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Ulysses vocabulary
20 mythology vocabulary words
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Pasiphae
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tags: [mythology]
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Definition:After a curse from Poseidon, Pasiphae experienced lust for and mate with a white bull sent by Poseidon. In the Greek literalistic understanding of a Minoan myth, in order to actually copulate with the bull, she had the Athenian artificer Daedalus construct a portable wooden cow with a cowhide covering, within which she was able to satisfy her strong desire. The effect of the Greek interpretation was to reduce a more-than-human female, daughter of the Sun itself, to a stereotyped emblem of grotesque bestiality and the shocking excesses of female sensuality and deceit.[...]In the Greek literalistic understanding of a Minoan myth, in order to actually copulate with the bull, she had the Athenian artificer Daedalus construct a portable wooden cow with a cowhide covering, within which she was able to satisfy her strong desire.text: from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike
image: By Jean Lemaire - http://www.akg-images.de/archive/-2UMEBMYYB148R.html , Public Domain,
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Uses:
Of Phasiphae, that was queen of Crete,
For shrewedness he thought the tale sweet.
Fy, speak no more, it is a grisly thing,
Of her horrible lust and her liking.
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue (1400)
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Shall the lewdness of others animate thee in thy lightness? Why then dost thou not haunt the stews, because Lais frequented them? why dost thou not love a bull, seeing Pasiphae loved one?John Lyly. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
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I was fond of Bloch; my parents wished me to be happy; and the insoluble problems which I set myself on such texts as the ‘absolutely meaningless’ beauty of La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë tired me more and made me more unwell than I should have been after further talks with him, unwholesome as those talks might seem to my mother’s mind.
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 1]
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STEPHEN: Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first confessionbox.
James Joyce. Ulysses
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