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