Plato's 'Love' in Stoppard's
The Symposium, by Plato and Arcadia by Tom Stoppard are two novels that deal with the meaning of the word love and the expressions and actions that are brought on as results of it. Plato delivers a number of perspectives on love in his novel. Different characters at a dinner party give their perspectives about the definition of love. The definition seems to become closer to the truth as more characters take their turn to speak. The Symposium is told to the reader by Apollodorous as told to him by Aristodemus about the 'dinner party.' After the guests have eaten, it is suggested that all give speeches to honor the god of Love. Phaedrus goes first and describes love as a force that acts upon and exists between people. He also proposes that love ensures courage and happiness. Pausanias elaborates on this idea by speaking of two types of love, Heavenly and Common. He also talks about appropriate types of love. Eryximachus sees order as the driving principle of love. He thinks that conflicting elements will make perfectly balanced love. Aristophanes tells a myth about three genders in hopes to explain how love guides us towards those who are close in nature with us. After Agathon speaks about love, Socrates argues that Ag
Another relationship in Arcadia exists between Hannah Jarvis and Bernard Nightingale. Hannah Jarvis is an author, who wrote a novel about Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron's mistress. She is staying at Sidley Park researching exactly who lived in hermitage. She is a hard worker who is very proud of what she has already accomplished. While working at Sidley Park she meets Bernard Nightingale, also an author. He is studying the life and death of Lord Byron in hopes of finding out what happened to the poet Ezra Chater. He, like Hannah is also proud of his work, but tends to draw conclusions from unproved information. Bernard is different than all others living in the house at the present time. He is driven by sex, and upsets the social order and romantic equilibrium when he arrives. While visiting Sidley Park, he prepares the speech he will give at the lecture on Lord Byron and the death of Ezra Chater. He has come to the conclusion that Sidley Park was not about science and math, but it was about sex and literature. When he proposes that Byron killed Chater in a duel, Hannah, Valentine, and Chloe all disagree. They all begin to argue and Bernard lashes out on science saying, "Why does scientific progress matter more that personalities? There's no rush for Issac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos." Once everyone has left the room and Bernard is left alone with Hannah, he begins to criticize her biography of Caroline Lamb, and proceeds to ask her to leave for London with him and have sex with him. He suggests that Hannah should, "...let yourself go a bit. You might have written a better book." Hannah responds by saying, "Sex and literature. Literature and sex. Your conversation, left to itself, doesn't have many places to go...One of them is always sex." It is during this scene that Bernard's sex drive is perceived, and the reader realizes that he is not seeking virtue and wisdom, only sexual gratification. athon has just described the object of Love. Socrates attempts to explain what Love is itself by relaying a story he was once told by Diotima. Diotima believes that one should strive for the knowledge of the Form of Beauty to reach love. Arcadia takes place during two different centuries. Some of the characters in the play are portrayed in 1809, and others in the present, which was 1999. The plot takes place in the same dr
Some common words found in the essay are:
Diotima Diotima, Heavenly Love, Coverly Love, Form Beauty, Eryximachus Symposium, Tom Stoppard, Caroline Lamb, Heavenly Common, Chloe Coverly, Sidley Park, sidley park, conflicting elements, virtue wisdom, types love, sexual gratification, dinner party, love heavenly, sexual pleasure, carnal embrace, hannah jarvis, told diotima diotima, thomasina tutor septimus, story told diotima, types love heavenly, love heavenly common,
Approximate Word count = 1601
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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