Essay on The Nature and Role of the Ocean in the Medieval...

The ocean in medieval times was a thing of great mystery to the ordinary medieval peasant. However to the explorers, the church and the educated the sea was a dangerous place. The ocean began to fascinate people in the time of the early Greeks. The Titans ruled the earth in the beginning, and Oceanus, son of Uranus and Gaea was one of them. In him [Oceanus] Homer salutes the essence of all things, even the Gods, and regards him as a divinity whose power was inferior to none but Zeus He was the father of all the rivers and lakes of the world. But then the Olympians rebelled against the Titans, Zeus drove Cronus into the western ocean. When Zeus had taken his place as head of the gods, not even the oceans tides could defy him.†¦show more content†¦In the North there were no deserts, so the monks had to go for the only other thing that would give them the isolation they desired. The Sea. Adamn#225;n refers to a certain B#225;it#225;n who asked for St. Columbas blessing before setting out in search of a desert place in the sea (in mari herimum) ... It is clear from Adamn#225;n that eremitical sea-voyages such as these were a familiar enough feature of the religious environment of the C7th The Monks formed monasteries on remote islands off the Irish coast, for example Skellig Michael, Co. Kerry and Inishmurray, Co. Sligo. They viewed themselves as white martyrs, leaving their families and friends to do good work for God and the church. Living in discomfort in little beehive huts sleeping on stone beds on windswept rocky crags in the ocean, they scraped together a living selling their crafts through an independent agent. The idea of penance and exile is closely tied up to the idea of white martyrdom, often there were civilians on the monastery and they were there to repent for their sins. They spent a certain length of time there, sharing the harsh living conditions of the monks. The monks wanted to test the strength of their penance. This was a voluntary form of exile and a documented source records another: And three Irishmen came to king Alfred in a boat without any oars from Ireland which they had left secretly because they wished for love of god to be in exile,Show MoreRelated C.S. Lewis on Misunderstanding Fantasy Essay4960 Words   |  20 Pagesfantasy as, â€Å"A pleasing imaginative construction entertained†¦moderately and briefly as a temporary holiday or recreation, duly subordinated to more effective and outgoing activities† (Lewis: An Experiment in Criticism 51). The keys words here are imagination and construction. Lewis considered people who imagine fantasy as castle builders; those who are unhealthy fantasizers engage in morbid castle building while healthy individuals engage in normal castle building. Lewis elaboratedRead MoreEssay about What is World History?4758 Words   |  20 Pagesand pieces. So what can historians do? They can connect the dots, the pitifully few dots, to make conjectural pictures of the past; they can assemble the surviving evidence into narratives, or stories, about the past, with liberal resort to their imaginations; but they will always do so in the light of certain premises or theories or world-views that inform their labors, even if they have no coherent awareness of these premises, theories, or world-views. It would be advisable if historians could operateRead MoreWilliam Shakespeare and Macbeth8813 Words   |  36 Pagesthings. The medieval and renaissance view of the world saw a relationship between order on earth, the so-calledmicrocosm, and order on the larger scale of the universe, or  macrocosm.  Thus, when Lennox and the Old Man talk of the terrifying alteration in the natural order of the universe — tempests, earthquakes, darkness at noon, and so on — these are all reflections of the breakage of the natural order that Macbeth has brought about in his own microcosmic world. Disruption of Nature Violent disruptionsRead MoreEssay on Wonderment and Awe: the Way of the Kami4711 Words   |  19 Pagesand animistic faith that believes that every object possesses a spirit, and encourages nature worship, folk beliefs, ancient deities and rituals. It has no dogma or moral doctrine, except for four general tenets: worshipping and honouring the kami; love of nature; tradition and the family; and cleanliness (Picken 1994:9-10). For the scope of this article, I will be looking at how respect for the kami and nature inform two of Miyazaki’s films Princess Mononoke (Mononokehime 1997) and Spirited AwayRead MoreEssay Utopia4252 Words   |  18 Pagessociety of great planning and capability. A community where individuals compromised their rights for the good of the collective and focused on a communal goal. These ideals of an infinitely capable and cooperative. Utopic society have captured the imagination of the greatest minds throughout the centuries. One may find the origin of Utopian thoughts in the Republic and Law conceived by Plato and in The Nicomachean Ethics and Politics created by Aristotle. The two individuals are the founding fathersRead MoreDiscussion of William Shakespeares Macbeth Essay3412 Words   |  14 PagesShakespeare also explores the topic of kingship and loyalty. They were of great importance to King James. His father, Lord Darnley was murdered and his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been executed as a traitor. Hence, inquiries of the role of a monarch were always on his mind. Other possible intentions include showing the fight between good and evil, showing the relationships between humans and the supernatural, exploring the psychology of ambition and the implicationsRead MoreFrankenstein Study Guide14107 Words   |  57 Pageswithin tales. The story opens and ends with the letters of an explorer named Robert Walton, who is searching for the source of magnetism in the northern polar regions. There he finds and rescues Dr. Victor Frankenstein from certain death in the icy ocean. While he is recovering, Frankenstein tells Walton the story of his life. Set within Frankenstein’s narrative and Walton’s letters is the first-person story told by the creature Frankenstein created. Frankenstein, a young man from a happy family inRead MoreImpact of Science on Society38427 Words   |  154 Pagesadaptive abilities, as yet only minimally activated, which wall make of our future a place very different f r o m anything we have ever experienced before? Somebody once apparently said to the philosopher Wittgenstein, â€Å"What a bunch of no-knows we medieval Europeans must have been! back in the days before Copernicus, t o have looked up at the sky and thought that what we saw up there was the Sun going round the Earth, when, as everybody knows, the Earth goes round the Sun, and it doesn’t take too manyRead MoreImpact of Science on Society38421 Words   |  154 Pagesadaptive abilities, as yet only minimally activated, which wall make of our future a place very different f r o m anything we have ever experienced before? Somebody once apparently said to the philosopher Wittgenstein, â€Å"What a bunch of no-knows we medieval Europeans must have been! back in the days before Copernicus, t o have looked up at the sky and thought that what we saw up there was the Sun going round the Earth, when, as everybody knows, the Earth goes round the Sun, and it doesn’t take too manyRead MoreSantrock Edpsych Ch0218723 Words   |  75 Pagesguage skills and cognitive development. However, I The students loved the project and I was able to inte- have also come to realize that as students progress grate many elements of the curriculum into the unit. through the elementary grades the nature and By providing students with opportunities to express design of this play needs to be modified in order to their learning across a number of authentic, playful be developmentally appropriate. For instance, while activities, I was able to tailor