- Locus amoenus
Latin for "pleasant place", "locus amoenus" is aliterary term which generally refers to an idealized place of safety or comfort. A "locus amoenus" is usually a beautiful, shady lawn or open woodland, sometimes with connotations of Eden.The literary use of this type of setting goes back, in Western literature at least, to
Homer , and it became a staple of thepastoral works of poets such asTheocritus andVirgil .Horace ("Ars poetica ", 17) and the commentators on Virgil, such asServius , recognize that descriptions of "loci amoeni" have become a rhetorical commonplace.In
Ovid 's "Metamorphoses ", the function of the "locus amoenus" is inverted. Instead of offering a respite from dangers, it is itself usually the scene of violent encounters. [http://www2.hawaii.edu/~zuern/demo/explication/loc/locus1.html]In "
Beowulf ",Heorot is a "locus amoenus" until it is attacked by Grendel.In
Boccaccio 's "Decameron ", the garden in which the ten narrators tell their stories is a "locus amoenus".In
Chaucer 's The Book of the Duchess, the dreamer meets the Man in Black grieving in the clearing of the wood, interrupting the masculine hunt.In the works of
William Shakespeare , the "locus amoenus" is the space that lies outside of city limits. It is where erotic passions can be freely explored, away from civilization and thus hidden from the social order which acts to suppress and regulate sexual behavior. It is mysterious and dark, a feminine place, as opposed to the rigid masculine civil structure. Examples can be found in "A Midsummer Night's Dream ", "As You Like It ", and "Titus Andronicus ".In William Wordsworth's 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood' the dimly recalled edenic joy of infancy is located in the amoenus: 'There was a time when meadow, grove and stream...'
External links
* [http://www.wpl.lib.in.us/roger/LOCUS.HTML The "Locus Amoenus" and the Fantasy Quest]
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