The Aphrodisia

Contains index of artists.

A rare marinal about disguised identities and loves among the Greco-Roman deities under the Mediterranean Sea. Percy described Aphrodisia as an experiment in a new genre he was inventing, the marinal, designed to contrast the pastoral set on land in the countryside. Beyond this setting, this comedy focuses on taking to an extreme the popular European trope of disguises by having most of the main characters reveal themselves to have an identity other than the one they present themselves as. Arion relates a sad story that is an original translation of a segment out of Bartas’ Weeks about him being a poor singer who was captured by pirates, but in the conclusion, Arion reveals himself to actually be Jupiter, the King of the gods in Roman mythology. And Talus pretends to be an engineer and Vulcan’s (god of fire) son, when he is really Neptune (god of water). In standard published plots from the Renaissance, these revelations prove to have been necessary to further the goals of the characters, but in this censored story, the disguises cause lifetimes of misery and prevent all who are disguised from achieving their romantic and power goals. Percy has designed a plot that subversively shows how common pseudonyms and fraudulent identities are in British society, as it confesses the Workshop’s role in selling ghostwriting services. On the surface, the story is dense with innovative love entanglements, and the mythological misadventures of complex and stumbling characters. The preparations for Empress Cytherea’s arrival and the Aphrodisia feast in her honor also showcases realistic details about what a day might have been like when the aristocratic Percy family prepared for James I’s visit to their Sion House on June 8, 1603, just before James was crowned. “Fascinating study of disguise, identity, self-fashioning, metamorphosis, and authorship. *****” —LibraryThing, Early Reviewers, Charles Alan Ralston Plot and Staging Text Terms, References, Questions, Exercises

"A rare marinal about disguised identities and loves among the Greco-Roman deities under the Mediterranean Sea. Percy described Aphrodisia as an experiment in a new genre he was inventing, the marinal, designed to contrast the pastoral set on land in the countryside. Beyond this setting, this comedy focuses on taking to an extreme the popular European trope of disguises by having most of the main characters reveal themselves to have an identity other than the one they present themselves as. Arion relates a sad story that is an original translation of a segment out of Bartas' Weeks about him being a poor singer who was captured by pirates, but in the conclusion, Arion reveals himself to actually be Jupiter, the King of the gods in Roman mythology. And Talus pretends to be an engineer and Vulcan's (god of fire) son, when he is really Neptune (god of water). In standard published plots from the Renaissance, these revelations prove to have been necessary to further the goals of the characters, but in this censored story, the disguises cause lifetimes of misery and prevent all who are disguised from achieving their romantic and power goals. Percy has designed a plot that subversively shows how common pseudonyms and fraudulent identities are in British society, as it confesses the Workshop's role in selling ghostwriting services. On the surface, the story is dense with innovative love entanglements, and the mythological misadventures of complex and stumbling characters. The preparations for Empress Cytherea's arrival and the Aphrodisia feast in her honor also showcases realistic details about what a day might have been like when the aristocratic Percy family prepared for James I's visit to their Sion House on June 8, 1603, just before James was crowned"--

A rare marinal about disguised identities and loves among the Greco-Roman deities under the Mediterranean Sea.Percy described Aphrodisia as an experiment in a new genre he was inventing, the marinal, designed to contrast the pastoral set on land in the countryside. Beyond this setting, this comedy focuses on taking to an extreme the popular European trope of disguises by having most of the main characters reveal themselves to have an identity other than the one they present themselves as. Arion relates a sad story that is an original translation of a segment out of Bartas' Weeks about him being a poor singer who was captured by pirates, but in the conclusion, Arion reveals himself to actually be Jupiter, the King of the gods in Roman mythology. And Talus pretends to be an engineer and Vulcan's (god of fire) son, when he is really Neptune (god of water). In standard published plots from the Renaissance, these revelations prove to have been necessary to further the goals of the characters, but in this censored story, the disguises cause lifetimes of misery and prevent all who are disguised from achieving their romantic and power goals. Percy has designed a plot that subversively shows how common pseudonyms and fraudulent identities are in British society, as it confesses the Workshop's role in selling ghostwriting services. On the surface, the story is dense with innovative love entanglements, and the mythological misadventures of complex and stumbling characters. The preparations for Empress Cytherea's arrival and the Aphrodisia feast in her honor also showcases realistic details about what a day might have been like when the aristocratic Percy family prepared for James I's visit to their Sion House on June 8, 1603, just before James was crowned.

A book of make-your-own aphrodisiacs with ingredients and recipes to create a variety of love-enhancing elixirs, tinctures, oils, and edibles, all illustrated with original photography by authors.

Inspired by Theodore Papanghelis’ Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death (1987), this collective volume brings together seventeen contributions, written by an international team of experts, exploring the different ways in which Latin authors and some of their modern readers created narratives of life, love and death. Taken together the papers offer stimulating readings of Latin texts over many centuries, examined in a variety of genres and from various perspectives: poetics and authorial self-fashioning; intertextuality; fiction and ‘reality’; gender and queer studies; narratological readings; temporality and aesthetics; genre and meta-genre; structures of the narrative and transgression of boundaries on the ideological and the formalistic level; reception; meta-dramatic and feminist accounts-the female voice. Overall, the articles offer rich insights into the handling and development of these narratives from Classical Greece through Rome up to modern English poetry.