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| via Wikimedia Commons |
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Procrastination in the desert
Thursday, December 29, 2011
"A cultural language ... in dialogue with the idea of antiquity"
If you haven't already, check out Mary Beard's "Do the Classics Have a Future?" over at the New York Review of Books.
A taste:
A taste:
The truth is that the classics are by definition in decline; even in what we now call the “Renaissance,” the humanists were not celebrating the “rebirth” of the classics; rather like Harrison’s “trackers,” they were for the most part engaged in a desperate last-ditch attempt to save the fleeting and fragile traces of the classics from oblivion. There has been no generation since at least the second century AD that has imagined that it was fostering the classical tradition better than its predecessors. But there is of course an up-side here. The sense of imminent loss, the perennial fear that we might just be on the verge of losing the classics entirely, is one very important thing that gives them—whether in professional study or creative reengagement—the energy and edginess that I think they still have.Pin It
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Happy Holidays
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm Pin ItAnnounced by all the trumpets of the sky,
via Wikimedia Commons
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Ancient men had it sort of rough, too
This evening I'm intrigued by the Discovery News article on medieval knights with PTSD:
I had similar thoughts to this article the last time I watched the Rome episode "Pharsalus." Pullo and Vorenus are about to set themselves adrift on a raft made of the bodies of their dead comrades. Meanwhile, the female characters (who undoubtedly have their own tribulations) trade verbal barbs:
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Tales from that era include all sorts of gruesome details, Kaeuper said. Many tell of warriors vomiting blood or holding their entrails in with their hands. One mentions a Castilian knight who gets a crossbolt stuck up his nose in his first fight. Another tells of a fighter getting slashed by a sword through his mouth. Again and again, there are references to bad food, uncomfortable conditions and relentless fighting.Elizabeth Chadwick's novels cover this really well, especially The Champion, which deals with the surprisingly crummy lives of tournament knights, those who live off tournament earnings instead of inherited wealth. There is also her wonderful A Place Beyond Courage, which tells the story of John Marshal, who had half his face melted off by a burning lead roof and then walked 25 miles before receiving any medical treatment.
I had similar thoughts to this article the last time I watched the Rome episode "Pharsalus." Pullo and Vorenus are about to set themselves adrift on a raft made of the bodies of their dead comrades. Meanwhile, the female characters (who undoubtedly have their own tribulations) trade verbal barbs:
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Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Kevin Young's Ardency
The Boston Globe review of Ardency hooked me with its first line, "a good epic poem is hard to find these days." Ardency tells the story of the Amistad slave rebellion. It has three sections, one in the voice of the slaves' interpreter, James Covey, one based on the slaves' letters from prison, one in the voice of the rebel leader Cinque.As a classicist, I am always a tad suspicious of modern poetry, but I found Ardency a fast, energetic read, with a genuinely American feel. (As a reader it's always nice to want to read a poem slowly, but it's essential, especially with a narrative work, that you're not forced to read it slowly because of preciousness or an overly fragmented style.)
Gabriel, Escalastio, Desiderio - in the seas beneath
the States, names new & Christian fell around you
like the lash. (Ardency lines 1-3)
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Monday, December 19, 2011
Those darn Furies, always so vengeful
I'm on a (very long) waiting list for Fury at the public library. Today I thought I'd drop by Amazon and check out the reviews. I was quite amused.Fury is a tale of high school students punished for juvenile misdeeds by the ancient Greek goddesses of vengeance. Some of the reviews complained of uneven pacing and wooden dialogue. Okay, fine. As a longtime fan of Simon Pulse for escapist reading (I devoured Samurai Girl and The Nine Lives of Chloe King) I'm not expecting The Brothers Karamazov.
But there are also repeated complaints that the Furies are too harsh (potentially punishing every transgression with death), illogical and 'favor revenge.' Is this pressure on YA fiction for warm-fuzzy morals a new thing?
I fear that this reflects what my students, just out of high school themselves, expect of mythology. Thus, instead of examining how Greek literature illuminates the human condition in all its breathtaking ugliness and glory, I'm going to have to spend the next semester talking about why the gods are immature. (Akin to talking about why Greek heroes love to fight. They just do. It's what they did.)
May the Fates send me a more imaginative group than that. (Not that I expect them to be 'fair' or anything...)
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Saturday, December 17, 2011
Why the Romans Celebrated a Child-Killing Patricide
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| Io, Saturnalia! Tee |
But as with most Greek mythology, it is best to look beyond the borderline-nonsensical surface story to the larger cultural significance. And Saturn, of course, ruled over a golden age that only a dramatically transgressive act (like devouring your own offspring) could bring to an end.
As I look ahead to teaching mythology next year, and as I indulge my various modern-day guilty pleasures (like the BBC's Robin Hood series), I ponder the ridiculousness of many ancient and modern myths. I hope to show my students that they should then ask "Why is this myth ridiculous in this particular way? What does it tell us about the people who created it, believed in it and derived great satisfaction from the different versions of it?"
*available in several versions
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Medieval art and red-and-green symbolism
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| via Wikimedia Commons |
I love that the ultimate explanation has to do with the survival of medieval churches. I love pre-Renaissance churches (and Greek and Roman temples, for that matter.) These early churches have a naive and additive quality to their artwork that I find charming. Rather than presenting one designer's vision as many post-medieval churches do, these early churches are presenting a community's vision. Pin It
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
All of this has happened before ...
...and all of it will happen again.
From the New Statesman blog:
From the New Statesman blog:
"Linguistic disobedience" might be achieved in many ways: by speaking out of turn, by disrupting syntax and "meaning", and by offering comparisons between disparate things. It might be a case of the poem acting as "witness", a recording of what's normally "unseen", ignored or denied. It can be subtle -- using allusion and slight shifts from convention -- and it can be volatile -- from agitprop to rants.From Sappho 16 (tr. Anne Carson):
Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on footPin It
and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing
on the black earth. But I say it is
what you love.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Animal Metamorphosis in Celtic and Classical Myth
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| via Wikimedia Commons |
I vaguely recalled a story associated with the Wild Hunt about a girl having to pull her fiance out of the procession and hold him while the fairies transform him into a series of animals. I (again, vaguely) thought there might be interesting similarities between this story and the 'courtship' of Peleus and Thetis, in which he compels her to wed him by restraining her while she transforms. Actually reading up on these narratives made everything quite a bit more complicated.
The Wild Hunt story comes from a Scottish ballad called Tam Lin. Everything I told you above is true, except that the fiance is a) a fairy who b) assaults young women traveling through 'his' territory. Not to mention that c) his fiancee is pregnant and d) he's about to be given to the devil as the fairies' 'tithe to hell', a tax paid every seven years.*
His fiancee, Janet, wants to avoid having to marry an older knight she doesn't love just because she is pregnant. She has returned to Tam Lin's forest to obtain an herb that will cause her to miscarry. Tam Lin tells her how to turn him back into a mortal man, explaining that he believes he is about to be given to the devil by his fairy buddies. She does so and weathers the anger of the fairy queen to, presumably, live happily ever after.
Thetis is a minor goddess in the historical period in ancient Greece who may have been much more powerful in prehistoric times. Zeus would like to 'marry' (make baby gods) with her, but fears the prophecy that her son will be more powerful than his father. She is married off to the Greek hero Peleus to neutralize this threat. The sea god Proteus, an expert on metamorphosis, tells him how to overcome Thetis' transformative abilities. She agrees to marry him after he creeps up on her asleep and restrains her through a series of transformations into water, fire and serpents. Apart from his skill at goddess-abducting, Peleus is a rather unremarkable hero, a grandson of Zeus and a companion of Heracles, like most of the generation prior to the Trojan War.
The Peleus and Thetis myth is a distasteful story even by ancient standards. (Although the modern 'love match' was an alien concept, complaints about arranged marriages and the unequal treatment of goddesses are not unknown in Greek literature.) Surprisingly, I found that 'Tam Lin' was far less egalitarian than I remembered. Tam Lin commits serial assaults on woman and only agrees to marry Janet because it's better than an eternity spent in Hell. Janet is motivated less by love than a desire to avoid unwed motherhood or marriage to the "auld grey knight" who revealed her secret.
The differences between the stories come down to one thing: female agency. Neither myth reflects a romantic world, nor one particularly fair to women, but any ancient Greek would have been shocked at the notion of a woman lying in wait for a demigod lover and forcibly restraining him as a way of saving his life (so to speak). There are strong, forceful women (within limits) in Greek literature, but the total impossibility of a myth like Tam Lin reminds us not to look for Wonder Woman in the megaron.
*This is all based on the earliest version, Child 39 A. The 'tithe to hell' plays an important role in Gabaldon's novel. Pin It
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Latin teacher, pigeon benefactor: Carl Wingate
This obituary of a former Jesuit turned married (and apparently quite eccentric) Latin teacher caught my eye. Carl Wingate graduated from Notre Dame with a master's in biology, but spent 30+ years teaching Latin at a high school in Washington state. He translated 'Star Wars' into Latin and wore clothing he painted with religious and movie themed designs.
The first reason his extraordinary life interests me: it's a good example of how Classicists with varied backgrounds can make better teachers and colleagues. Have you been around a group of classicists lately? We can be a bit boring, not to mention neurotic. I understand why -- we've spent over a decade of our lives training for a job that, in many cases, can be taken away at any moment. We are afraid to think about anything besides classics, and sometimes we almost don't remember how to, because it's been so long. So maybe Carl can inspire us to chill a little.
The second reason he interests me is that I enjoy eccentric people and hope they are not a disappearing breed. Vexillum monstruosum tuum volet! (Let your freak flag fly!) Pin It
The first reason his extraordinary life interests me: it's a good example of how Classicists with varied backgrounds can make better teachers and colleagues. Have you been around a group of classicists lately? We can be a bit boring, not to mention neurotic. I understand why -- we've spent over a decade of our lives training for a job that, in many cases, can be taken away at any moment. We are afraid to think about anything besides classics, and sometimes we almost don't remember how to, because it's been so long. So maybe Carl can inspire us to chill a little.
The second reason he interests me is that I enjoy eccentric people and hope they are not a disappearing breed. Vexillum monstruosum tuum volet! (Let your freak flag fly!) Pin It
Monday, December 5, 2011
'Though I loved you well, I wooed you not': Troilus and Cressida's mythological roots
I posted recently about the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, the dominant version of the Trojan war myth before the western world rediscovered ancient Greek. An anecdote from the Recuyell inspired Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.
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| via Wikimedia Commons |
Cressida is someone I've thought about from time to time since that post. She does not appear in the ancient version of the Troy myth; her name is a corrupted version of Chryseis and in some medieval works she is called Briseida (which of course is a corrupted version of Briseis).
Anyway, medieval audiences could not get enough of her and the love triangle between her, Troilus (a Trojan) and the Greek warrior, Diomedes. She betrays Troilus by starting an affair with Diomedes after being captured by the Greeks. Okay... I'm obviously intrigued by a worldview where a captured woman carries on optional 'affairs' with her captors. (She is, admittedly, a hostage rather than a woman captured in a city-sacking.)
And most of all, what about Helen? Why invent this character when you seemingly have a perfectly good unchaste women available? I'm wondering if it has to do with the medieval notion of the divine right of kings: Helen couldn't play the role of the corrupt woman because, as a queen, she was purer than the rest of the human race. I would love to read about this more (and hopefully I'll remember to do so in about 6 years when I have time ...)
Friday, December 2, 2011
Curbside Haiku, the new Parthenon?
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| courtesy of the Safe Streets Fund |
"Curbside Haiku seeks to merge public art with public awareness to infuse a bit of beauty and joy into the public sphere with the images while underscoring the realities of the message with poetry. I’m aiming to engage, edify and inform and nothing does that better than art."
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Thursday, December 1, 2011
Latin Zombies t-shirt and mug
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