October 26 Lecture Notes

October 26 Myth lecture notes:

Start reading the Henderson the Rain King this weekend: how does this relate to mythology?

-Killing of the king

-The Golden Bough

-Survival of myth in the contemporary world

Quiz: November 9

Presentations Begin: November 23 (Groups #1, 2, 3)

Ovidian Story Presentation: November 16

Presentation of our term papers--will be posted to the blog, will be due in hard copy on day of presentation: December 7

Sublime=sublimination: divert or modify into culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity; of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe

Cornucopia: a symbol of plenty consisting of a goat’s horn filled with flowers, fruit, and corn

            -Origins from Achelous & Hercules

Nessus & Hercules:

Nessus (the centaur) love Deianera, but was shot with an arrow in his spine by Hercules

            -Had to cross the river, Hercules had to trust Nessus to bring Deianera across safely

            -Nessus takes Deianera and rapes her

            -Hercules shoots Nessus with a Hydra dipped arrow in the spine

Hydra: the animal with a hundred heads, poisoned blood

            -Nessus doesn’t want to die in vain so he gives Deianera his blood soaked shirt, tells her it’s an aphrodisiac, and it will work to make Hercules love her again if it were ever to be softened

           

“She gives Hercules the shirt,

“Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name,

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame,

Which human power cannot remove.

We only love, only suspire,

Consumer by either fire or fire.”

            -The Shirt of Flame, T.S. Eliot

           

-If it tries to remove the shirt, chunks of his flesh comes with it, he jumps into a pool, he then asks to be placed on a funeral pyre (A barbeque)

-The gods say he has suffered enough and places him in the sky as a constellation

Pygmalion:

Modern Day Pygmalions:

Pretty Woman

My Fair Lady

The Princess Diaries

An artists sculpts a figure of a beautiful woman, falls in love with it

*The power of the artist that changes simile to metaphor

            -Changes from what something is ‘like’ to what something ‘is’

            -Alters from object to subject

            -The function of the artist is to create reality

-The artist kisses, gives gifts to the ivory girl, dresses it, speaks to it

-Asks the gods, Venus, to have “one like my ivory girl” as his wife

-The statue comes to life!

            -9 months later, the girl gives birth to Paphos

            -In honor, Cyprus was called the Paphian isle

A Happy Ending!! J

The Birth of Adonis:

The story of the girl who is impregnated by her father, tries to flee, transformed into a tree, the tree had the baby, and gives birth to Adonis from the tree

            -Adonis is the figure of the most amazingly beautiful man

-Adoni=worshipped god, horrified patriarchs of the Bible, the women would sob for Adoni to come back to life, which repeats every year

• Adonis is so beautiful, he even attracts the love of Venus
• She warns Adonis against hunting and doing dangerous things to keep him safe so she will never suffer
• Adonis is on a wild boar hunt, lead by his hounds
• The boar tusks spur Adonis in the groin, Gored in the groin: MTV’s Jackass. Ha.
• Venus is devastated and she calls out that his memory will live on for eternity by reenacting his death at a giant feast

-The Gardens of Adonis: ritually every year, the ancient women of Greece would plant seeds in a shallow dish so that they grow and die quickly

-The anemone flower, “born of the wind” what he now represents

-“Live fast, love hard, die young”

Dionysus: comes to town and drives all the ladies crazy

            -Modern day: Sex, lies, and videotapes!

Perceptions

"In every one of these instances the life of the god-man is prolonged on condition of his

showing, in a severe physical contest of fight or flight, that his
bodily strength is not decayed, and that, therefore, the violent
death, which sooner or later is inevitable, may for the present be
postponed." -James G. Frazer

After acknowledging the fact that the artist is the master mind of our known world, I found a quote from 

Talmudic teachings stating: "We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are."

The concept of perception touches our lives every moment of everyday, and it affects each of us differently

in how we will respond to our next stimulus.  For example, I'm currently sitting with my boyfriend while 

he actively engages in Fantasy Football while watching the Oakland Raiders kick the Denver Bronco's ass. I 

believe the score is currently 31-0 and its not even half time yet. My perception: boring game.  His

perception: its Sunday afternoon football, this is the sport of warriors, and its important to me.  Although I 

am still attempting to learn the significance of this, he has had years of participation in the sport. He played

football all throughout high school, him and his best friend were collaborates for MVP, he has made 

countless friends and has had priceless experiences. So while he sees football as a weekly ritual, a hobby,

a passion, what have you, it has contributed to his character and become part of his identity. Football can

be seen as a sport, a waste of time, a way of life, a debate topic, inspiring, devastating, etc, etc. It really 

doesn't matter the description because for each, it will be and mean something different. All that matters

is: previous experience+current information=new perceptions. This is what the artist does. He creates new

perceptions for the eye to interpret. And it probably won't look anything like how the artist intended, but

it will undoubtedly alter your immediate perception of an object, a subject matter, or personal life value.

Welcome to college and prepare to have all previous conceptions peeled apart, altered, and reconstructed!

October 21 Lecture Notes

October 21 lecture notes

How is mythology related to a religious text?

Ovid is a key to all classical mythology and classical literature.

It is the secular scripture connected with the Bible

Holiday=holy-day

            Of course, every day could be a holy day and every moment can be or could become a holy moment

“The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatening decay” –James G. Frazer pg. 309

Term Paper: MUST be related to Henderson the Rain King; the mythological importance, creation, separations, etc

1^st State: Conviviality: your on good terms with someone; an atmosphere that’s friendly, lively, or enjoyable

2^nd Stage: Rape: physical and psychic invasion

• The gods appear in very invasive and violent awakening
• Invasion of myth into your own world

3^rd Stage: Indifference

Philomela-turned into a nightingale (makes a jug-jug-jug sound)

Tereas-hoopoe

Procne-swallow

The Stories of the Bulls

Flannery O’Connor:  Green Leaf

            About a farmer who has help that doesn’t do a lot, so she goes out to do the work by herself and she keeps seeing a bull in her yard. She asks for it to be removed and has a man “Green Leaf” to shoot him. Green Leaf scares him into the woods and the bull comes back and charges the woman, he pierces her through the heart

*Literature is a whole-lotta bull

Minos: one of the children of Europa

-Cretan stories

-Was supposed to sacrifice this beautiful, milky-white bull that comes from the sea but he was so beautiful he sacrifices another

-Pasiphae: was taken by the bull and she dressed up as a bull in order to mate with him

            -Passes through the permeable layer between humans and animals that is allowed and permitted in mythology

            -Pasiphae is impregnated by the bull and 9 mos. Later a half human-half bull was born

            -The Minotaur was born

                        -Monstrous child who repeatedly requested virgins to eat

            -Theseus: A hero must come and SAVE THE DAY

Daedalus: an artist, a craftsman, a carpenter

            -Built a labyrinth

            Pg. 253: “constructs this maze. He tricks the eye with many twisting paths that double back-one’s left without a point of reference.”

            -Exactly like Ovid’s twisted stories

                        -Ended up trapping up the Minotaur

*Ovid describes more: The man behind the curtain, the artist, the craftsman rather than the ‘over-the-top’ hero

Nostos: Home; homecoming

            -Wizard of Oz, sending Dorothy home

            -nostalgia

• The artist alters nature so that we can see the world the way it truly is –Ovid
• The artists trains us to see things the way they are

Diadem-a jeweled crown or headband worn as a symbol of sovereignty

It is because I say it is

"The ancient Germans believed there was something holy in women, and accordingly consulted them as oracles.  Their sacred women, we are told, looked on the eddying rivers and listened to the murmur or roar of the water, and from the sight and sound foretold what would come to pass." --James G. Frazer

After yesterday's lecture, I have come to appreciate Ovid from an entirely new perspective than I had previously seen.  I had been reading the stories of the great divinities and how they have affected common people. I had been feeling shock at his uncanny descriptions of sparagmos and the brutality of adultery, rape, crime, and sabotage. I had come to look at the characters he described as something of heroes, taking on monsters, or facing the great gods and challenging them like Arachne or Lycaon.  I was attempting to connect these historic heroes with a modern day hero and describe how an ordinary person or situation can become life-altering and "holy".  However, I'm pretty sure I was trying too hard. Why look for something so prodigious when the connections to the past are "plain as the nose on your face"?


In Ovid's illustration the story of the Minotaur, he only briefly touched on the hero's perspective, and focused more on "the man behind the curtain".  The artist and the craftsman, the puzzle builder, the person who can pick any object or being and manipulate it to make others see it they way he does. The artists trains us to see they way things really are. This is where I found my new appreciation of the stories in the Metamorphosis, he twists the thoughts and the actions of the characters in the stories to make us see it the way he wants us to. He is the artist, the craftsman, and the puzzle builder.  How clever!

I found a quote yesterday that was so relevant to this topic:
"Art is anything we can get away with" --Andy Warhol

I realize this blog is completely discombobulated, my attempt to make it cohesive is beyond my words right now, perhaps I have experienced my lovely epiphany, a sublime moment, indeed.

October 19 lecture notes

LIT285-October 19 lecture notes

Assignment: Become an expert on assigned story and prepare for a 1-min presentation

            Blog: BAD DAY

*Beauty and terror together: go out and have a sublime experience

Call and response of our blogs: inspire, become inspired

Theodicy: the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil

In the Bible, a really really bad day: The Book of Job

            -Within a matter of min, Job loses everything from his family to his wealth and health b/c he is living too righteously

-How do you justify having a bad day?

Bad things happen all the time, but observed in the right light, it can show positive outcomes b/c you may come out stronger on the other side

            -“That which not does not kill me, only makes me stronger” –Nietzshe

                        -“That, that, that, don’t kill me….” –Kanye West

            -“A blessing in disguise”

Conversely, something that good happens originally, can end up having negative consequences

            -i.e. you win the lottery but……______________ fill in the blank!

Why do we suffer?

-“We suffer so that the poets will have something to write about”

            -Country music anyone? Lost my wife, she took the dog, house burned down, and my truck broke down

Add to the Reading List: Haroun, and the Sea of Stories

 The Oresteia: “We suffer, we suffer into truth, and we suffer to find truth”

Book VI: What is the very worst the human mind can imagine?

Tereus, Procne, Philomela:

Tereus and Procne are married, Juno wasn’t present

            -Given a son, Itys

Procne, bored with married life, sends Tereus to fetch her sister; he ends up raping her and cutting out her tongue so she can’t cry out.

            -Sister, Philomela, weaves a tapestry of her rape tale and gives it to her sister

            -Procne, enraged, kills her son and feeds him to Tereus

*Both are beyond words in anger and are morphed into hoopoe birds, “every ready to attack”

**hope these notes are complete enough to get the lecture experience! Let me know if you have any suggestions about how I can make them more detailed or more comprehensive! :)

October 14 Lecture Notes

October 14 lecture notes:

Assignment #1: Go out and have a bad day

            -Only way to experience the muddle of mythology

Searching for clues, go be a detective!

Mythic clue: the autumn leaves

            -Homeric Hymns

            -Ovid: Ceres and Proserpina (Greek Persephone)

Story: Ceres is out looking for her daughter, b/c Proserpina is out looking for a flower (Narcissus) and Pluto comes up and captures her and takes her into the underworld.

-There is an agreement between Jove and Pluto that Pluto can have his daughter, Proserpina

Marriage: a contract between men that agrees that ownership of the girl is passed from one man to another; the act of abduction from the underworld

-Ceres is angry b/c Jove gave her daughter away!

            -She can’t take back her daughter b/c there is already an agreement, but she can make the situation dire. She uses her powers to turn the season to nuclear winter (changing of the leaves, signifies death)

-2 men go to the underworld to rescue Proserpina, run into Pluto and comment that they are coming to take back the beautiful woman

            -Dumb and Dumber Go To Hell: New blockbuster film!

-Pluto glues him to a chair in the underworld—“you must stay here FOREVER!”

            -He is eternally tantalized by crisp, clear, flowing rivers and flourishing fruit trees

            -Other guy rolls a rock up and down mountains, if he can get the rock to the top he is free to go

-However, Hercules comes down to be a hero (Its raining men!), and rips one of the men from the bench (‘tis the reason Greek men have such small bottoms)

*Look for something subtle and relate it back to mythology*

            -From the past or the present

Arachne:

Arachne by Velazquez

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vel%C3%A1zquez_Arachne.jpg

Painters attempt to create a frame story in literature

Frame Story: a story within a story within a story

Moral of the story: Immortality

            -Telling a story that never ends

*Metamorphosis is both punishment and reward

            -If Ovid’s fate will be to always be web spinning, she will forever be immortal through spider’s webs

Homework Assignment: Find the leg of Minerva, or one that is an equivalent!

            Déjà vu: French literal translation= “already seen”

The Saragossa Manuscript

            -Maddening frame story

            -Groundhog Day is the modern adaptation

-Point of Ovid is to become confused by the immense emersion of stories

Inggris: Jupiter and Thetis

http://www.artble.com/imgs/0/b/b/914870/jupiter_and_thetis.jpg

Picasso: Guernica

Gives a pictorial quotation of the Inggris painting

            -Thought Picasso was doing something dramatically new when in fact he is depicting great paintings from before him

            - He was transfixed with mythological symbolism

Satyr: Greek myth one of a class of lustful, drunken woodland gods

            -Roman representation as a man with a goat’s ears, tail, legs, and horns

            -A man with strong sexual desires

Trope:  a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression

            -To turn (tropics, tropical lands)

Polytropos: Ability to turn in many ways; of many shifts

Marsyas: Claimed he could play the flute better than Apollo and his fate led to him being hung upside down, de-skinned and filleted alive

Pelops: founder of the house of Atreus, father was Tantalus

            -Savage Banquet: Tantalus cuts Pelops into pieces to make a stew and served it to the gods, Demeter, still weeping over the abduction of Proserpina, absentmindedly ate some of the stew (his ivory shoulder). The other gods knew what was happening so they rebirthed him with only one piece filled in with the ivory

           

October 12 Lecture Notes

October 12, 2010

Myth Notes

Relationship between reality and the imagination

Foreground Information: general information that gives a general setting for the story (ies) to come

Europa=sister of Cadmus, granddaughter of Io(who had also been turned into a bull while dealing with Jove)

            Painting by Tesha: The rape of Europa

Ekphrasis:: a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art

Minerva (to the Romans)(Athena, to the Greeks)-the daddy’s girl & Arachne

            -“to praise is less rewarding than receiving praise” Minerva—she’s a bitch!

-Arachne claimed she was a more talented weaver than the great goddess Minerva-foreshadowing for awful things to happen to those who claim to be greater than a god

            Hubris: extreme haughtiness or arrogance

Corrine’s parents: Christine & Tom

Mentor: a teacher or helper, an experienced or trusted advisor

Painting: Velazquez’s Spinners

Persian Story Teller: “This was so (logos), and this wasn’t so (mythos), It happened, and it didn’t happen”

            I.e.: Aladdin

Pagan (Secular) Tradition: human beings>gods –Ovid is in this tradition!

Religious Traditions (Christians and Jews): humans should be submissive to the gods

In her contest, Minerva depicts the hill of Mars (pg. 180)

            -1. The glory of the gods, herself in particular. 2. Shows what happens when mortals contest against the gods

            Moral: didactic: designed or intended to teach--  you will respect the gods or else!

Arachne’s depiction: Shows the victims of the gods and how they use their power to be deceitful, they are immoral and they commit awful crimes

            -Her painting was better which ANGERED Minerva: she hung Arachne and turned her into a spider

Mendala: Any of various ritualistic geometric designs symbolic of the universe, used in Hinduism and Buddhism as an aid to meditation.

Perfidy: treachery, duplicity, deceit, infidelity, faithlessness

Assignment for Presentation: The background of a mythological story

            -We will be assigned a story and will become EXPERTS on the story and give a 1 min presentation about the story. Know it forward and backward, research it, make it apart of your being!

A shining gold basket from generations past, given to Europa, if she would have looked in the basket, she would have realized

-Painted in the basket, 2 men were watching a heifer swimming in an ocean with a young virgin girl, Zeus was also in the painting—the story of Io! (Europa’s great-great-great grandmother)

Myth: you discover from which story you come!

The single sentences that change everything...Book V

Book V:

Perseus using Medusa's head to complete his battle

Perseus and Phineas: Here is where blockbuster makes their money. "300" anyone? Its a gory, gruesome battle tale. 'Nuff said.

Polydectes: It would seem by now Medusa has done her work. Believers, and in this case, skeptics, alike will be turned to stone from her 'death stare'. Maybe this is what men today are afraid of when they get "the look" from a disapproving female!

Pegasus: The winged horse was born from Medusa's blood and Minerva is a happy and awe-struck woman when she rests her eyes on the steed. (I made my parents rewind the part of the old Paramount Pictures when the winged horse would come running through the clouds multiple times before we could watch the movie!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVycXOAlfHU

Pyrenus: This fellow is rather interesting in the way that his evil character sets the stage for many fairy tales. He welcomes visitors and once they enter he hopes they will never leave, once they do, he has a breakdown and commits suicide. His character reminds me of the nasty witch from Hansel and Gretal.


Ceres and Proserpina: "To ask is not to rape." Pluto is struck by Cupid's arrow and rushes to take away Propserpina. Ceres, heartbroken, searches high and low for her daughter, she created drought until it is decided that she will have split custody of her father and husband. 

Ovidian Imagery

Io and Jove

Perseus and Andromeda

Phaethon

Pyramus and Thisbe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*I wish I had an art gallery full of these original works. What a happy girl you would have!

 

 

 

The single sentences that change everything...Book IV

Book IV:
Pyramus and Thisbe: The star-crossed lovers escaped the grasp of their forbidding parents, but alas, they find their fate at the end of a knife while searching for each other to full fill an elopement.
Mars and Venus: Literally caught in adultery by a thinly woven chain, the Sun is punished to forever burn and be watched as he rises in the East and sets in the West.
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus: The lazy nymph pleasured no one but herself and when she found something she wanted, the handsome Hermaphroditus, he rejected her, no surprise, karma's a bitch.
Cadmus and Harmonia: Both held fast in the city of Thebes, Cadmus wished to be like the snake that he had slain, he morphed, and the devastated Harmonia wished the same fate upon herself. Together they slithered into hiding. 
Perseus and Andromeda: The fair girl is chained to an ocean front rock where the mighty Perseus must battle a great sea monster in order to save her. He does and together they were joined in love :)

The single sentences that change everything...Book III

Book III:

Cadmus: A dragon slayer plucked the little horny teeth from the fallen dragon, plants them, and voila! Thebes is born.
Actaeon: Although it may have been by chance,to give a boy the benefit of the doubt, the goddess Diana is seen naked, his punishment is to become the stag he and his hounds were searching for originally. What fate!
Semele: Oh the dear girl, so naive first to fall for Jove, then his hysteric wife, Juno, she requests to see the great god in his true appearance. Unfortunately for her, it results in over-stimulation of all her senses, and she explodes.
Tiresias: The fool claimed that men have more fun doing the naughty to the all-powerful Juno, and as a result, she blinds him. The End.
Narcissus: If only he did not know himself, another could have loved him as equally. Instead, the vain bastard drowned in his own reflection. 

Blog Master

Hello All,

Because I am a compulsive note-taker, I'm going to start becoming a blog master for all of our class lecture notes to supplement our learning. Plus, I think it will help me to reinforce the ideas and stories if I have to write them out multiple times.  Yay, win-win situation!

SA