Elizabeth Beese

Elizabeth Beese - Joke to break the ice

• The importance of being art.
• Metamorphoses of Ovid and children (the works influenced by) got into a fight, who would win?
• The power of art is huge
• small reactants = large products

Kari Bowles

Kari Bowles - Personal Epic Poem

• In and Out Burger (It is worth the wait!)
• San Bernadino, CA with her grandfather and sister who worked at Disneyland in a POS car, Beatles marathon on the radio, went through the twelve labors (trials), but succeeded in the end to complete her epic poem.

Maggie Casey

Maggie Casey -

• White(maiden), Red(mother), and Dark Goddess(crone) (thanks for the cookies)
• Psyche (maiden then mother)
• Crone - Golden Ass (Bandit woman)

Steve Liss

Steve Liss - Art is a reflection and it lies

• Rembrant self portrait (50), 6 etchings and several scetches.
• Narcissus & Echo
• Man is a recursion of matter
• art is man reflecting himself in matter
• Pygmalion ----> Narcissus
• the creator of art perceives that it has a voice, but it is the voice of the artist.

Samantha Clanton

Samantha Clanton - Narrative how the myths come alive in her life.

• Fate made her late.
• She was abducted by Sutter, whisked away in a white chariot to the Yellowstone
• They were floating down the river, Sutter had a sudden anagnorsis, they were lost
• Samantha felt like Phaethon 15 miles down the river, cold, it was windy, and she was hungry.
• Tiresias = John (stranger, not another character from class) saved them by taking them back to the car.
• They were rewarded with milkshakes.
• Samantha is glad that she has Sutter to make a Scapegoat.

Sutter Stremmel

Sutter Stremmel - degrees of separation between Persephone and a jar of pickles.

• Sparagmos to Sybil put in a jar that made Sutter think of pickles.
• This is too in depth a thing for me to write.

Cassi Mari Clampitt

Cassi Mari Clampitt - The many rapes of Zeus

• Alcemene
• Leto
• Diane
• Europa
• Io (Priestess of Hera)
• Maia
• Semele (Consented)
• Ganymede (not raped, abducted to become Zeus's cup bearer.
• Callisto (turned to bear) - Ursa Major and son is Ursa Minor (big and little dipper).
• 150 known rapes of Zeus.
• Gods can do anything that they want.
• Zeus + Leta = Helen = War = Literature = Us here!

Dustin Cichosz

Dustin Cichosz - Narrative of how the past possesses the present.

• Lysistrata - roommate's girl friend won't have sex with him unless he gets her a burrito.
• Bacchae - Drank and turned into Lucius (Ass) , but it wasn't his fault because he was possessed by Dionysus.
• Symposium - talking about love when you would not ordinarily. (Loose Lips...)
• Later that night he experienced a mild form of Sparogmos.

Carly Parelius

Carly Parelius - Memory - the collective unconscious.

• Coincidental - song playing when you have been thinking of it.
• Collective experience of humankind - stories that we keep coming back to
• Synchronicity

Clark

Clark - this is you, this is you in love!

• Love will tear us apart.
• Love destroys boundaries.
• Phantom itches - Antigone's loss of a love one is equivocal to feeling an arm no longer there.
• Lysistrata - how much they need women
• Rape
• Lack of trust & communication destroys love.
• Psyche - Lucius (beauty unpolluted by mortality = Isis).
• Real freedom - total acceptance, become one with all things.

Katie Crystal

Katey L. Crystal - How the past possesses her life today.

• Humanity is a single body with the same concerns.
• Dionysus, Athena (diciplined war) : Gods and Goddesses that she sees within herself
• Katey's mom = Demeter, Montana = Hades, however, Katey chose to leave her mother to seek Haydes.
• When she was looking at colleges, she fell in love with Montana.
• Katey wants to inspire others, be immortalized as a Muse
• Art is the most important of ways to immortalize.

Douglas Fejes

Doug Fejes - Pythagoras

• Not transformed physicaly.
• Capstone of Ovid's Metamophoses.
• Added depth that the other stories lacked.
• Transformed the reader.
• Framed - speech on veganism
• life is never ending
• is the most meaningful story

Sarah Flemming

Sarah Flemming - Women who get carried away.

• Persephone - from the Hymn to Demeter
• Europa - Ovid
• Psyche - Transformations of Lucius.
• Agave - Carried away by the madness of Dionysus - Bacchae
• Sarah - Dr. Sexon says that all marriage is abduction.

Ross Jensen

Ross Jensen - The immortal Presense of Socrates

• Gain knowledge and immortality
• Didn't write anything down, and yet Socrates is still immortal.

Socrates -

Recipe:

• 1 cup Plato - most comprehensive works recording Socrates.
• 1 Tbsp. Aristotle - not biographical at all
• 1 tsp. Xenophon - only delves into the ethical issues.
• Pinch of Aristophanes
• Everything taken with a grain of salt.

Info:

• accused of corrupting the youth
• said he should be rewarded, not punished
• Jesus & Aristotle were both influencial, didn't write anything down, and were martyrs.
• Socrates present in the psyche of all.

Sereta Heser

Sereta Heser - The Doors, Jim Morrison's Connection to Dionysus

• Mesculin
• Openmindedness and debauchery
• New Experiences
• Father, yes son, I ant to kill you....
• Morrison was called Dionysus by friends
• Tragedy of a young death.
• To Become classic, you have to envoke the classics.

John Horner

John Horner - Correlation between Mythology and Science Fiction

Dune(Book, film)

• priorities of Gods and Goddesses are different than those of humans.
• Superman is an example of a godlike character from science fiction.
• Kal-El means vessel of God in Aramaic.

Danielle Heinle - Individual Presentation

Danielle Heinle - The Triple Goddess

• 3-in-1 (sounds vaguely familiar.)

• Crone - Mother - Maiden
• Hecate - Demeter - Persephone (Kore)
• Death - Love - Birth

• Poem of the triple goddess from a pagan's perspective:
  
  THE TRIPLE GODDESS :
  
  As the Maiden, I saw through your eyes as a child
  Spring rains, green forests, and animals wild!
  I saw you run freely on the Earth with bare feet!
  I watched as you danced in the winds, blowing free!
  I was there as you grew, getting stronger each day!
  I brought you rainbows, chasing grey skies away!
  I was there in your laughter - I was there in your tears!
  I was the acceptance you gained from your peers!
  I saw your first love and I felt your first blush,
  As passion first stirred in the night's gentle hush!
  I am there with you always in the fresh morning dew!
  I bring you the crispness of beginnings anew.
  As the Mother, I bore all the labor distress
  Of birthing your child, and I felt the caress
  Of your hand on the face of the new life so dear.
  I heard its first cry, and I eased your fear!
  I provided the milk which you fed from your breast
  Till the baby grew strong, and with health it was blessed.
  As she took her first step, I was there in your smile!
  I was there while you nurtured your beautiful child!
  On the first day of school, when the doors opened wide
  I was there in your fear - I was there in your pride.
  I am there with you always in the bright full of moon!
  I bring you fertility - abundance in bloom.
  As the Crone, I brought blessings of wisdom with age
  [Wisdom not found by the turn of a page].
  I was there as you taught the correct way to live:
  To love and to trust - to take and to give!
  I was there in the twinkle of your aged eye!
  I was there in your thoughts of the years flying by!
  I was there when you taught the Mysteries of old!
  I was there in the fire warming you in the cold!
  In the weariness of age, I was there with you, too...
  I brought well-deserved rest and peace unto you!
  I am there with you always in the darkness of night!
  I complete your life cycle, guiding you toward the light.
  Maid, Mother and Crone - We are all One -
  Yet We are all separate, as each role is done.
  We do not leave you - We're always there
  As you walk through this life with your worries and cares;
  As you dance in the spiral, We live inside -
  Deep in your spirit - where nothing can hide!
  No matter your path, no matter it's length -
  We give you courage and We give you strength.
  We are there to support you every hour of day
  And deep in the night, when dreams take you away.
  Our gifts We give freely, for you are our Child...
  Yes, We are the Lady: Wise, Pure, and Mild!
  -Kalioppe-
  
• Dr. Sexon recommends Robert Graves' The White Goddess
• Psyche & Eros : Psyche = Maiden, Aphrodite = Mother, and who is the Crone? or is the child a maiden?

Here is some stuff that I found. It is not from the presentation, and as I have blogged on this topic before, it might be a bit repetitive. The Greeks use the three the most, having many representations of triple Deities.

The concept of the Great Goddess as The Triple Goddess, young woman (Maiden), birth-giving matron (Mother), and an old woman (Crone), dates from the earliest ages of mankind. (These attributes were also ascribed to the three phases of the moon; the Maiden, which corresponds to the new moon; the Mother, which corresponds to the full moon; and the Crone, which is the waning moon. These aspects have been used for centuries by many civilizations.) This concept was embraced by many different mythologies from many different parts of the world. The Vikings had the Norns (Urdu/Verdandi/Skuld), the Romans had the Fortunae (Concordia/Salus/Pax), the druids had Diana Triformis, the Greeks had the Moirae, Graeae, Horae, etc.

Maiden : The Maiden aspect represents enchantment, inception, expansion, the female principle, the promise of new beginnings, youth, excitement, and a carefree erotic aura. She is innocent in some ways, but also a seductress who recognizes the power of her sexuality. Maiden goddesses include: Anatha, Brigid, Nimue, Kore, Persephone, Gerd, Caer, Blodeuwedd. Her traditional color is white.

Mother : The Mother is ripeness, fertility, fulfillment, stability, and power. Mother is ripe, full-breasted, at the peak of her womanly powers. She is the one who tenderly rocks the baby, but she is also the lioness who hunts to feed her offspring and will fight to the death to protect them. Mother goddesses include: Aa, Ambika, Anahita, Asherah, Ceres, Coatlicue, Danu, Demeter, Hathor, Ishtar, Isis, Lakshmi, Luonnotar, Nintu, Sheng-Mu. Her traditional color is red.

Crone : The Crone is wisdom, retrenchment, repose, and compassion. She is old age, experience, accumulated wisdom and death. She is the gateway to Death, and the guide to Rebirth. Crone goddesses include: Annis, Baba Yaga, Cailleach, Greine, Hel, Maman Brigitte, Oya, Sedna, Skuld, Takotsi, Toci. Her color is black.Goddesses who embody the triple aspect within themselves include: Brigid (Ireland/Celtic), Carmenta or Carmentis (Roman), Hekate or Hecate (Greek/Anatolia), Helice (Greek), Kali (India), the Morrigan (Ireland/Celtic).

Individual Presentations Z - J

Oh so original... I broke this up because it was taking too long to load anything I edited. If you have not paid attention to Dr. Sexon's constant reminders or the syllabus, the blogs were due on Wednesday! If anyone has any questions on things that they missed and I haven't posted, just leave a comment asking, or ask the presenter.

Alison Zobel - Lysistrata - Sex, Time, Power

• How an act would or would not work today.


• Women ultimately want iron to be happy.


• How the patriarchal society came about.


• Women have a biological upper hand sexually.


• Women are more aware of death, and therefor are more peace loving.

Chase Wright - Dionysus vs. Jesus Christ

Similarities :

• Both have a mortal mother and God of Gods heavenly father.


• Agon: ritual of Dionysus is similar to the Eucharist in the omophagia or eating of flesh.


• Both died and were reborn.

Difference:

• Phalic representation of Dionysus is viewed as a difference, but Chase sees it as a symbol of fertility, and so an actual similarity? I don't really view Jesus in a way associated with fertility, but I am not an expert, just a Christian.

Ultimate Question:

• Are the similarities fundamentals of all religion, or are they merely coincidence?

Hannah Vidrich - Make love not war!

• Colombian women withheld sex from their husbands: shows and amount of control still from Lysistrata.


• In Turkey - women locked their doors of their bedrooms to keep their husbands out. (How did they eat? Use the bathroom if there wasn't one in the room?)


• Pedigree of women in the 7th century B.C.


• Poetic descriptions of types of women:

• The barking dog - busy body, gossip
  

  The sea - and unpredictable woman, moody ( I agree Hannah, this is my favorite description as well, and the reason men will never understand women. We are ever changing).
  

  A good woman - illustrated as a bee and does not gossip.
  

  Zeus created women as a thorn in man's side.

Brittany Tyler - How Brittany met Bob

• Bob came around when she was three years old.


• She was chastising him for eating her grandmother's ice cream.


• When her grandmother asked who bob was, Brittany explained that Bob was a rat who lived under the fridge.


• Now the grandparents never saw Bob, but they knew that he must exist, because Brittany kept noticing food that would disappear.


• Anytime things happened it was Bob.


• We are immortalized through the stories that we tell, and most of those stories are about someone doing something that they shouldn't, like sneaking grandma's ice cream.

Megan Thale - Love/Infatuation

The story of Cupid and Psyche

• Love is a confusion


• The things that you will do for love


• Elsa Cole - Beautiful poem by the way.

Jesse Stolba -

• There was a picture of his mom's house on the board that he used to imitate being hurt and running to mommy. I couldn't get a picture, as the board was glaring. It was a rather abrupt presentation.

Jann Spizziri -

• Dionysus vs. The Virginia Tech shooting: the darker side of the god.
  I think that you had to be there for this one. Jan made really good and interesting parallels between the shooter at Virginia Tech. and Dionysus.

Brittini Reid - the role of women from all of the books (other than Demeter and Persephone) (funny how those are two of the most discussed characters in class)

• Agave - The Sheep


• Lysistrata - Rosie the Riveter


• Antigone - Laura Croft
  
• Jessica Simpson I believe was Psyche, I think that Paris Hilton would make a good example too because she is adored by men, but can't seem to marry one, and even if she isn't she also acts clueless.
  
• Arachne
  
• Europa
  
• Diotema - Grandmother Willow (Pocahontas)

Barbara Ralston - Mythology

• A frame of many stories


• Rice chex are duck food - she created a myth.


• Discusses and quotes the rape of Europa


• Even though we try, we cannot protect our children from their fate.


• We are better people after being humbled.


• Can you see faces in the trees?

Emily Lewis - Zeus + Memory = The 9 Muses

• If she were to pick a muse, it would be Terpsichore, the muse of dance.


• Her Terpsichore's name is Janet


• We read about Terpsichore in the Homeric Hymns

Daniel Prill - Nothing dies, only changes.

• The redemptive power of art.


• Daedalus and Icarus


• Everything is indeed old. There is nothing new.


• Carry on Our Wayward Son by Kansas is representative of Daedalus and Icarus.


• Labyrinth = war


• Wings = current flight

Jared Porter - (I don't have your link to your blog! WHO ARE YOU j/k do you have a blog?)
Calvin & Hobbs - The five conflicts dealt with in Steiner( I notice that a lot of people took offense at Steiner's decree that only Antigone dealt with all of these five conflicts.)

• Individual vs. Society - Society makes him learn. (oh darn)


• man vs. religion - imagines himself as a god, blames God for his problems


• Living vs. the dead - Calvin tries to save a baby raccoon.


• Man vs. woman - love vs. cooties


• Young vs. Old - mom vs. boy (mom's always win!)


• (Haven't we all experienced these problems? I guess you just proved Steiner right about how all of these conflicts are a natural part of human life, and also wrong that they only take place all together in Antigone.)

Jonathan Orsi - Atlas + Perseus + Andromeda

• Love conquers war.


• Jimmy Hendrix - "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."


• (Now noting people who decided that with out love, their life was not worth living seems easy enough, but at this point John, I must disagree with your reference that Hitler committed suicide at the thought of losing love. Secondly, he was not married to Eva. She was his mistress, and he was in a bunker that was being bombarded by the allied forces. So, while I may see the many tragic stories where there is no life without love, we will have to chose another martyr.)

John Nay - Catcher in the Rye

(The novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage alienation and fear. Written in the first person, The Catcher in the Rye relates Holden's experiences in New York City in the days following his expulsion from Pencey Prep, a college preparatory school.)
- the Metamorphoses of Holden Caulfield

5 Conflicts -

1. Man vs. Society - Phonies vs. Holden


2. Living vs. Dead - Holden's brother Allie died - this haunts Holden


3. Young vs. the Old - Holden tries to save children from falling off the cliff, and into adulthood. (The worst thing that can happen is to grow old.)


4. Men vs. Women - Convinced a woman to marry him ( I think that the example here would most likely have to be read directly from the book, as I am sure that the dealings leading up to, and after, the wedding are the actual conflict.)


5. Men vs. God(s) - Holden's loss of faith

Holden's metamorphoses occurred when he fell off of the cliff and into adulthood. Holden experiences the thing that he was so afraid of, and realizes that it wasn't as bad as he thought.

William Meznarich - Highlander, it only proves that all old people migrate to Florida. (Don't ask me. I didn't quite catch all of this reasoning.)

• The immortality of stories - The author is riding the coat tales of the story.


• William told a story to us, about a story he told his friend Andy, about his friend Nick & Jane Doe (who was "unavailable via boyfriend". I had to add that bit, as I thought it was a rather great way to put it. I can see the ball and chain dangling from her ankle. *disclaimer* In a comical way of course! I am not trying to say anything bad about anyone. :) )


• Point of the Presentation(you can correct me if I am wrong): Tell Stories!


• Plato and Socrates preferred the oral traditions of story telling vice actually writing it down. (I would say that the advantages of oral storytelling would be that you could constantly pad, stretch, and manipulate the story, as well as your voice, where as in a written story, it is what it is.)

Mick Leslie - Ambrosia, Metamorphoses, Spartan Training (Walkabout)

• Coincidence is no accident ( there is no such animal)


• walkabout = walking through the Australian Outback, and through that walking you gain knowledge. What knowledge you gain is not specified, it can be any knowledge. You do not seek the knowledge, as it will find you on your travels. (If you walk you will learn.)


• The book Walkabout was written by James vance Marshall a.k.a. Donald Gordon Payne, the book was first published as The Children and later made into a movie starring Jenny Agutter.


• Sexon recommends The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin (singing up the land). (Songlines are also called Dreaming tracks by Indigenous Australians. A cross between a creation myth, an atlas and an Aboriginal man's personal story. )


• ( Australian Aborigines "go walkabout" at the age of thirteen in the wilderness for six months as a rite of passage. They then trace the path of the ceremonial ancestors of their tribe, following the exact route that those ancestors took, and imitating in a fashion, their heroic deeds. )

Luke Klompien - (is this the best link to your blog? it is kind of odd. Thanks)

• Nick Neeb(okay, I checked almost every other blog, and the one person that I found doing the indiv. presentation notes is almost, but not quite this far. I don't know what this guy's last name is, so I can't look him up.) - Relationship specialist

Women are fundamentally programmed to depend on men for security. (This old Nick's opinion, not mine, and I don't agree, but what woman would say that she did?)

• More people in our class would rather admit to being in love than wearing underwear, or being drunk.


• "I shall have life." - "English people [majors/lovers?] are emotional basket cases."


• "What is your key to life?"


• The key to happiness is to do something for your mind, body, and someone else each day.

Ashley Kirchhoff - ( entire book, not just the poetry from class) The Homeric Hymn to Demeter

• The Eleusinian Mysteries - women's initiative rights.
  
• there is nothing more tragic than the separation of mother and daughter, or Demeter and Persephone


• We want a mother that can undo rape and bring us back to life.


• Mother's search for their lost daughters as their lost selves

Woman's quest - Death
Man's quest - War and Kinship

• you must go through the mysteries to SEE.


• the mysteries are symbolic of death and rebirth (look at Lucius)


• Social oppression is the result of lies and personalities.


• Experience both male and female quests in order to be secure as an individual. (Maggie was our Aristophanes of the day by the way. She had the hiccups. I just mentioned this because Sexon did, and the allusion to the Symposium.)


• Tiger Lily - Ashley's poem of her journey to womanhood. "I chose me."


• go through the experience to clarity of self (this is what I got out of the poem, so let me know what you think if it is wrong).

Melissa Sue Kelsey - The Scapegoat by Renee Girard

William Holman Hunt
'The Scapegoat'

• "The secret to success is knowing who to blame for your failures."
• "A scapegoat is almost as welcome as a solution to the problem"
• Mellisa thinks that a scapegoat is more welcome than a solution, because it requires no actual work.
• Cartoon - "I'll take full responsibility for finding a scapegoat." - as the city is burning (seems to reference Nero mentioned in the next presentation.)

5 Ways to avoid being a scapegoat:

1. Avoid being the new guy in town.
2. Be on time and at everything possible, for they may be plotting against you.
3. Avoid taking the game winning shot/goal.
4. Avoid being different than anyone.
5. Be well liked (this is hard if you aren't different from anyone.)

Brian Judge - Scapegoat

• portrayed by Ray Finkle in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
  
• Leviticus - biblical reference to scapegoat

"Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house. He shall take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats: one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat on which the Lord's lot fell, and offer it as a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make atonement upon it, and to let it go as the scapegoat into the wilderness."

• Bacchae - Pentheus is the scapegoat (although Pentheus actually disrespected the god Dionysus, so he was not innocent as a goat would be).
  
• Bible - Jesus is a scapegoat (again the Dionysus vs. Jesus, I think this could be important for the test.)
  
• Nero - accused of fiddling while Rome was burning (although Brian tells us, the fiddle would not be invented for another thousand years. ;) )
  
• Jann as a scapegoat - her class voted on whether they wanted an open or closed book test, and when most of the class failed, blamed Jann's vote for the cause of the failure.
  
• Scapegoating - is the best way for humanity to feel closer.
  
• Tragedy means the song of the goat.

Alex Johnson - five movies that portray the 5 Steiner conflicts

• Snow White(Disney): Youth vs. Age - Snow White vs. The Queen (her step mother) (orginal)
  
• My Fair Lady - Pygmailian - Man vs. Woman ( Audrey Hepburn is my favorite actress of all time, but I love Julie Andrews, and they should never cast anyone who has to be dubbed. Although, now that I think about it I wonder why they did it. She sang Moon River in Breakfast at Tiffany's, which, to me is another, if not better, example of man vs. woman, but I am biased. )
  
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest : individual vs. society
  
• Frankenstein(1931, more) : Living vs. Dead - frankenstein represents both side as something dead that is now living, however you could also stack the monster against the living villagers.

Group Presentations

Group 1 - This was my group. We started with the invocation of the muse and dedicated a song from Handel's Semele to Zeus and Semele's love which = Dionysus.

John and John represented many characters in their stichomythia:

• Old vs. Young
• The "old" John represented Tiresius, Zeus, Dr. Sexon, Steiner, and many other characters.
• The young John was a hubristic representation of Dionysus, and performed a rock concert for the ecstatic Baccantes.
• The Baccantes found a man in our midst and sparagmosed him with a cheese grater.
• When the messenger came in to tell us that we had killed a human, we had our moment of recognition (anagnorsis), well except Carrie who just didn't know him.
• The question I would like to see on the test is "What was on the cheese grater?" the answer is a crouching lioness.

2nd Group:

The three plays represented by this skit of present day interpretations of classic literature were:

• Antigone - Bush and daughters.
• The Bacchae - Mrs. Bush and G.W.
• Lysistrata - Bush was dressed as a corpse and as a woman.

3rd Group:

This was an great interpretation of Demeter running a kind of bar for the gods. There were two mortal characters involved Arachne (Barbara) and Antigone who said her secret was joy. There were many interwoven references to modern day occurances of classical references, and Sexon was Steiner who was in ate with Antigone.

• You have to show the truth, not tell it.
• Frame of stealing lines, Macbeth, 12th Knight, and Cleopatra

4th Group:

Each member picked thier own story from the Metamorphesis of Ovid and brought it out in skits of modern day interpretations. The stories included:

• Galaetea & Acis
• Phaethon
• Rape of Europa
• Iphis & Ianthe
• Daedalus and Icarus
• Also, the song sung by the Cyclops was inspired by Southpark.

5th Group:

Agon support group: Tiresius as shrink, Philomela - used a notepad for obvi0us reasons, Deadalus mourning Icarus, Antigone in a fit over Creon, and Agave still clueless.

• Antigone's family put the funk in disfunctional.
• The most important aspect of the skit was the notion of the scapegoat(Creon).

6th Group:

• Pg. 232 of Steiner
• Death vs. Living
• Men vs. Women
• Pg 255 was quoted
• Individual vs. Community - Yurtle the Turtle by Dr. Seus
• Pg. 19 of Antigone was quoted
• Man vs. God(s) - Stella award for a man who locked himself in a garage while trying to rob some people who were on vacation. He survived on Pepsi and dog food. We have the golden rules set by God(s), but mankind's laws often undermine the logical.
• Old vs. Young was represented by the movie Big Fish (if you haven't watched this do!).

Sparagmos?

I have recently had a discussion with my mother about stories of mothers killing their children, and it is my mom's point of view that these women are possessed, and I realized that Agave was possessed by Dionysus, and that *blank* oh what's her name that stews her son Itys and feeds him to her husband, was possessed by the outrage of her sister Philomena's tragedy. I started to see a lot of reason behind this idea of possession. Whether you believe in demonic possession, or the brand of the Gods, all acts of this cruel nature must be the work of a higher power, for just listening to the horrid tales kept me awake all night. I will not repeat these tales in my blog, just in case anyone actually reads this because I now have permanent imprints in my mind of these women killing their children. These are true and recent stories, and while other replications of myth may bring a smile to my lips, this one makes my heart break. I felt persuaded to write on this topic because I myself have a daughter of an age with one of the victims, and well I think that I will tell one story. I mother of three children ages 7, 4, and 1.5 years took her children to the beach. She proceeded to through her children into the water, as if they were playing. Little did onlookers know that she was indeed drowning them. Her one and a half year old stood on the beach clapping, as she thought it looked like a fun game. These children did not know how to swim. The one year old kept clapping until it was her turn for the ocean. I am so upset by this woman that I believe if any one deserved to be sparagmosed it would be her. I cannot imagine anything but possession that would drive a mother to do such a thing instead of turning to child services. We do indeed emulate the past, just as the stop the rape tees indicate. This is not a bright and shiny thing though. There is indeed a darker side to this replication than peanut butter plagues and such.

The Music of the Spheres

I heard on KLOVE, a Christian radio station, today, that scientist have recently discovered that the sun makes a kind of music. It is impossible for humans to detect, but has been picked up by "technical" equipment. The station played a bit of the heavenly vibrations, and then stated that it was pretty awesome, that is, for the sun. Now, I just thought it a bit odd that the station would go on to call the music they were about to play better than that of the sun. It seems a bit odd to say that a mere mortal could produce a more amazing sound than the heavenly orb that sustains all life. The slight on the sun compared to human instruments is made even worse by the fact that this was a religious station that proclaims the heavens to be made by God. I would really like to ask them if they ever read the story of Arachne, or if not Arachne vs. Minerva then maybe Sodom and Gomorrah. Once again humans forget how minuscule we are in the great weave that is life, or as Robert Jordan would call it, the Wheel of Time. I would like to add that I am not slamming Christians, as I am one. I believe that humans try to imitate (the) God(s), and that God(s) enjoy being emulated, but when we believe to have surpassed an immortal in any act there is no better word for it than hubris. Any person who believes themselves better than the creator, or whomever they worship, has to realize that compared to God(s) were are mere dust. Anything great or small that mortals accomplish is due to a deity.

Lyrics to Handel's Where e're you walk from his opera Semele

A few of these lines are repeated, but this is esentially the content of the song. It really is a rather flowery love song. Listen

Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade;
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade:
Where'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise;
and all things flourish where'er you turn you eyes.
Where'er you walk, etc.

SEMELE :
(composed 1744)

Music by Georg Friedrich Händel

Words by Newburgh Hamilton
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

Jupiter (tenor)

Cadmus, King of Thebes (bass)

Semele, Daughter to Cadmus, belov'd by and in love with Jupiter (soprano)

Athamas, a Prince of Bœotia, in love with, and design'd to marry Semele (alto)

Ino, Sister to Semele, in love with Athamas (mezzo-soprano)

Somnus (bass)

Apollo (tenor)

Juno (mezzo-soprano)

Iris (soprano)

Priest (alto)

Chorus of Priests and AugursChorus of Loves and ZephyrsChorus of Nymphs and SwainsAttendants

16 April 2007

T.S. Eliot -

• Quartet No. 1: Burnt Norton
  
• Quartet No. 2: East Coker
  
• Quartet No. 3: The Dry Salvages
  
• Quartet No. 4: Little Gidding
  
  
  "We shall not cease from exploration
  And the end of all our exploring
  Will be to arrive where we started
  And know the place for the first time."


• Notes
  
• "Although logos is common to all, most people liveas if they had a wisdom of their own." 1. p.77. Fr.2
  
• "The way upward and the way downward are the same."
  1. p.89. Fr.6

*Test* Lucius eats ROSES to transform back to human form. *Test*

11 April 2007

We must have read up to pg. 147 in the Golden Ass by today.

Two things about life you must know:

1. S#*t happens
2. Things Change

Buddism - All life is suffering.

Everyone should watch the Fellini Satyricon -

• It is loosely based on the Petronius novel Satyricon, a series of bawdy and satirical episodes written during the reign of the emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome. The original text survives only in large fragments, and instead of trying to connect and "patch up" the fragments which survived, Fellini decided to present the material in a series of somewhat disjointed and dislocated scenes. Though the two protagonists, Encolpius (Martin Potter) and Ascyltus (Hiram Keller), reappear throughout, the characters and locations surrounding them change unexpectedly. This intentional technique of fragmentation conveys Fellini's view of both the original text and the nature of history itself, and is echoed visually in the film's final shot of a ruined villa whose walls, painted with frescoes of the scenes we have just seen, are crumbling, fading and incomplete. Fellini's interest in Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious is also on display with an abundance of archetypes in highly dreamlike settings.

Robert Graves -lived in Spain and was friends with Lawrence of Arabia.

• Robert Graves Archive


• English poet, classical scholar, novelist, and critic who produced some 140 books. Graves is perhaps best known for the historical novel I, CLAUDIUS (1934), with its sequel CLAUDIUS THE GOD (1943), autobiographical war memoirs and controversial study THE WHITE GODDESS (1948), in which Graves rejects the patriarchal gods as sources of inspiration in favour of matriarchal powers of love and destructiveness. The Muse, or Moon-goddess, inspires poetry of a magical quality, in contrast to rational, classical verse.
  "Philosophy is antipoetic. Phisosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he has a strong personal rhythm to vary his metrics, he is nothing. Poets mistrust philosophy. They know that once the heads are counted, each owner of a head loses his personal identify and becomes a number in some government scheme: if not as a slave or serf, at least as a party to the device of majority voting, which smothers personal views." (from 'The Case for Xanthippe', in The Crane Bag, 1969)

Sterilization - Radiation

• Cupid & Psyche is the centerfold of the Golden Ass
  
• No one thinks that an ass can hear.


• La Belle et La Bete - Madame de Villeneuve. (AT 425C, Frankreich)



• I am a huge Disney fan, but I do understand that Disney has sterilized the myth in their attempt to make the stories appropriate for children. What is even more hilarious to me is that the Grimm Fairy Tales were meant for children. Today's society puts a lot of emphasis on sheltering our children from the big bad world, and then parents are surprised by the shell shock and rebelion our children have when they are unceramoniously thrust out on their own.

• "Lend me your ear." Lector = reader attende = attention
  
• The moral of the story is.....THE STORY
  
• Morals reduce and sterilize the experience of the story.
  
• Shakespeare was influenced by Ovid & the Golden Ass
  
• Differenciates Apuleius from the other Transformations of Lucius: Apuleius redeems the pornography into art.
  
• the book focuses on slaves and beasts of burden, which was unusual
  
• The ass becomes the bishop, the lowest to the top.
  
• Lucius eats roses to become human again, but he is also reborn into the mysteries of Isis.

Movie The Game - Book the Magus

• Cupid & Psyche - the first monster in law story.

The biggest aphrodisiac is a good story.

Amor and Psyche - Book Psyche’s act ends the mythical age in the archetypal world, the age in which the relation between the sexes depended only on the superior power of the gods, who held [sic] men at their mercy. Now begins the age of human love, in which the human psyche consciously takes the fateful decision on itself. And this brings us to the background of our myth, namely the conflict between Psyche, the "new Aphrodite" and Aphrodite as the Great Mother. (Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine. New York: 1956: p. 146)

• all marriage is rape
• focusing on women

Cosmic - Cosmetics

• all weddings are funerals
• transfer of property.

Insignificance(Movie) - Four 1950's cultural icons (Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joseph MacCarthy) who conceivably could have met and probably didn't, fictionally do in this modern fable of post-WWII America. Visually intriguing, the film has a fluid progression of flash-backs and flash-forwards centering on the fictional Einstein's current observations, childhood memories and apprehensions for the future.

Golden Ass - Key passage

• Cupid and Psyche, wedding night.
  
• Deflowered (just my goolgle search) - de·flow·er (d-flour)
  de·flow·ered, de·flow·er·ing, de·flow·ers
  1. To take away the virginity of (a woman).
  2. To destroy the innocence, integrity, or beauty of; ravage.
  [Middle English deflouren, from Old French defflourer, from Late Latin dflrre : Latin d-, de- + Latin fls, flr-, flower; see bhel-3 in Indo-European roots.]
  de·flower·er n.
  Verb :
  1. deflower - deprive of virginity; "This dirty old man deflowered several young girls in the village" ruin, copulate, mate, couple, pair - make love; "Birds mate in the Spring"
  
  2. deflower - make imperfect; "nothing marred her beauty" mar, impair, vitiate, spoil
  damage - inflict damage upon; "The snow damaged the roof"; "She damaged the car when she hit the tree"defile, sully, taint, corrupt, cloud - place under suspicion or cast doubt upon; "sully someone's reputation"blemish, deface, disfigure - mar or spoil the appearance of; "scars defaced her cheeks"; "The vandals disfigured the statue"
  
• Tricked into peaking by the horrid sisters
  
• She is pricked by Love's arrow and falls even more deeply in love with Love.

When you are in love, you are blind to your lovers mistakes. I think that Love(Eros) could actually be beautiful, despite PLato's Socates' claim because Love doesn't desire good. Loving is not necessarily a good thing. Love leads, in most cases, to misfortune. Just look at what love did for Socrates' friend in the Golden Ass. Any euphoric experience felt while being in the presense of love, is returned tenfold in pain when that love is yanked away. Ate is a word that means infatuation to the point of ruin. You may say that what I was discussing was Ate and not love, but if you have ever loved anyone truely, it is the same. Our families, children, and significant others all have the power to hurt us if we love them that is, so all love is Ate. ( I will exclude agape love however, as I am a Christian. I will say that only the love of the Creator is pure, and will not break your heart.)

• We only ever play out the same story.

SECOND QUIZ

*Test Review For Monday*

1. What birds represent Procne & Philomena?
   Respectively, Swallow & Nightengale.
   
2. What is Ate?
   Infatuation to the point of being ruined.
   
3. Who is the original artisan/architect/artificer?
   Daedelus.
   
4. Who is the god of sleep, dreams, and disguises?
   Morpheus.
   
5. What should we avoid at all costs?
   Old People.
   
6. What is Aristophanes theory of the soul mate?
   Joined together in the beginning and then split in two.
   
7. Tragedy - Individual.
   Comedy - Community.
   
8. Accourding to Plato, how does one reach immortality of the soul?
   Knowledge & Virtue or Children of the mind.
   
9. Who taught Plato's Socrates all that he knows?
   Diotima.
   
10. What is Socratic Irony?
    "I don't know nothin'."
    
11. What does Icarus do to cause his own demise?
    Flew too high, melted wax that attached his wings.
    
12. What is the difference between Arachne & Minerva's tapestries?
    Arachne portrayed the travesties of the gods, where Minerva portrayed the gods in all their glory.
    
13. What is the final frame in Valasquez's "the Spinners"?
    The rape of Europa.
    
14. What does the name Pentheus mean?
    A man of constant sorrow.
    
15. Cadmus was the Grandfather of Pentheus.
    Who were 2 old men in the Bacchae? Tiresius and Cadmus.
    
16. Why did Ulysess believe that he should receive the arms of Ajax?
    Because Ulysess started it all.
    
17. What Shakesperian play was inspired by story of Procne et al.?
    Titus Andronicus.
    
18. What is a focus of New Comedy?
    Boy wants girl.
    
19. What is Anagnorisis?
    Recognition.
    
20. What is the first instance of a frame within the Metamorpheses?
    The story of Pan & Syrinx.
    
21. What is grace?
    The awareness of God's presence in the world.
    
22. Omophagia: Eating of living flesh.
    
23. Who is Love the child of?
    Poverty and Contrivence.
    
24. How old will the Metamorphesis be in 2008?
    2000 years old.
    
25. What was Daphne turned into?
    A laurel tree.
    
26. What is Nasso?
    Nose.
    
27. Aristophanes could not give his speech in the original order of speakers why?
    He had the hiccups.

04April2007

The wrap up of the Metamorphosis -

• amoral vs. immoral


• Italo Calvino - author of Il nome, il naso (1973) was an Italian writer and novelist. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). His style defies easy classification; sometimes his writing has an air of fantasy reminiscent of fairy tales (the trilogy, Cosmicomics), but sometimes his writing is more "realistic" and in the scenic mode of observation ("Difficult Loves", for example). Some of his novels have been called postmodern, while some have been labeled magical realist, others fables, others simply "modern." Twelve years before his death, he was invited to and joined the Oulipo group of experimental writers. And if you ask me looks a bit like Robin Williams.
  
• Ovid represents all that is worth telling in literature.
  
• it is ambiguous
  
• Ovid doesn't takes sides, he includes all possibilities, or rather excludes none.

Check Elizabeth's Blog

• there is no justification for the acts within the pretty poem.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 65.

• all that we have against carnage is a pretty poem (Flower power).

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Movie - Andrei Rublev - Revealing mistakes: After Rublev comments that nothing is more terrible than snow falling in a temple, some of it lands on Durochka's hair and is clearly a white feather. The film is intended to reflect the "soul" of Russia and its people throughout time, not in one specific period.
The state is represented as oppressive of the artist whose ideas deviate from the prescribed norm, and regards art as a means to glorify the powers that be. Corruption and strife between power-hungry rulers is depicted: disregard for human lives, mass murder and slaughter as well as extreme cruelty of the government/police – purges, torture, executions, forced exile. Also, as in the Jester scene, the betrayal or selling out of the "subversive" elements of society is alluded to (writers or poets killed and/or humiliated into silence).
The bell-casters represent those who manage to produce great art revered by both the people and the state, even in the face of possible death; and the pagans possibly allude to the emerging counterculture movement.

Several scenes within the film depict animal cruelty, but only one featured real physical harm to an animal, in the scene when a horse falls from a flight of stairs and is then stabbed by a spear. To produce the scene, the horse was shot in the neck before hand and once more afterwards in the head. This was done to avoid potentially harming a stunt horse—the horse was brought in from a slaughterhouse, killed on set, and then returned to the slaughterhouse for commercial consumption. (I don't even know what to say to this.)

02April07

3 Great colonical works after the Metamorphoses:

1. Daphne & Clois - I am pretty sure this is what Sexon said, but can't find it anywhere


2. Golden Ass


3. Patronius's Satiricon

I am sure that I am a huge nerd for this, but I am a huge fan of Jo Rowling, and I am just amazed at the continuous surprises of classical literature that jump out at me throughout the novels.

Aphrodite gives a necklace that when passed from hand to hand, cases disaster after disaster.

All life in which the gods aren't involved, isn't worth living. It is not worth it; it is boring.

Muslim and Amish women purposely make flaws in their work as not to offend God/Allah.

Forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. ~Joyce -
paraphrased last line of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.

• Do not judge a book because you find it distastful.

Decadent - immoral, there only well written and poorly written books.

• Well written = wholeness, harmony, and radience.

Frame - Steven must worship Joyce or be a part of him.

The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius= The Golden Ass

Rape of Europa = Story of Stories

Disney's Corruption of Pygmalion - Galatea (Jennifer Aniston) made an appearance in Disney's TV version of Hercules, but not as the wife of Pygmalion (the art teacher at a school for heroes), but as the statue Hercules beseached Aphrodite to bring to life for him as a date to the Aphrodasia Dance. Hercules learned a decidedly different lesson than the one from the original myth.

Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock w/ Jimmy Stewart

With technology, what have we gained, and what have we lost?

The picture includes, from the left, Hades, Cassandra, Hercules, Icarus, and Adonis.

30March2007

John Keats - John Keats was born in Finsbury Pavement near London on October 31st, 1795. The first son of a stable-keeper, he had a sister and three brothers, one of whom died in infancy. When John was eight years old, his father was killed in an accident. In the same year his mother married again, but little later separated from her husband and took her family to live with her mother. John attended a good school where he became well acquainted with ancient and contemporary literature. In 1810 his mother died of consumption, leaving the children to their grandmother. The old lady put them under the care of two guardians, to whom she made over a respectable amount of money for the benefit of the orphans. Under the authority of the guardians, he was taken from school to an be apprentice to a surgeon. In 1814, before completion of his apprenticeship, John left his master after a quarrel, becoming a hospital student in London. Under the guidance of his friend Cowden Clarke he devoted himself increasingly to literature. In 1814 Keats finally sacrificed his medical ambitions to a literary life.

• Read John's Blog
  
• Elizabeth's Blog is once again all encompassing.
  
• Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony - Book to read.
  
• The Greatest gifts come through madness when one is divinely inspired.
  
• Phenomenal or Fun Animal?
  
• What is divine intervention?
  
• Roberto Calasso - apparently pursuing a self-alliterating course of titles: Cadmus (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony), on Greek mythology); Kasch (The Ruin of Kasch) on modernity; Ka (Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, on Indian mythology); Quarantanove (49 in Italian) (The Forty-nine Steps, philosophy, addressed to Pierre Klossowski and his wife); even Garuda (The Story of Garuda, Hindu myth); and Kafka (K). In so doing he has traced a very broad path.
  
• Ate - Infatuation to the point in which you've ruined your life.
  Mortal Life cannot have anything great about it but Ate.

"You need to be crazy to hear music (of the spheres)."

• Turned his mind to unknown arts - Changes the laws of nature - we have become nature.


• Rat & Mole - A Wind in the Willows : Chapter 7 Piper's at the gates of dawn.
  The baby otter is on Pan's lap, but when they find him, Pan makes them forget what they have heard.


• Pan's Labyrinth - 2006 Academy Award-winning Spanish language film written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro. Its original Spanish title is El laberinto del fauno, which refers to the faun of Roman mythology and directly translates to The Labyrinth of the Faun; the English title refers to the faun-like Greek god Pan, though del Toro has stated that the faun featured in the film is not actually Pan.


• Margarette Atwood - Ovid's Metamorphoses "After Ovid"


• Decadent - In the end, the only thing that matters is art.


• "According to Pythagoras." (funny link)
  
• In addition to its use of all keys, the Well-Tempered Clavier was unusual in the very wide range of techniques and modes of expression used by Bach in the fugues. No other composer had produced such vividly characterised and compelling pieces in the fugal form, which was often regarded as a theoretical exercise. Many later composers studied Bach's work in an effort to improve their own fugal writing: Verdi even found it useful for his last work, Falstaff
  
• Keep changing your mind/subject.
  

28March2007

The Redemptive Power of Art:

I love to sing, and I love to write. I believe that these are two of the greatest expressions of the soul. Some people feel great after a two mile run. I however get the greatest high from perfoming in front of an audience. I also have horrible stage fright, and prefer being in a choir, but the exileration is the same. I am terrified at the thought of someone reading something special that I have written, and yet when that reading occurs, it seems to give my life purpose. Being successful in art seems to justify my existance. That may sound odd, but as we know from this class, art does not only effect the mind, it effects the soul. Music can change your outlook on life, and a single chord can give me chills. I am strictly a vocal person when it comes to music. I like that it has a mystery about it, as disecting it would bring the composition down to a scientific level. Anyway, on with the notes:

Budda - wittnessed illness, death, and old age.

We must redeem the world through acts of art.

Shakespeare and Joyce are the two authors other than Ovid who have the ability to transform you.

Finnegans Wake - One of the many sources Joyce drew from is the Ancient Egyptian story of Osiris, who was torn apart by his brother or son Set, and the pieces were gathered and reassembled by his sister or wife, Isis, with the help of their sister or daughter Nephthys. In this narrative, their other brother or son, Horus, emerges to slay Set and rise as the new day's sun, as Osiris himself. Osiris's night journey through the otherworld is described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a collection of spells and invocations to enable the recently deceased to join Osiris and rise with the sun.

A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man : Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions he has been brought up in. He finally leaves for Paris to pursue his calling as an artist. The work pioneers some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later come to fruition in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The Modern Library ranked Portrait as the third greatest English language novel of the twentieth century.

Weave = art

Imagination changes similes into metaphors.

Tragedy - Titus Andronicus - The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus may be Shakespeare's earliest tragedy. It depicts a fictional Roman general engaged in a cycle of revenge with his enemy Tamora, the Queen of the Goths. The play is by far Shakespeare's bloodiest, taking its inspiration from the Senecan Tragedy of Ancient Rome, the gory theatre that was played to bloodthirsty circus audiences between gladitorial combats. The play lost popularity during the Victorian era because of its gore, and has only recently begun to revive its fortunes.

After Ovid - Rewritten Ovidian tales. *wink*

Pan Pipes - is an ancient musical instrument based on the principle of the stopped pipe, consisting usually of ten or more pipes of gradually increasing length (and, at times, girth). The pan flute has long been popular as a folk instrument, and is considered the ancestor of both the pipe organ and the harmonica, or mouth organ. The pan flute is named for its association with the rustic Greek god Pan. The pipes of the pan flute are typically made from bamboo; other materials used include wood, plastic, and metal. Another term for the pan flute is syrinx, after the sound-producing organ in birds. The plural of syrinx is syringes, from which the modern word syringe is derived. (Pan pipes is both singular and plural.) Other names for the instrument include the medieval fistula panis.

26March2007

Bacchae - Carnage as metaphore

• see through the carnage and into the clarity.
  
• Holocaust - outbreak of logic.


• In order to experience Dionysus' clarity of vision and peace of mind, you must first see the carnage.

Music of the Spheres - Pythagoras taught of the Music of the Spheres and how the movement of the heavenly bodies could be perceived and reflected in the intervals of plucked strings.

Sexon's stories:

1. The Rape of Io - pg. 25


2. Syrinx ( the first instance of a frame ) - pg. 31


3. Europa - pg. 71(rape of Europa - Titian version and Velasquez's Spinners.)


4. Arachne - pg. 177


5. Pygmalion- pg. 335


6. Procne - Book 6


7. Daedalus- Book 8
   
8. Pythagoras- Book 15

• You should not eat meat because of the transmigration of souls.
• There is no death, only change.

Ovid - we suffer from the disease of insuficient sight.

• The Metamorphoses was published in 8 A.D.