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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 9 page paper showing the connection between these two issues, as demonstrated in the works of Aristophanes, Plato, Dante, and Shakespeare (Lysistrata, The Apology, The Inferno, and The Tempest, respectively). The paper asserts that Western literature first mocked or dismissed the sexual expression of female self-determination, later turned it into a sin, and finally transformed it into a social gaffe, but until recently still continued to maintain that its suppression was not wrong. Bibliography lists five sources.
Page Count:
9 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_4litwor.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
own day, most men seem much more comfortable with the idea of women as passive and suppliant, rather than assertive and self-determined. Western literature shows that this is scarcely a
new concept. In fact our culture has done all it can to link womens procreative sexuality to submission, as well as non-procreative sexuality to a proscribed self-determination. We can see
this by comparing two works from ancient Greece with two works from the extremes of the Renaissance era. In so doing, we will see how the literature of these periods
has first mocked or dismissed the sexual expression of female self-determination, later turned it into a sin, and finally transformed it into a social gaffe, but until recently still continued
to maintain that its suppression was not wrong. In the fifth century BC, the playwright Aristophanes wrote a screamingly funny anti-war play, Lysistrata, which retains its topicality -- and
its humor -- even today. His play takes place during one of Athens and Spartas interminable wars, when the entire male population of Athens is fired up to fight for
the glory of their State. The women think the war is ridiculous. Led by a noblewoman named Lysistrata, the women agree to make themselves as lovely and seductive as possible
-- but to deny their husbands sex until the men agree to sign a treaty. It is the women, therefore, who actually end the war. Read from a distance of
2500 years, Aristophanes play would seem to imply that Athenian women had a great deal of power in their households, but this is emphatically not the case. The king of
the family was the husband and father; his sons were the ranking nobility; his wife and daughters minded the males. H.D.F. Kitto notes that "It is the accepted view .
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