The Role Of Odysseus's Bed In The Odyssey
Introduction- Odysseus’s Bed in The Odyssey:
Upon his return home Odysseus is tested by his wife Penelope- she tests him in order to determine the reality of his being. Odysseus had been gone for years and Penelope could not be so easily persuaded that he had alas returned. Penelope orders Eurycleia to move her bridal bed, in doing so Odysseus grows uneasy. He begins to describe the bed and how he built it, thus proving his identity.
There was the bole of an olive tree with long leaves growing strongly in the courtyard, and it was thick, like a column. I laid down my chamber around this … Then I cut away the foliage of the long-leaved olive, and trimmed the trunk from the roots up, planning it with a brazen adze, well and expertly, and trued it straight to a chalkline, making a bedpost of it, and bored all hones with an auger.
Their secret! as she heard it told, her knees grew tremulous and weak, her heart failed her. With eyes brimming tears she ran to him…
Aristotelian View of the Bed: …show more content…
A marriage bed that holds its identity with a rooted olive tree would also retain this identification. There are a certain number of basic principles at work in nature, according to which all natural processes can be explained. The wood is the nature of the bed. The figure of the bed is not the nature, for if the bed were to sprout, not a bed but wood would come up. We regard the beds figure as being its artistic form.
Art and nature are identified with form. A potential bed must receive form before it can be said to be, “by nature” or “by art”. Nature in this sense is identified with the shape- more precisely the form- of a thing having a sense of motion within it. The primary difference surrounding art and nature is form. Form identifies what a thing is and cannot be separated from the matter. Matter is a things source of movement; this is because matter is drawn to
Upon his return home Odysseus is tested by his wife Penelope- she tests him in order to determine the reality of his being. Odysseus had been gone for years and Penelope could not be so easily persuaded that he had alas returned. Penelope orders Eurycleia to move her bridal bed, in doing so Odysseus grows uneasy. He begins to describe the bed and how he built it, thus proving his identity.
There was the bole of an olive tree with long leaves growing strongly in the courtyard, and it was thick, like a column. I laid down my chamber around this … Then I cut away the foliage of the long-leaved olive, and trimmed the trunk from the roots up, planning it with a brazen adze, well and expertly, and trued it straight to a chalkline, making a bedpost of it, and bored all hones with an auger.
Their secret! as she heard it told, her knees grew tremulous and weak, her heart failed her. With eyes brimming tears she ran to him…
Aristotelian View of the Bed: …show more content…
A marriage bed that holds its identity with a rooted olive tree would also retain this identification. There are a certain number of basic principles at work in nature, according to which all natural processes can be explained. The wood is the nature of the bed. The figure of the bed is not the nature, for if the bed were to sprout, not a bed but wood would come up. We regard the beds figure as being its artistic form.
Art and nature are identified with form. A potential bed must receive form before it can be said to be, “by nature” or “by art”. Nature in this sense is identified with the shape- more precisely the form- of a thing having a sense of motion within it. The primary difference surrounding art and nature is form. Form identifies what a thing is and cannot be separated from the matter. Matter is a things source of movement; this is because matter is drawn to