Pictures and Conversations

Final Paper

2008-12-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

Too Curious: Discovering the World of Children's Literature

A prick on the finger, the turning of a key, a jump down the rabbit hole, and the closing of a wardrobe door - curiosity is what discovers the world. Curiosity is not only the motivation, but also the main character in children's literature. It is the portal through which we all must step, never to return. For not only are the characters in children’s literature curious, but so also are the readers. Narration of all stories must start and end in the mind of the reader, in the imagination of a child – an imagination that is nosy, probing and questioning. So often in children’s literature, curiosity becomes both a bane to the main character and essential to moving the story forward. And this seems to beg the question, can we be too curious?

Psyche, in Apuleius' story of Cupid and Psyche is a character who cannot escape this compelling need to know. As readers we sense the peril of Psyche indulging her curiosity and yet we cannot help but joining her in the need to understand the world. Even though she is warned that she cannot see her husband, Psyche must hold up a lamp to see the supposed serpent who climbs into her bed each night. Not only does she indulge her curiosity to see her until-then invisible husband, but she is also entranced by the newly revealed Cupid's sheaf of arrows. And it is this particular curiosity – the inevitable prick on the finger – that defines her life. Because at this moment of unflagging curiosity, Psyche (the soul) falls in love with love. It is at this moment that her quest truly begins, for no one, not even Psyche, can ignore the power of Cupid's arrows.

Nor does Psyche's curiosity lessen once she begins her quest to find the lost husband, the beast groom. As Psyche travels to the underworld in the last leg of her quest and obtains a box of beauty, she is again overwhelmed by curiosity. Psyche does not open the box because she needs or wants more beauty. Indeed, her story begins because Psyche's beauty rivals that of the goddess Venus. Instead, Psyche opens the box because she is told not to - because she is too curious about its contents. Psyche is the archetype of the character who is too curious, someone whose story is defined by their desire to understand the world - a desire that is both destructive and essential.

The same forbidden curiosity – this time in the form of a forbidden door – drives Perrault’s fairy tale Bluebeard. The wife of a hideously ugly and yet extremely wealthy man with a blue beard must confront her curiosity in this fairy tale that makes us question, is this really for children? As he leaves town, Bluebeard instructs his wife in the workings of the household and the keys that open each door. And it is the last golden key she receives that pushes the story forward. Indulging her curiosity of the forbidden – the turning of the key – reveals a room filled with Bluebeard’s past wives murdered and hung on the walls. The opening of the door is essential to the narrative Bluebeard. As his wife steps through the doorway, crossing over the luminal state, she gains a new understanding of her world. Curiosity not only has the power to transform her reality, but also the power to create it. Because it is this act of indulgence that sets the wheels of punishment and rescue in motion. Curiosity creates the fairy tale – the happily-ever-after.

And although the wife’s curiosity sets up the fairy tale ending of the story, Perrault leaves us with a moral that again questions the character who is too curious:
Curiosity, in spite of its appeal, often leads to deep regret.
To the displeasure of many a maiden, its enjoyment is short lived.
Once satisfied, it ceases to exist, and always costs dearly.
Does curiosity cease to exist, as Perrault suggests, when it is satisfied? Is it something that, once used, disappears forever and leaves only a price to pay? Or does the story of Bluebeard instead exemplify the necessity of the curious imagination? Although the moral Perrault provides seems to warn against the ills of curiosity, the story itself teaches a different lesson. Without curiosity, and the characters who indulge in it, the story itself cannot exist. And without stories, our own reality crumbles.

Yet stories do not always submit to the crumbling of reality. Emerging through the dissolution of logic and reason is another type of story, one that is, “curiouser and curiouser” – a story of nonsense. A white rabbit running past a dozing Alice in the field is not out of the ordinary. We expect rabbits to jump down rabbit holes. Alice is not even startled when the rabbit mumbles, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” But the comfortable reality of Alice begins to crumble when the seemingly ordinary white rabbit pulls a pocket watch out of his waistcoat. Rabbits, Alice knows, do not have pocket watches or even waistcoat pockets from which a watch can emerge. So, “burning with curiosity” Alice runs across the field and jumps down the rabbit hole after this unusual animal. And with a jump down the rabbit hole, the story of Alice and the ultimate childhood story of nonsense begins.

The portal of the rabbit hole becomes, then, an emergence into the world of dreams, dream logic, and nonsense. The curiosity driven jump through the portal opens into a world where Alice can swim in a pool of her own tears, receive advice from a hookah smoking caterpillar, and drink tea with a mad hatter. And at the end of the rabbit hole, the nonsense of Wonderland makes perfect sense. Wonderland is characterized by its changing, turning, and shifting – the metamorphosis of forms, thoughts, and ideas. Indeed, the only constant in the topsy turvy world of Wonderland is Alice’s curiosity. It is curiosity that drives Alice to drink from a vial that says “drink me,” peek at the baby who so closely resembles a pig, and play a game of croquet with the seemingly dangerous queen of hearts. Alice’s curiosity is not only the catalyst into this magical world, but the creation of its landscape, inhabitants, and events – curiosity creates the world of Wonderland, the world of dreams.

When we first meet Lyra Belacqua she is stealthily sneaking into the Retiring Room at Jordan College, a place she has been told is off-limits at all times. And it is the fact that this room is off limits, forbidden to not only Lyra but all women, that makes it essential Lyra finds out what is hiding behind its doors. Lyra and her daemon, Pantalaimon sneak into the retiring room out of pure curiosity. She has no specific reason for entering the room, but enter she must – if only to prove that she is both daring and brave. What Lyra doesn’t expect is the early entrance of the master and his servant, the poisoning of wine, and the visit of her guardian, Lord Asriel. To avoid detection – first from Lord Asriel and then from the scholars of the college – Lyra hides in the room’s wardrobe. It is this closing of a wardrobe door – the realization of plans for murder, expeditions to the north, and twinkling golden dust – that begins Lyra’s adventure into the realm of infinite universes and infinite realities.

Lyra’s seemingly unexciting foray into the Retiring Room, her innocent curiosity, begins a journey that will define her life, her world, and the many worlds she passes through. Once Lyra hears of Dust from behind the wardrobe doors, she must seek it out. Dust, once known, is something that cannot be escaped – it both attracts and is attracted to this girl who will change the course of the future. In this way, Pullman’s Dust is like the curiosity of Psyche, Bluebeard’s wife, Alice, and Lyra. Curiosity is not only a defining trait of these main characters, but a trait that creates their futures and their worlds – their realities. Curiosity is what creates the stories and the stories are what create reality. So then the question of curiosity itself must transform. Instead of wondering about the character who is too curious, we must ask ourselves, are we curious enough?

Lyra on the Borderlands

2008-11-24T10:40:00.000-08:00

I have recently been reading a book written by Michael Chabon titled, Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing on the Borderlands. In his chapter called "On Deamons and Dust" Chabon explores the worlds of Lyra, Will, and Mary Malone. The whole chapter is fantastic and I would highly recommend the whole book. (If nothing else, the book is worth its multi-layered cover art.) Chabon makes the point that not only is Lyra herself on the borderlands between worlds, but so also is the genre that Pullman chooses to write in. And it is because The Dark Materials lies in this liminal, in-between state that his worlds and words are so powerful. Like Pullman, Chabon also writes both eloquently and clearly. Here is some of what he has to say:

"...all mystery resides there, in the margins, between life and death, childhood and adulthood, Newtonian and quantum, 'serious' and 'genre' literature. And it is from the confrontation with mystery that the truest stories have always drawn their power (67)."

"Yet epic fantasies, whether explicitly written for children or not, tend to get sequestered in thier own section of the bookstore or library, clearly labeled to protect the unsuspecting reader of naturalistic fiction from making an awkward mistake. Thus do we consign to the borderlands our most audacious retellings of what is arguably one of the two or three primal human stories: the narrative of Innocence, Experience, and, straddling the margin between them, the Fall (68)."

"Pullman has looked around at this broken universe of ours, in its naturalistic tatters, and has indicated, like Satan pointing to the place on which Pandemonium will rise, the site of our truest contemporary narratives of the Fall: in the lives, in the bodies and souls, of our children (69)."

"...it is Lyra's childhood - and indeed Childhood itself - that will prove to be the irrecoverable paradise, the Dreamtime, of his story (70)."

"[Pullman] is also, in the great tradition of unabashed concocters of stories, a highly self-conscious storyteller. By the end of The Amber Spyglass, on has come to see Pullman' s world-calving imagination, to see Imagination itself, as the ordering principle, if not of the universe itself, then of our ability to comprehend, to wander, and above all, to love it (73)."

"The bond between humand and daemon is fundamental, essential, empathic, and at times telepathic. When a daemon's human being dies, its own life ends; the daemon winks out of existence, snuffed out like a candle flame (74)."

"Under [Mrs. Coulter's] spell, and frightened by the implications of Dust's evident attraction to experience in the Blakean sense, to Fallenness - believing that Dust may be the physical manifestation of Original Sin itself - the Church leadership has authorized Mrs. Coulter to lead a northern expedition of her own, one that wills seek to determine whether Dust - Sin - can be forestalled, fended off, or eliminated entirely, by the intercision of a child before his or her daemon has 'settled' (76)."

"As Lyra's daemon comes ever closer to settling in its final form, the narrative itself grown ever more unsettled; for a single point of view is a child's point of view, but a multiple point of view is the world's. And the settling of a daemon into a single form with the onset of adulthood, Pullman tells us, represents not simply a loss of the power to change, of flexibility and fire; it also represents a gain in the power to focus, to concentrate, to understand, and, finally, to accept: a gain in wisdom (81)."

"That's the trouble with Plor, and its gloomy consigliere, Theme. They are, in many ways, the enemies of Character, of 'roundness,' insofar as our humanity and its convincing representation are constituted through contradiction, inconsistency, plurality of desire, absence of abstractable message or moral (83)."
(This seemed especially to reference the characters in Alice...)

"Lies, as Philip Pullman knows perfectly well, tell the truth; but the truth they tell may not be that, or not only that, which the liar intends. The secret story he has told is not one about the eternal battle betwen teh forces of idealist fundamentalism and materialist humanism. It is a story about the ways in which adults betray children; how children are forced to pay the price of adult greed; how they are subjected to the programs of adults, to the General Oblation Board. Each of its child protagonists has been abandoned, in different ways, by both of his parents, and while they find no shortage of willing foster parents, ultimately they are betrayed and abandoned by their own bodies, forced into the adult world of compromise and self-discipline and self-sacrifice, or 'oblation,' in a way that Pullman wants us - and may we have the grace - to understand as not only inevitable but, on balance, a good thing.
Still, we can't help experiencing it - as we experience the end of so many wonderful, messy novels - as a thinning, a loss not so much of innocence as of wildness (84)."

Daemon Test

2008-11-23T19:14:00.000-08:00

Fun Loving Soul

Suggested forms: Meerkat, Labrador Retriever, Sea Lion, Lemur

You are an open and social person. When you are left alone you tend to get bored and restless, and too much time without social contact makes you fade away. A good night surrounded by friends and laughter soon perks you back up.

You are trusting and truthful, and you aren't good at hiding your emotions from friends or strangers alike. People need to take you as you are - and often they do. You are confident but not overconfident, sensitive but not touchy. You aren't afraid to give your opinion, or to let someone know when they have offended you, but you don't constantly fly off the handle. You simply want to make your thoughts and feelings known, and you are just as open to hearing others' points of view. Sometimes your friends feel slighted by you, because they aren't as open about their feelings as you are, and so you don't always notice when they are feeling hurt or down.

Your daemon's form would represent your social and emotionally honest nature, as well as your balanced sense of self. He or she would constantly be throwing him or herself into the moment - enjoying the feel of the afternoon wind, the throbbing beat of music in the club, or helping you argue your point.

Class Notes 11/19

2008-11-23T18:25:00.000-08:00

*Pullman calls himself a "stark realist"

*Pg. 281 - Idea of North
- idea as the reality of the thing instead of a geographical understanding
- the imagining of North
- Wallace Stevens The Snowman

*Music of the Spheres
- movements of the celestial bodies create a kind of music
- can be heard, but not until your ears are trained to hear it
- what we think of as inanimate, may be sentient - the dust knows

*Animals
- to transcend your human/animal connection is denying your soul
- Animals, daemons, are inseparable from their humans
- to lose your animal is to lose your anime = soul

*Aliethiometer
- symbols mapped out on Ryan's blog
- you bring you own assumptions to the divining instrument
- Taylor's Mongolia divining bones
- devices as symbols of the way the imagination works
- imagination is a device for connection

Class Notes 11/17

2008-11-23T18:02:00.000-08:00

*Keep a running commentary on Pullman on blogs

*Pullman Pg. 363-370
-Keats' negative capability
- Coleridge "willing suspension of disbelief" vs. Pullman's "willing suspension of certainty"
- we can never be certain of what we have to say

*Lyre = musical instrument that is played by the wind (LYRA - main character of Dark Materials)

*Pg. 364 Mary Malone
- "shadows are collections of particles...you can't see them unless you expect to see them"
- nonsense is a way of cleaning out the system, of making us uncertain
- Mary Malone calls her computer "the cave" - reference to Plato and reality as shadows on the wall

*Pg. 379 - Sunderland
- "the cat Will had seen in Sunderland Avenue"
- has Pullman read/seen Talbot?
- "it is a poor sort of memory that only works one way" - Red Queen in Looking Glass

*Aliethiometer
- lieth - lethe = river of the gods that causes the drinker to forget
- "a-lethe" = taking away the forgotten, remembering (truth)
- I Ching reading of broken and un-broken lines

* 6 Degrees of Separation
- Definition of DUST
- Pullman's list of essential reading includes Wallace Stevens and Glen Gould
- Gould is a Canadian pianist who played Bach's Goldberg Variations in a groundbreaking and pure way - a portal to Bach
- 32 short films about Glen Gould

*the Idea of North
- Katie's blog - Stevens' Autumn
- central metaphor of the trilogy is the Northern Lights
- Northern Lights as the serpent
- Stanza 6 of Stevens - theater floating through the clouds, the cloud transforms
- Northern Lights as a metaphor for consciousness
- "scholar of one candle"

*Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass are all instruments allowing us to use/see imagination

Leaving The Page

2008-11-10T11:31:00.001-08:00

I have recently been searching for images of Alice that somehow leave the page of the book and transform. Metamorphosis or transformation is evident on every page of Alice, and even on every page of our lives. In the art of Su Blackwell, words literally transform and jump off of the page.

Artist Statement:

"Paper has been used for communication since its invention; either between humans or in an attempt to communicate with the spirit world. I employ this delicate, accessible medium and use irreversible, destructive processes to reflect on the precariousness of the world we inhabit and the fragility of our life, dreams and ambitions.

It is the delicacy, the slight feeling of claustrophobia, as if these characters, the landscape have been trapped inside the book all this time and are now suddenly released. A number of the compositions have an urgency about them, the choices made for the cut-out people from the illustrations seem to lean towards people on their way somewhere, about to discover something, or perhaps escaping from something. And the landscapes speak of a bleak mystery, a rising, an awareness of the air."

Here are some examples of her work and a link to her website:

Su Blackwell

Alice, Through the Looking Glass

Alice, Tea Party
The Secret Garden

Peter Pan

The Wizard of Oz

Class Notes 11/5

2008-11-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

*"Every good book is re-readable." - MS

*Sunderland
- Pg. 297
--political diatribe on immigrants
--history of Alice becomes the history of England which becomes the history of the world

*Relationship between:
- history and myth
- dream
- art

*Talbot seems to find a consolation to the decrepitude of age, passing, ephemeral life in Alice
- cycles, re-birth

*Write about your Favorite Alice Chapter

*Ronnie's Blog - "its refreshing to just be"
- does the remembering take away the quality of be-ing?

*Violence in Alice - are these stories for children?
- Apocalyptic - divine world vs. demonic counterpart
- Pg. 290 - our lives are dream-like
-- Shakespeare's Tempest - "we are such stuff as dreams are made of"
- The Worm as the Mythological basis for the lochness moster
- Death of the Venerable Bede - we are here one day and not the next
--A-B-C-D-E-A-T-H (Book and Heart Film)
- Looking Glass is the winter, concerned with the ephemeral, dying, passing

*Alice is immortalized in art
- she becomes a muse only after she is painted or characterized by Carroll

Chuang Tzu, the Butterfly, and Dreams

2008-11-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

*From Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, translated by David Hinton

-"Long ago, a certain Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly - a butterfly fluttering here and there on a whim, happy and carefree, knowing nothing of Chuang Tzu. Then all of a sudden he woke to find that he was, beyond all doubt, Chuang Tzu. Who knows if it was Chuang Tzu dreaming a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming Chuang Tzu? Chuang Tzu and butterfly: clearly there's a difference. This is called the transformation of things.

*From The Essential Chuang Tzu, translated by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton - Chapter 2: All Things Being Equal

-"How am I to know that this life is not merely a delusion? How am I to know that to despise death is not merely to be like one exiled in his youth and who now can find no way home? Beautiful Lady Li was the daughter of a pretty knight Ai. When Chin first got her, she drenched the whole front of her gown with tears. But once she arrived at the palace and shared the emperor's bed and feasted on his fatted calves, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret clinging so ignominiously to life? Who dreams of drinking the wine of luxury may wake weeping in the sunrise. Who dreams of weeping may at dawn take up the hunt. As they dreamed, they didn't know that they were dreaming. Or in the midst of their dreams they may have tried to find an omen in thier dream. Awakened, they knew they'd been dreaming. Now, maybe there's a Great Awakening, after which we know all this has been a Great Big Dream. Fools think they're awake now, having ferreted out the knowledge for themselves, on the sly, that this is so. One a lord; one a shepherd...Oh sure!
Your Master Kung and you are both dreaming. And my saying you're both dreaming is also a dream. The name for all this is the Pitiful Deception. Ten thousand years from now, you may meet with a great sage who will know how to unravel this mystery for you. Or maybe you will this morning. Or this evening."

Class Notes 11/3

2008-11-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

*Read Chris Clark's Blog - Shelley Poetry
- rhapsodic lines about poetry and Bach's suite playing in the background

*Sunderland
- Pg. 28-29
- Wonderland is a world where everyone is mad - Cheshire Cat
- Pg. 206 - "do historical events become myth only if they contain a moral lesson?"
- Vladimir Nabokob is influenced, like Carroll, by the chess game - it appears in every one of his novels
- James Joyce - APL archetype of the female character
- a world of coincidence or Jungian synchronicity
- Pg. 134 - Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly
- The Idiot, Doestoevsky
--"at the very last conscious moment before the fit began, he had time to say to himself clearly and consciously, "Yes, for this moment one might give one's whole life!"

Off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of bOZeman

2008-11-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

The Ruby Slippers of BOZ...

Follow the red brick sidewalks to downtown Bozeman (a far cry from a yellow brick road, but as close as Bozeman will get) and you will find the Wizard...of shoes. Ruby Slippers, a local shoe boutique takes its name from the OZ story. And although a pair of the real ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the movie recently sold for 165, 000 dollars at auction, you can get some pretty fabulous and much less expensive shoes at the downtown Bozeman store.
In this case, 1 Degree of separation is all we need.

For more on the actual shoes in the movie: Ruby Slippers

Class Notes HALLOWEEN 10/31

2008-11-07T11:27:00.001-08:00

*Class started with a lovely showcase of fairy tale characters....

*Book List
- Alice in Wonderland: Norton Critical Edition
- Film titled Dream Child

*Sunderland - boring historical information?
- everything is connected (anagogy)
- the author is aware that he is giving boring historical information
- 6 degrees of separation
--Talbot knows that he can connect the reader to Alice through this wealth of historical information
--each reader of Wonderland and/or Sunderland is connected to Alice in no more than 6 degrees
--How is Bozeman connected to the Wizard of Oz? Or Alice?

*Ben's blog about Raquel's cello piece
- Put drafts of term papers on blogs

* "The most interesting people are never bored." -MS
-transforming power of words

* "Myth is a de-personalized dream and dream is a personalized myth." - Joseph Campbell

*Could literacy be the metaphoric power that changes us from children to adults?

*Sunderland - Pg. 26 - dream logic reigns
- "Alice: the precocious, logical little girl who dreams she falls down a well (in a rabbit hole!) into a bizarre realm where dream logic reigns"

*Tenniel pictures from Alice:

Class Notes 10/29

2008-11-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

* "Life is a handful of moments. Most of us spend the moments we have left indulging in the arts and literature." - Walter Pater The Renaissance

*Papers should be somewhere between 3-100 pages.
*Look at Hannah's images of Alice

* "In the end, it does not come down to morals, but to music." -MS

* "It takes a great deal of history to write a little bit of literature." - Henry James
- Sunderland is at the intersection of history and mythology - the real and the imaginary

*Endings of Tartar
- Sleeping Beauty = everything becomes animated, en-souled (anime = soul)
- Snow White = red hot iron shoes, dancing to death
- Frog Prince = hoops burst from around Faithful Hendrick's chest
- Rapunzel = the healing power of tears
- Rumpelstiltskin = there is magic in a name
(the realm of childhood is a realm of magical words - words have power)
- Jack and the Beanstalk = happily ever after....

Class Notes 10/27

2008-11-07T10:54:00.001-08:00

* Class started with a wonderful production of Bach's Solo Cello Suite #1 by Raquel
- SUBLIME = exaltation, transcendence from the ordinary realm into one in which words are not possible
- literature aspires to music because music doesn't require a question about meaning - you may simply ask what it is

*Alice
- The Matrix and TS Elliot's 4 Quartets are drawn from Alice
- starts with an annoying, didactic poem admonishing children not to be idle, but in Wonderland didactic poems come out all wrong because the psyche of Alice has been changed
- when Alice enters the Portal of the rabbit hole, her very self is changed and so also must the way she sees and remembers the world be changed
- in these words, there are no morals
- see Kayla's blogs on Alice
- satire, cynicism, parody
- Carroll is eviscerating didactic poetry (to disembowel)

*Book and Heart
- "human nature is misplaced concreteness"
- Frye - "literature liberates us into play" (Anatomy of Criticism)
- children's literature goes beyond the cautionary
- the world of children is a world of metaphor, not simile
- "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life." - Oscar Wilde

Curiouser and Curiouser: Term Paper Topic

2008-11-07T10:27:00.001-08:00

So often in Fairy Tales, curiosity is both a bane to the fairy tale character and essential to moving the story forward. Psyche, in Apeleius' story of Cupid and Psyche is a character who cannot escape this compelling need to know. As readers we sense the peril of Psyche indulging her curiosity and yet we cannot help but joining her in her need to understand the world she is living in. Even though she is warned that she cannot see her husband, Psyche must hold up a lamp to see the supposed serpent who climbs into her bed each night. Not only does she indulge her curiosity to see her until-then invisible husband, but she is also entranced by the newly revealed Cupid's sheaf of arrows. And it is this particular curiosity that defines her life. Because at this moment of unflagging curiosity, Psyche (the soul) falls in love with love. Now her quest truly begins, for no one, not even Psyche, can ignore the power of Cupid's arrows. Nor does Psyche's curiosity lessen once she begins her quest to find the lost husband, the beast groom. As Psyche travels to the underworld in the last leg of her quest and obtains a box of beauty, she is again overwhelmed by curiosity. Psyche does not open the box because she needs or wants more beauty. Indeed, her story begins because Psyche's beauty rivals that of the goddess Venus. Instead, Psyche opens the box because she is told not to - because she is too curious about its contents. Psyche is the archetype of the character who is too curious, someone whose story is defined by their desire to understand the world - a desire that is both destructive and essential.

My term paper will start here, with the archetype - but not the original.

Class Notes 10/22

2008-11-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

*Blog Topics for the Term Papers

*Film of Beauty and the Beast from the Criterion Collection
- by Jean Cocteau
- used classical paintings and images for the decorations and placement of actions
- anime = soul, animated
- heavenly choir soundtrack that may seem cliche today
- the portal of the rose

*Tartar - Pg. 80
- Gilbert and Gubar's Madwoman in the Attic

Quiz Questions 10/10

2008-10-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-10-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-10-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

* 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

2008-10-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-10-06T17:24:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-01T20:41:00.000-07:00

*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

Class Notes 9/29

2008-09-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-09-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-09-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-09-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-09-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-09-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-09-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-09-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

*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

2008-09-04T21:02:00.000-07:00