Great Works of Literature, Spring 2017 (hybrid)

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

Love is part of human nature and it is discussed in Plato’s Symposium. In the symposium when discussing love, there is said to be two types of love. The first type being common love this is love in the physical sense such as because of someone’s looks. The second type of love mentioned is heavenly love this is when love goes beyond the physical and you care for the companionship or mentorship. These types of love can be seen in the Odyssey. Common love is seen when Odysseus is stuck on the island for sex. Heavenly love can be seen through the way his son will not give up and believe that his father is dead, he goes out to try to find him.

2 thoughts on “Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.”

  1. It was really great the way you used Plato’s Symposium to define love and then showed how both common love and heavenly love played a role in The Odyssey. It is also very interesting to see how Plato wrote about many different views of love that were portrayed through each speaker, eventually leading up to Socrates who had the most fitting description of what love truly meant. On the other hand, in The Odyssey, Odysseus really saw love with a different lens, defining it more as loyalty and friendship.

  2. I think all of your comments are very insightful!
    I really like how you compared the concepts of “common” and “heavenly” love that were mentioned in The Symposium and showed how they can relate to The Odyssey.
    I have another theory of how “common” and “heavenly” love was relevant in The Odyssey. I agree that Odysseus had “common” love with Calypso on her island when he was having sex with her. However, another example of “heavenly” love in The Odyssey is how Penelope remains faithful and hopeful for her husband, her true love, to come back and be with her.

    Let me know what you guys think!

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