Week 1 - January 29
Into
the Woods -- with Red Riding Hood, Perceval, Theseus -
in search of grandmother, the holy grain, and the Minotaur
But
often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life:
A thirst to spend out fire and restless force
In tracking out our true and original course;
A longing to inquire
In the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us - to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
~Matthew Arnold
For
me literature is a medicine. Like the medicine others take by
spoon or injection, my daily dose of literature -- my daily fix,
if you will - must meet certain standards.
First the medicine must be good. Its goodness is what tells me
how true and potent it is.
To read a dense, deep passage in a novel, to enter into that world
and to believe it to be true - nothing makes me
happier, nothing more surely binds me to life. I also prefer that
the writer be dead because then there is no little cloud
of jealousy to darken my admiration…
Let me explain what I feel on a day when I've not written well,
am unable to lose myself in a book. First the
world changes before my eyes; it become unbearable, abominable….
I can feel misery settling inside me like cement.
~Orhan Pamuk
Perhaps it is only when we experience what the word solitude means
that we
learn something about art….To write is to submit to the lure
of timelessness
~Maurice
Blanchot
Peter
Stillman: Introduction to Myth
1. We live in a society in which facts are seen as synonymous
with truth.
2. The hero and the quest (examples: Pinochio, Huck Finn, Odysseus,
Sir Gawain)
a. Heroes
are often of obscure or mysterious origin,
b. Heroes are called upon to make a journey("quest")
by urgent need
c. Heroes are neither fools or invincible
d. The hero's way is not always direct or clear to him or her.
e. The hero has a goal
f. The hero's way is beset with dangers, loneliness, and temptations,
g. The hero has guide or guides'
h. The hero descends into darkness
i. Many quest tales supply friends, servants or disciples as
company for the hero
j. The hero is not the same after emerging from the darkness,
the descent
k. The hero suffers a wound
Joseph Campbell:
"Where you stumble there lies your treasure"
1. "Mythology
is other people's religion."
2. "As Schopenhauer says, when you look back on your life,
it looks as though it were a plot; but when you are immersed in
it, it's a mess, just one surprise after another"
3. "The deeper you go and the closer you get to the final
realization, the heavier the resistance."
4. "You do not have a complete adventure unless you do get
back. There is a time to go into the woods
and a time to come back."
5. What did you do as a child that created timelessness, that
made you forget time. There lies the myth to live by."
6. Jesus -"Split the stick, you will find me there. Lift
the stone, there I am" ("Gospel of Thomas")
7. "Tat twam asi" - "Thou art that" - compare
negative capability.
K.K. Ruthven:
Myth
Of myth St Augustine wrote: "I know very well what it is,
provided no one asks me, but if I am asked and try to explain,
I am baffled)
1. Mythogonists - those who "cannot bring themselves to accept
Malinowski's view that myths simply mean what they say" and
wish to "unscrew the inscrutable."
2. Euhemerists - for them stories are histories -- "It is
only a matter of time before an entomologist (euhemerist)may be
called upon to testify that Little Miss Muffet (who sat on a …)
is none other that the squeamish daughter of Sir Thomas Moufet,
author of The Theater of Insects)"
3. Myths as natural science
Fontanelle: 'All metamorphoses are the physics of the early ages"
Freud: myth is "nothing but psychology projected unto the
external world"
4. Moralists - "scour pagan myths for Christian messages'
"If we
agree with Wittgenstein that philosophy is a battle against the
bewitchment of our intelligence by words, we may conclude that
mythology is often a willing bewitchment"(Ruthven 34)
"You
are free to invent your own myths… or you can pretend to
set the record straight by 'correcting some well known myth…
You display your originality by exercising ingenuity I n discovering
new ways of writing about old myths" (Ruthven 44).
"Myths
can tolerate almost any kind of treatment except indifference
or the solicitousness of historical scholarship" (Ruthven
47)
"Heathenism
is lovely because it is dead… To read Keats is to fall in
love with Paganism; but is the Paganism of Keats. Pagan Paganism
was not poetical" (Francis Thompson, 1888)
"If none
of the mythologies proves satisfactory, you can always invent
your own "(Ruthven 54).
1. SO Into
the woods we go with Red Riding Hood…taps into many childhood
anxieties, but especially into one that psychoanalysts call the
dread of being devoured (Maria Tatar) pedagogy of fear/cautionary
tales Conrad the Thumbsucker(page 18)
To her mother's words, ever after this
Red Riding Hood gave better heed;
For she saw the dreadful end
A disobedient act may lead. (qtd. in Tatar Off with Their Heads!"39)
a. read
Briffault version (pages 13-14)
b. read Roald Dahl's version (in Disenchantments pages 32-33
c. read "Little Red Writing Group" (page 39)
d. d. in groups of four
a. take poem assigned and use it to diagnose the poet by the
way he or she
reshaped the story;; what does this re-shaping unfold about
the poet?
b. pick 5-6 lines that will support this "diagnosis"
to the larger group
c. draw a picture that reflects the reshaping of the fairytale
poems to be
assigned:
Sexton: pages
27-29
Zupan: page 30 in Disenchantments
Sklarew; pages 30-31
Broumas: pages 31-32
Barnard: page 35
McGuire: page 36 in On the Dark Path
Morris: page 37
Tolan: page 38
2. Out of
the Labyrinth with Theseus
a. read
story paraphrased in Stillman
b. read poems by Dobyns and Kushner
c. in a 6 line poem explore what is your labyrinth, your "minotaur,"
your ball of yarn
Sisyphus and
his Stone vs. Perceval and his Grail
give out stones
& assignments:
1. search out a mythology and immerse yourself in it
2. invent your own mythology and a set of poems for it
3. rewrite a fairytale
every meeting:
bring 4 copies of a poem (no longer than 1-11/2 pages) for small
workshop
if snowing,
go to BCCC website (bucks.edu) and check if school is open or
call school 215-968-8000
Read for next
week: Skim (yeah, right!) Paradise Lost - Books I, IX, XII
