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!
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