Explanation of The Title
The title refers to the myth of the Sirens, creatures with the bodies of birds and the heads of beautiful women who perched on rocks at sea and lured men to their deaths with their hypnotic singing. The sirens appear in Homer's Odyssey, which Flavia recites to an interested audience. The allusion comes up since each of the three widows invited to the villa for the false matchmaking party is both young and very beautiful, drawing the attention of all the men.
There is also a humorous scene parodying the passage from the Odyssey, when the women and girls of the villa decide to skinny dip in the ocean and sunbathe naked on a rock out at sea. In excitement, the boys try to slip out in a boat to spy on them, but end up running aground on some nearby rocks.
Read more about this topic: The Sirens Of Surrentum
Famous quotes containing the words explanation of the, explanation of, explanation and/or title:
“To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, about what is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.”
—Bas Van Fraassen (b. 1941)
“We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)
“Are cans constitutionally iffy? Whenever, that is, we say that we can do something, or could do something, or could have done something, is there an if in the offing—suppressed, it may be, but due nevertheless to appear when we set out our sentence in full or when we give an explanation of its meaning?”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“All his works might well enough be embraced under the title of one of them, a good specimen brick, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.” Of this department he is the Chief Professor in the World’s University, and even leaves Plutarch behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)