Class Notes 9/29

*Book List / Class Bibliography:
- The Hidden Adult by Perry Nodelman

*Jung – archetypes
- manifestation of constant themes that arise out of the collective unconscious of humankind
- collective unconscious is very close to Plato’s ideas of the recollection of erasures – we already know everything you can know, we have simply forgotten


*Northrop Frye – defined archetypes in primitive and popular literature
- popular literature gives us an unobstructed view of archetypes
- ephemeral rubbish = “trash,” crude literature – fairy tales, folk tales, and dreams also give us archetypes

*Man Reading by MS
- the act of reading is almost by definition, reading in – reading into the text
- when you have nothing else to say, you say a cliché, filler – “In lieu of flowers…”

Class Notes 9/22

*Northrop Frye – “ALL literature is displaced myth”


*La Dolce Vita – Paparazzo character is an aggressive photographer whose name becomes the commonly used phrase, paparazzi
- http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring99/Johnson/page1.htm

Class Notes 9/17

*Canonical work for men in children’s lit = Iron John by Robert Bly

* Ian Forester – “only connect”

*Poet Rilke – “we live in an interpretive world”

- It seems we live both the questions and the answers in our stories.

* Man Reading by MS – Mississippi Review

*Thompson – Imaginary Landscapes
- we are fascinated by stories of world building because ours is falling apart
- women, plants, and lost cosmologies
- 6 pages have lasted 6000 years – conscious literature
- Thompson’s 4 levels of interpretation (based on Dante’s interpretive model)
1. literal
2. structural (patterns)
3. anthropological
4. cosmological

*Aladdin – “I’m not history, I am mythology.”


*Robert Graves The White Goddess
- 3 Part Goddess
1. Maiden/Virgin
2. Mother
3. Crone

*English teachers are usually the Hades figures
- Shakespeare kills off the grammarians first – no imposition of education on the “people”

*Blissful diad = mothers and daughters
- plant Rapunzel fertilizes itself
- introduction of the male brings instability and uncertainty

Class Notes 9/15

*Rapunzel – Tartar
- misplaced concreteness – there is NO original
- Rapunzel did not arise as a result of a historical event
- stories only come to us in writing that evolves from an oral source
- matriarchal vs. patriarchal society

Rapunzel Displaced, Daily Tribune

Daily Tribune
Sept 15, 2008

Parents in Anguish Over Missing Child
Authorities received a missing child report on Friday and now the parents are speaking out on this tragedy. The child was allegedly stolen soon after it was brought home from the hospital and has not been seen in 5 days. "We just hope that our child is safe and well taken care of," said the mother in a press statement yesterday, "She needs a mother at such a young age." And although the story is heartbreaking to hear, rumors have come out that the parents are not exempt as suspects in this case. Some have suggested that the parents knowingly gave up the baby, but cannot find where she was taken. They are now speaking out in hopes that the baby can be rescued.

Lasik Eye Surgery Revolutionized
A groundbreaking new study in Lasik Eye Surgery reveals that human tears are the most important aspect of healing. A new company, Imperial Lenses, is said to be producing vials of real human tears for patients to use as they heal from the surgery. It is not confirmed how these human tears are being extracted, although rumors report that a large shipment of Saving Private Ryan and Simon Birch were delivered at the Imperial Lenses plant.

Survival Tactics Confirmed
A local wilderness man is reported to have survived on only roots and berries for years. "I lived without weapons and ate what I could gather with my own two hands," says the rugged mountain man. Although a bit slim and seemingly without a spark of joy, the man is reported to be in good health.

Research Shows Cure For Morning Sickness
Campanula Rapunculus, a plant that is unknown in most of the United States has been found to be a healthy way for expectant mothers to cure morning sickness. This new research conducted by top researchers at Montana State University has been taken up by Gerbers and the baby food company is now developing a new line of products for mothers like smoothies and vitamins that contain the herb.

Guinness Book of World Records
Public relations employees from the Guinness Book of World Records announced a new record yesterday. A young German girl whose family name is Glockenblume is reported to have the longest hair in the world. Measuring 22 ft 6.4 inches, this record breaks the previous record set by Xie Qiuping, whose hair measured 18 ft 5.54 inches.

Rapunzel Displaced, Braided Taffy

Braided Taffy

Ingredients
2 Cups Sugar
2 Tablespoons Cornstarch
1 Cup Light Corn Syrup
3/4 Cup Water
2 Tablespoons Butter
1 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 to 1 Teaspoon Mint Flavoring
1/4 to 1 Teaspoon Berry Flavoring
3 drops yellow food coloring
3 drops purple food coloring

1. Mix together sugar and cornstarch in the saucepan.

2. Use a wooden spoon to stir in the corn syrup (1), water, butter, and salt. Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves (2).

3. Continue stirring until mixture begins to boil, then let cook, undisturbed, until it reaches about 270 degrees F or the soft-crack stage. Wash down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in warm water while the syrup cooks (3).

4. Remove the saucepan from the heat and divide into two halves (4). Add yellow food coloring and mint flavoring into one half of the taffy mixture (5). Stir gently, and then pour onto a greased marble slab or into a shallow greased cooked sheet to cool.

5. When the taffy is cool enough to handle, grease your hands with oil or butter and pull the taffy in a downward motion. Hold the taffy at the top, pull downward, and then fold upward, doubling the taffy on itself. Repeat by pulling downward and then folding both ends together again. Keep pulling downward and repeating this motion until you get a long rope of taffy that is light in color and has a golden, satiny gloss (6).

6. Whisk in berry flavoring and purple food coloring to the other half of the taffy mixture (7). When cooled, pull this taffy long enough to perfectly match (8) the golden strand.

7. Intertwine the purple strand with the golden rope of taffy by twisting the two strands together (9). Then cut the rope into 1 inch long pieces with greased scissors or a butter knife (10). Let the pieces sit for about half an hour while the two colors meld together in their individual pieces (11). Then apply a few drops of warm water to the outside of the taffy pieces (12) and wrap them in wax paper or plastic wrap and twist together the ends of the wrapper (13).

EXPLANATIONS
(1) Just like the sorceress in the story, corn syrup and butter act as "interfering agents" in this and many other candy recipes. they contain long chains of glucose molecules that tend to keep the sucrose molecules in the taffy syrup from crystallizing. If you leave out the corn syrup, you get a candy with a very creamy, soft texture - something that hasn't been interfered with (a normal child not taken away by a sorceress.)

(2) The child is a mixture of the main ingredients - mom and dad - that are dissolved together.

(3) While the syrup (baby) is cooking, the parents are aware of the agreement with the sorceress and must wash away their joy in a child.

(4) The one becomes two

(5) Golden strands of Rapunzel's hair. Mint flavoring is a green, leafy plant that can be used in salads, like Rampion or Rapunzel. Rapunzel, the girl, must also be filled with the plant that is her name because her mother ingested it while pregnant.

(6) Rapunzel's hair that grows and becomes a ladder which the sorceress can use to climb to the girl. The hair is let down and then pulled upward again.

(7) Berry flavoring because the prince eats only berries and bark from the woods once he is blinded by the scorceress and purple because it is the color of royalty.

(8) The prince realizes (quite quickly) that Rapunzel is his match.

(9) Prince and Rapunzel's union

(10) Sorceress finds out and cuts them apart, removing Rapunzel from the Prince's grasp

(11) Although the sorceress has separated the couple, they cannot help but be together in both love and the children they have created.

(12) Warm water, like Rapunzel's tears, is healing as the pieces of taffy get wrapped and packaged together.

(13) The taffy recipe produces taffy pieces that are very similar - two colors and flavors that are twisted together like the twins that are the result of Rapunzel and the Prince's union.

Class Notes 9/12

*Assigned groups – SUPER SECRET MISSION = create a graphic novel of The Wizard of Oz
- not limited to print material (can use videos)
- eliminate information we already know about the story – go beyond the facts

*Don’t ask, “what does this poem mean?” but “how does this poem mean?”

* The moral of the story IS the story

* Dorothy
- The Alchemist finds the treasure right at home – in his “backyard”
- but Dorothy teaches us that the only way you can appreciate your own back
yard is to leave it and go to the land of Oz
- the journey is always the same
1. Separation
2. Initiation
3. Return


*When something in a story is forbidden, you can be sure it will be done

*The call to adventure that’s been denied – but once you have heard the call, you cannot go back again
- Frog and the Princess – she cannot ignore the frog requests, the princess
has heard the call and cannot return
- the return can never be to the same place – it has always moved through
our experiences

* “It’s wonderful to be terrified.” – MS Why?

* “Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.” – Freud

*The wind in the willows – the music of the god Pan removes memory with a floating mist
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame


* Book List / Class Bibliography:
- Mirror, Mirror on the Wall by Margaret Atwood
- there is a certain element of the haphazard in fairy tales

* Dreams happen to you – they are not decided upon before hand

Class Notes 9/10

*Joyce – Finnegan’s Wake
- contains every conceivable fairy tale Joyce could get his hands on
- children can deal with nonsense better than adults – they don’t ask questions of meaning
- in the realm of the structure of a fairy tale
- can Joyce be enjoyed when not presented orally?

*Didactic = teaching, pedagogical (moral of the story)
- can a moral be detachable from the story?

*Fractured / Twisted Fairy Tales (Jesse's Blog)
- stories told from the perspective of the “evil” character
- Little Red Riding Hood Twisted – sinister, ax, provocatively dressed
- irony – the sense of irony must develop, children cannot understand it

Class Notes 9/8

*Master Blogger = Lynn (http://lynndoyle304.blogspot.com/)

* Book List / Class Bibliography:
- The Feminine in Fairytales by M L von Franz
- From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner
- Fairy Tales and After by Roger Sale
- Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked by Catherine Orenstein
- Pipers at the Gates of Dawn by Jonathan Cott
- The Classic Fairy Tales by Iona and Peter Opie
- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Cinderella: A Casebook by Alan Dundes
- Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook by Alan Dundes
- Don’t Tell the Grown-ups by Allison Lurie

* “All stories are re-tellings of other stories.” – MS

* Fairy tales are very generic with time – the more specific you are with time, the closer to realism you get

Class Notes 9/5

*Children's Literature is a portal to mythology and realism or naturalism

*Frye - "all literature is displaced myth"

*The Juniper Tree
- “There are not auditors or speakers, only participants in the story.” – MS
- Story morphs in the switch from an oral culture to a print culture

*Mnemosyne = mother of the muses = memory
- http://www.goddessgift.com/Goddess-myths/g-mnemosyne.htm

*Children are creatures of repetition, simplicity

*Things always happen 3 times in fairy tales
- the dad is always the king and the daughter, a princess

*There is a tension between the stories that are written for children and their (sometimes) burglarized versions that become stories that teach a lesson, moral stories