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|From Pereira, Colombia| |Living in NYC| |Business Adm and Marketing| ???? |NY National Guard|???? ????????

Women and Love in The Heptameron

The main theme of this work is love. Human love and profane love, love in all its forms. In this work as the story is read you can see the ideology of love according to Marguerita through attitudes and words of men and women, where a picture of the conception of love and marriage in the sixteenth century is built is reflected. Do not forget that in the Middle Ages, love in literature was the courtly love, the troubadour sang the female coquetry, beauty and female discretion were values ​​that were above of the  intellectual values.

In the sixteenth century however , the woman begins to influence society. Undoubtedly, one of the pillars of the female role is humanistic education. Through the culture and its privileged social position Marguerita of Navarre realizes that the world is changing, but the woman is still too obfuscated by man. We see in her work a mosaic structure, where every word, every gesture of the characters help to  shape a defense of honest, believer and educated woman.

The characters are divided into two groups: female and male. Although equalize in number, they do not have the same importance. The male side led by Hircan is characterized by misogyny  which means discrimination against women  and machismo (except Daugocin and Geburon).

However, it is on the female side where the spiritual leader of the group is, Oisille  and the person  with greater intellectual development; Parliament. Thus, Margarita gets elevate the role of women in the society of his time, banishing values like ​​frivolity and pride. So like this, faithful to God and to her husband and also intelligent and cultivated woman, represented by Parlamente, is the big winner in the debates.  Human love for Margarita must be between individuals of the same social class and within marriage, So much so Parlamente respect her husband when dissimulating the flirtation of her admirers.

 

Aristophanes’s speech

Aristophanes’s speech is interesting in the sense that is based on the myth to give explanation to the love among men, but somehow modifies the myth and find an razonable explanation. According to him, before there were two sexes there was only one ( androgynous) the gods were angry with those beings brcause they contradict his orders so he split them in half, now both beings needed each other to reproduce and survive, thus was born the love or as the Greeks: the instinct of Eros. Aristophanes also briefly explains homosexual tendencies in the greek world were not frowned upon and were common.

Similarities between “The Aeneid” and “The Odyssey”

In the Aeneid, Book VI written by Publius Vergilius low commanded by the Roman emperor Augustus to give a mythical and heroic fundament to the Rome foundation. In Book VI several similar topics are presented to those presented in the “Odyssey”, specifically in the edge 11 where we see death and life after death, with prophecies of the near future and hope among others.

During Book VI of the Aeneid it presents a major and recurring tragedies and heroic songs in ancient Greece, the death, specifically supporting characters whose involvement in history has greatly altered the protagonist. In the Odyssey is dying one of the closest friends od Odysseus in a “party”, while in the Aeneid “Dido”is dying, here we can see a crucial factor in the development of the characters, the death of a loved one caused for a bad decision from the some of the characters, possibly to demostrates that a great leader or hero is not born so, if not after repeatedly falling off and then rises again. In a way the Greek or Roman literature present a book whose pages teach those who read some of the basic principles of life, and how to reach or aspire to greatness.