Western literature week 3

Achilles

Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War and the central character and greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad. His mother was the immortal nymphThetis, and his father, the mortal Peleus, was the king of the Myrmidons.

Achilles’ heel

An Achilles' heel is a weakness in spite of overall strength, which can actually or potentially lead to downfall. While the mythological origin refers to a physical vulnerability, idiomatic references to other attributes or qualities that can lead to downfall are common.

River styx

In Greek mythology, Styx is a deity and a river that forms the boundary between Earth and the Underworld (the domain often called Hades, which also is the name of its ruler). The rivers Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, and Cocytus all converge at the center of the underworld on a great marsh, which sometimes is also called the Styx. According to Herodotus, the river Styx originates near Feneos. Styx is also a goddess with prehistoric roots in Greek mythology as a daughter of Tethys, after whom the river is named and because of whom it had miraculous powers.

According to some versions, Styx had miraculous powers and could make someone invulnerable. According to one tradition, Achilles was dipped in the waters of the river by his mother during his childhood, acquiring invulnerability, with exception of his heel, by which his mother held him. The only spot where Achilles was vulnerable was his heel, where he was struck and killed by Paris' arrow in the Trojan War. This is the source of the expression Achilles' heel, a metaphor for a vulnerable spot.

Thetis

Thetis, is encountered in Greek mythology mostly as a sea nymph or known as the goddess of water, one of the 50 Nereids, daughters of the ancient sea god Nereus.

Peleus

Peleus was a hero whose myth was already known to the hearers of Homer in the late 8th century BC. Peleus was the son of Aeacus, king of the island of Aegina, and Endeïs, the oread of Mount Pelion in Thessaly. He married the sea-nymph Thetis with whom he fathered Achilles.

Agamemnon

In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra and the father of Iphigenia, Electra or Laodike, Orestes and Chrysothemis. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. When Helen, the wife of Menelaus, was taken to Troy by Paris, Agamemnon commanded the united Greek armed forces in the ensuing Trojan War.

Chryseis

In Greek mythology, Chryseis was a Trojan woman, the daughter of Chryses. Chryseis, her apparent name in the Iliad, means simply "Chryses' daughter"; later writers give her real name as Astynome.

In the first book of the Iliad, she has been enslaved, as a war prize, by Agamemnon who admits she is finer than his own wife Clytemnestra and refuses to allow her father, a priest of Apollo, to ransom her. Apollo then sends a plague sweeping through the Greek armies, and Agamemnon is forced to give Chryseis back in order to end it, so Agamemnon sends Odysseus to return Chryseis to her father. Agamemnon compensates himself for this loss by taking Briseis from Achilles, an act that offends Achilles, who refuses to take further part in the Trojan War. A later Greek legend, preserved in Hyginus' Fabulae, states that she had a son by Agamemnon. In medieval literature, Chryseis is developed into the character Cressida.

Eris

Eris is the Greek goddess of strife and discord. Her name is the equivalent of LatinDiscordia, which means "discord". Eris' Greek opposite is Harmonia, whose Latin counterpart is Concordia. Homer equated her with the war-goddess Enyo, whose Roman counterpart is Bellona. The dwarf planet Eris is named after the goddess, as is the religion Discordianism.

Stanza & paragraph

Stanza: In poetry, a stanza is a grouped set of lines within a poem, usually set off from other stanzas by a blank line or indentation.^[1] Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, though stanzas are not strictly required to have either. There are many unique forms of stanzas. Some stanzaic forms are simple, such as four-line quatrains. Other forms are more complex, such as the Spenserian stanza. Fixed verse poems, such as sestinas, can be defined by the number and form of their stanzas. The term stanza is similar to strophe, though strophe is sometimes used to refer to irregular set of lines, as opposed to regular, rhymed stanzas.

Paragraph: A paragraph is a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. A paragraph consists of one or more sentences. Though not required by the syntax of any language, paragraphs are usually an expected part of formal writing, used to organize longer prose.

Climax chart