19March2007

*test* Lysistrata - Read Sarah Rudan's essay on Athenian Women. *test*

The feast of fools was a day in which the roles of men and women are reversed, as women rule.

Group 1: We do our presentation on the 18th of April

The personal Presentations are on the subject of our three to four page final term papers. The papers are due when you present, and the presentations will be done in reverse alphabetical order. The individual topic will most likely be something that you have blogged about.

Tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same coin. Pg. 32 of Lysistrata

• Dress as a woman (the councilor) - this was the most humiliating thing that could happen to a manly man.


• Scapegoat: ritually expunged from the community to get rid of the evil(sin).


• Unconsciously practicing scapegoat ritual(phalocentric representative).


• Dressed as a corpse(the counselor) - Aristophanes is making fun of the Phalice - deflation of the masculine will to power.


• Comedy - must happen at the end: Reconciliation, happy ending, feast & dancing, marriage (happily ever after) at the end of comedy, all conflicts must be resolved.
  (death or war gives way to life or peace).


• Leda's rape by Zeus as a swan produces Castor and Polydeuces (lat. Pollux) and sisters Helen, Clytemnestra, and Timandra.
  W.B. Yates' Leda and the Swan:
  
  A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
  Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
  By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
  He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
  How can those terrified vague fingers push
  The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
  And how can body, laid in that white rush,
  But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
  A shudder in the loins engenders there
  The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[8]
  And Agamemnon dead.
  Being so caught up,
  So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
  Did she put on his knowledge with his power
  Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Baccants - The Bacchae at Aranui High School

• a.k.a. Maenads - female worshippers of Dionysus, the Greek god of mystery, wine and intoxication, and the Roman god Bacchus. The word literally translates as "raving ones". They were known as wild, insane women who could not be reasoned with. The mysteries of Dionysus inspired the women to ecstatic frenzy; they indulged in copious amounts of violence, bloodletting, sexual activity, self-intoxication, and mutilation. They were usually pictured as crowned with vine leaves, clothed in fawnskins and carrying the thyrsus, and dancing with wild abandon.


• Hair = virility (Sampson and Delila).


• A "new" example of the riot of a Dionysus like figure is shown here: DiCaprio Causes Near Riots In Jerusalem

Dionysus - Drives you out of your mind.

• is a liberator - first deconstructor.
  
• entheos - god inside you.
  
• ecstasy - outside yourself.
  
• homopabia - the ingesting of flesh
  
• sporagmos - rending or shredding of human flesh.