Quiz Questions 10/10

*Responsible for the following stories:
- Little Mermaid
- Little Red Riding Hood
- Cinderella
- Hansel and Gretel
- Beauty and the Beast (B & B)
- Sleeping Beauty
- Snow White
- Rapunzel
- East of the Sun, West of the Moon
- Bluebeard
- Juniper Tree

*Questions
1. What is the archetypal lady's name from Finnegan's Wake that we discussed in class?
A: Prank Quean
- Quean is a PORTMANTEAU word = multi-level word
- ex: slithy = combination of slimy and slithering in Humpty Dumpty

2. What numbers are privileged in fairy tales?
A: 3 and 7

3. What is misplaced concreteness?
A: there is no original, these fairy tales did not arise as a result of historical events
- ex: is it true that human hair can carry the weight of a human?

4. Which fairy tale is 333 in the index?
A: Little Red Riding Hood

5. How is the collective unconscious manifested in fairy tales?
A: Archetypes

6. What fairy tale says, "If you're really crafty, you'll get them both"?
A: Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf

7. What are the 3 parts of the universal quest according to Joseph Campbell?
A: Separation, Initiation, and Return

8. What are the 3 parts of a goddess according to Robert Graves?
A: Maiden, Mother, and Crone

9. Why is there no such thing as an original?
A: All literature is displaced myth

10. What are you recognizing in someone when you bow to them?
A: The Divine

11. Aladdin - "I am not history, I am _________."
A: mythology

12. What are some of the differences in the Grimm and Perrault versions of Cinderella?
A: Cinderella is called Ash-girl in Grimm
Sisters cut off their heels and toes
Birds land on Ash-girl's shoulder and then peck out the eyes of the sisters

13. Which category in the motif-index contains E of Sun, W of Moon, B&B, and Hans my Hedgehog?
A: The Beast Groom or the search for the Missing Husband

14. Which story does NOT have parents struggling to conceive?
A: Bluebeard

15. What is the mother/daughter archetype we always refer to in class?
A: Demeter and Persephone

16. Write a haiku for any fairy tale - 3 lines, 5-7-5 syllables
Deal with images

17. What is the signifigance of the blue in Bluebeard's beard?
A: All of the above (Choose answer D)

18. What causes the transformation in Beauty and the Beast?
A: Love

19. An archetype for the talking animal can be found in which story?
A: Lucius in the Golden Ass

20. Why did Cupid wake when Psyche was looking at him?
A: Drop of oil from the lamp

21. The two "sisty uglers" is an example of what rhetorical device?
A: Spooner-ism

22. Which romantic poet said that we already know everything, we have simply forgotten it?
A: Romantic poet = Wordsworth who displaced this idea from Plato

23. What mythical story did B&B come from?
A: Suggested lineage = Cupid and Psyche

24. Bluebeard's character flaw in the moral refers to which gender?
A: the girl who is too curious - it is her fault for looking in the door, not his for killing his previous wives

25. Which Grimm story has a witch in it?
A: Hansel and Gretel - witches are uncommon in Grimm tales

26. Who wanted to marry Little Red Riding Hood?
A: Dickens

27. What phrase is generally the first clue that you are reading a fairy tale?
A: Once upon a time...

28. In the Celtic version of Cinderella, who/what is the mother?
A: an ewe

Class Notes 10/8

*Tartar - Introduction XVII
- Pavarotti and Dickens
- We must give up the question, what is the best or correct response?

*Cinderella Rebuttals
- Beauty over wit

*Book List
-The Hard Facts of the Grimm Brothers by Maria Tartar

*Grimm version of the Cinderella ending
- Cinderella goes to the tree instead of the fairy godmother
- Ash-girl instead of Cinderella
- Prince coats the stairs with pitch to make the shoe stick
- Shoe of gold, not glass
- Midnight and pumpkin missing
- Sisters cut off toes and heel
- Birds perch on the shoulder of Ash-girl
- Birds peck out the eyes of the sisters, as if mutilating their feet wasn't enough
- Ugly sisters become a foil for the main character

*Stith Thompson
- Categorizes fairy tale themes
- Beauty and the Beast is 425 C - search for the lost husband

*"A book and story is about reading on both sides of the page." - MS

*Beauty and the Beast
- trials between the two main characters always about marriage
- "all marriage is rape - all about abduction" - MS
- abductor displaced into the rescuer
- story in a magazine designed for young women

Cinderella Moral Rebuttal

* As Isak Denisen says, "we must be unswervingly loyal to the story." I thought it more loyal to the story if beauty, instead of grace, gets its hearts desire. So, except for a few tweaks to keep the rhyme, I took the moral that Perrault gives us and switched grace with beauty and beauty with grace. Although I am not usually really cynical, I think this new version is much more loyal to the story.

Original:

The beauty of a woman is a rare treasure
To admire it is always a pleasure
But what they call real grace
Is priceless and wins any race.

That’s what the fairy in this tale
Taught Cinderella without fail,
Here’s how she could become a queen
Teaching lessons, yet staying serene.

Beauties: that gift is worth more than a dress
It’ll win a man’s heart; it will truly impress.
Grace is a gift that the fairies confer:
Ask anyone at all; its what we prefer.

Surely it’s a benefit
To show real courage and have some wit,
To have good sense and breeding too
And whatever else comes out of the blue.
But none of this will help you out ,
If you wish to shine and gad about.
Without the help of godparents
Your life will never have great events.

Switched:

The grace of a woman is a rare treasure
To admire it is always a pleasure
But what they call real beauty
Is priceless and wins all the booty

That’s what the fairy in this tale
Taught Cinderella without fail,
Here’s how she could become a queen
Two glass slippers, and tiny feet to be seen.

Beauties: no gift is worth more than a dress
It’ll win a man’s heart; it will truly impress.
Beauty is a gift that the fairies confer:
Ask anyone at all; its what we prefer.

Surely it’s a benefit
To show real courage and have some wit,
To have good grace and breeding too
And whatever else comes out of the blue.
But none of this will help you out,
If you wish to shine and gad about.
Without the help of a really great dress
Your life will always be a mess.

Class Notes 10/6

*Sheryl - What is a child?
- Loss of imagination and having to take repsonsiblity brings us to adulthood

*The Golden Ass - Apuleius
- more of a romance than a novel, highly episodic
- Mr. Ed the talking horse draws upon Francis the talking donkey which draws upon Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream which draws upon The Golden Ass
- Roman Eros to Greek Cupid - there is a difference in images from an erotic love to a cherub
- shifting of a focus from what is being said to how its being said
- the child can easily distinguish between illusion and reality
- possible source for Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Snow White
- Psyche = soul = butterfly
Psyche is an "airhead bimbo" - MS What does it mean that psyche, the soul, cannot keep her secret? What does it mean that the soul is always too curious?
- Google Cupid and Psyche art
- The soul has fallen in love with love

*Book list
- Amor and Psyche by Erich Neumann
- Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale by Betsy Hearne

*Cinderella
- "Spooner-isms" by Jack Ross
- Perrault version of Cinderella seems too good - write a rebuttal to the moral of this story, use irony, satire, etc.

3 Questions

What is a Child?
What is a Book?
What is Nature?

I want to see these questions not as three separate and distinct questions, but as three different ways to ask the same question. Like the stories that have no original, these questions all seem to draw and pull on one another. Book, child, and nature are all, at their very basis, words. Language, based on these words, defines the way we see our world. They form the basis for our numerous views of reality. By naming something, we give it associations and an etymology that signify its meaning. And from these distinct words, we form stories. From great, sacred stories (cultural myths) to fairy tales to news reports, the stories we tell define our view of reality and the world around us. They tell change or enhance the way we see.

A book, then, is a narrative or story in its most literal and tangible form - black words on a white page. But when narrative escapes the page, and enters the imagination it becomes an interactive, oral story that is dynamic, moving, and alive - a child. And when we look out to the world around us and see nature, we are seeing a story that has been told for generations. We see the natural metamorphoses of Ovid, the land to be conquered of the Bible, and even the scientific lab reports of Microbiology and Ecology.

So what is a book, a child, and nature? Words, Language, Story.

Class Notes 10/1

*Film - Jim Henson's The Storyteller
-Archetypes of Hans my Hedgehog
"Story that starts with hello and ends with goodbye."

1. East of the Sun, West of the Moon

2. Beauty and the Beast

3. Rash Promises
-Book of Judges, Jephthah's Daughter
-sacrificial child

4. the number 3
-3 nights to keep her promise
-3 iron shoes

5. Passing of Property from one male to another

6. Demeter and Persephone

7. Husband and wife who cannot have a child (Hebrew Bible miracle birth)

8. Monster Baby (black sheep)
- Jung's archetype of the shadow
- getting in touch with the inner monster

*Language Formulas
- oral stories are composed through repetitive phrases
- willing suspension of disbelief - how far are we willing to go?

*Canterbury Tales - Wife of Bath
- reversal of the beast role to the woman