ipl-logo

Prayer In Confessions Analysis

1238 Words5 Pages

Prayers to Those Above: From Homer to Augustine To request a favor from a higher deity, people across time and location learn to pray and sacrifice to give back to the gods for hearing the pleas. Although years separate them, one can see that Greco-Roman authors often follow the same rules of praying to a god. However, even after the time of Ancient Greece and Rome can readers still find the invocation of gods with barely anything changed from the time before. Constantine's performance of prayer in Confessions is a sudden change from the those in the texts such as Homer's Iliad and Sappho's fragments students have read in the Literature Humanities course. With a sudden shift from a polytheistic Greco-Roman time to a monotheistic period, it is not …show more content…

Within one of her poems. Sappho calls upon "Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind, child of Zeus, who twists lures" (Sappho 3) to assist her with her love life. Sappho's invocation is rather brief compared to Constantine's continuous praise of God. With short descriptions of Aphrodite being the "O blessed one" or having a "deathless face" (Sappho 3), Sappho's respect to Aphrodite is mentioned through her portrayal of the goddess' past deeds for her. Constantine is out right with his praise, stating that God is "most high above things" (Constantine 31) or how God "will lighten [his] darkness" (Constantine 68). He also repeatedly calls the deity "Lord my God" throughout the book, contrasting with Sappho's one mention of Aphrodite's name in the beginning of her poem. God's repeated title serves as a way to ground Constantine and remind himself that his audience of the novel is God first then the mortal readers. On the other hand, Sappho's prayer switches her point of view, sometimes even putting Aphrodite herself as the speaker in the

Show More
Related

  • Greek Gods Help Out Men

    772 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Father Zeus, doesn’t it infuriate you to see this violence? We gods get the worst of it from each other whenever we try to help out men. Why did you have to give birth to that madwoman, your marauding daughter who is always breaking the rules? All the rest of us gods, everyone on Olympus, listens to you. But she can say or do whatever she wants.”

    Read More

  • The Working Man's Prayer Rhetorical Analysis

    819 Words  | 4 Pages

    Picture a life where every intricate detail of any trade took a large amount of time to do but it had to be done for the survival of the human kind. Now picture it’s the turn of the 20th century, everyone and everything in the united states was revolutionizing. Many inventions are being born and many machines are making these intricate jobs more effortless. Life before was merely a memory.

    Read More

  • Plato's Symposium And The Oppression Of Sappho

    1343 Words  | 6 Pages

    The language in Plato’s symposium and the expression of Sappho’s poetry are similar in that they both deal with homoerotic love. Sappho, the only ancient Greek female author whose work survived, talks from the female point of observation, where as Plato’s work concentrates on the idea of love among males. In spite of the fact that both of their points of view are comparative in courses, for example, their thoughts of physical fascination and want, Plato’s work creates a better understanding of the nature of love then Sappho’s ideas. This understanding will be shown with three arguments and counter- arguments in order to demonstrate the dominance of Plato over Sappho. It will than be concluded with an overview of the main idea and a recap of the three arguments made for Plato.

    Read More

  • Lamentations Of The Father Analysis

    1552 Words  | 7 Pages

    3. The audience for the essay, “Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father” from the Atlantic by Ian Frazier is for parents. The audience is portrayed throughout the essay through the tone of the narrator. The narrator uses a superior and authoritative tone as he is speaking, much like a parent. Because the narrator is describing the house rules, responsibilities and directly speaking to “you,” it is indicated that when he says “you” he is referring to the children of the household.

    Read More

  • In My Eyes He Ang The Gods Sappho Analysis

    847 Words  | 4 Pages

    Another influential factor expressed in Sappho’s writing was her sexuality. Disregarding the fact that she was married to a man for a brief period of time, Sappho found a great interest in women (Poetry Foundation). As an illustration, the poem “In My Eyes He Matches the Gods” is enthusiastic towards Sappho’s sexuality. This poem is about a women Sappho sees sitting across the room and with a man. Sappho is envious of said man and states it does not matter who the man is with this women, any guy would be like the gods getting to be with her, hence the name of the poem.

    Read More

  • Confessional Approach To Religion

    1840 Words  | 8 Pages

    Siobhan O’Connor 117440012 Essay 1- (BA) RG1001 2ND November 2017 Introduction to the Study of Religion In this essay, I will begin by defining the study of religion as discipline followed by discussing the many approaches used to study this subject. This will lead me to differentiate between the confessional and the non-confessional approaches to the academic study of religion.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

    873 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rhetorical Analysis "Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all resolutions. "- Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” was a sermon written and delivered by American reverend Jonathan Edwards in 1741, and was an outstanding example of the potentially dominant convincing powers of the use of Rhetoric. The sermon, even when read silently, is effective in projecting a specific interpretation of the wrathful nature of God and the sinful nature of man.

    Read More

  • Athena Intervention In The Odyssey

    1056 Words  | 5 Pages

    The reader also sees this in Book 7 as Odysseus calls out to Athena through a prayer. Odysseus says, “Athena! Hear my prayers at last, for you have never heard me then, when I was shattered… Grant that here among the Phaecian people I many find some mercy and some love!” (7.356-357, 359-360).

    Read More

  • The Gods And Mortals In Homer's The Odyssey

    610 Words  | 3 Pages

    The relationships between the Greek gods and mortals have always been complicated. The gods can be generous and supportive, but also harsh and destructive towards the humans. They claim to be all powerful beings with unlimited power and influence, but in truth, they are far more human than they are perceived. They meddle with human lives, not because they are wise, but because of their own selfish reasons. In Homer’s

    Read More

  • Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Essay

    549 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God”, Johnathan Edwards uses fear to create images that help his audience experience the consequences of sinful behavior. He uses imagery and figurative language to persuade his readers. He wants us to get a mental picture of Hell in your head and he wants us to fear the wrath of God. One such image was when Edward wrote, “When men are on god’s hands and they could fall to Hell, natural men are held in the hands of God, over the pit of Hell.” God could let us fall into the eternity of burning flames anytime He wants to.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Deus Ex Machina In The Odyssey

    805 Words  | 4 Pages

    Prayers to the gods could be used to get a crew or companion home safely. For example, Odysseus had a voyage that lasted for a long time, and many thought he had passed. Homer’s purpose of writing the Odyssey is to connect mythology to the lives of the people living in the time period of this epic poem and the reader’s lives using deus ex machina.

    Read More

  • Debussy's Six Epigraphes Antiques

    4133 Words  | 17 Pages

    This invocation of the gods is typical of the ancient Greek dramas, where the first line calls upon the divinities for inspiration of the work, similar to an opening prayer. Examples include Homer’s great epic poems Odyssey and the Iliad, as well as the Homeric hymn to Pan, XIX, “They sing of the blessed gods and high Olympus and choose to tell of such and one as luck-bringing Hermes above the rest.” Pan, who was the son of the god Hermes, also favoured by Dionysus, “Then all the immortals were glad in heart and Bacchic Dionysus in especially; and they called for the boy Pan because he delighted all their hearts” (Evelyn-White 1914 as quoted in Astilla, 2007). There are surviving fragments of Sappho’s third and fourth odes, as translated

    Read More

  • Arcite And Plamon In The Knight's Tale

    849 Words  | 4 Pages

    Arcite and Palamon are the main characters in “The Knight’s Tale” and they both play very important parts in the story. These two men have similar traits but different personalities and methods for accomplishing tasks. Arcite and Palamon are cousins, who are so close, that they consider themselves, and even swear an oath stating that they are brothers. Their brotherly pact, as strong as it may seem, is still helpless against the powers of love. In “The Knight 's Tale”, similarities and differences between Arcite and Palamon are evident when they fall in love with the same person, how they behave after they leave prison, and what they pray for and how the prayers are answered.

    Read More

  • Greek Gods And Goddesses In Homer's Odyssey

    1203 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the epic poem The Odyssey, Homer portrays Greek gods and goddesses as possessing human qualities and faults. Through their actions and emotions, Homer emphasizes the detrimental effects of lust, envy, wrath, and greed in ancient Grecian society. He also never fails to remind readers of the importance of respect for holy figures because of their powerful abilities to create chaos and wonder". Homer wants to prove that gods and humans share a variety of traits, and the only difference is that god don’t allow these flaws negatively to impact their society. To help further his argument, we can compare Greek gods and goddesses to that of Christianity.

    Read More

  • The Role Of The Gods In The Iliad

    718 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Iliad, written by Homer, is an ancient Greek epic about the Trojan War, which the divine certainly influences. Unlike how most gods might act or behave in books nowadays, the gods in the Iliad share some uncommon traits. For example helping their favorite morals, the idea of justice and harmony is surely excluded in the portrayal of Greek gods. The divine in the Iliad are characterized as very emotional and somewhat manipulative. Regardless of what occurs, it 's all the doing of the gods.

    Read More

More about Prayer In Confessions Analysis

Open Document