The groves were God's first temples. ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/how-to-find-a-sense-of-ca_n_5844480.html?cps=gravity
Hello, class. How are you? I hope that you have brought essay #3, for it is due today!
Today we have plenty to catch up on. With any luck, we'll get to several posts, "A White Heron" "Son of Satan" and other assigned works, such as "Song of Myself" and "Tintern Abbey."
We will start with the poetry piece for recitation that you were asked to bring for a practice run in the lead-up to the actual recitation by memory week 11. Those who have it will have opportunity to read the piece and earn homework and participation credit. Then we will address "Music of the Spheres," a homework piece also.
The following poem and song has folk roots going back to slave times in America, and the work of abolitionists like John Brown, whose siege of the federal arsonal in support of a slave insurrection at Harper's Ferry, for which he was tried and executed, gave impetus to the American Civil War. It is an excellent piece for recitation! You can hear it sung on youtube.
Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord:
We will start with the poetry piece for recitation that you were asked to bring for a practice run in the lead-up to the actual recitation by memory week 11. Those who have it will have opportunity to read the piece and earn homework and participation credit. Then we will address "Music of the Spheres," a homework piece also.
The following poem and song has folk roots going back to slave times in America, and the work of abolitionists like John Brown, whose siege of the federal arsonal in support of a slave insurrection at Harper's Ferry, for which he was tried and executed, gave impetus to the American Civil War. It is an excellent piece for recitation! You can hear it sung on youtube.
Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath
are stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightning of His terrible swift
sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling
camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the e evening dews and
Damp;,
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring
Lamps.
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery Gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall
Deal;"
Let the Hero born of woman ,crush the serpent with His
heel,
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call
retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment
seat,
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him!
Be jubilant, my feet,
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus* rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton^ blow his wreathed horn.
*In Greek mythology, a sea god who could change his shape at will.
^Another ancient Greek sea god, represented as having the torso of a man and the tail of a fish.
----------------Notes on the Persona, one of Carl Jung's Five Basic Archetypes--------
In dictionaries the word persona is defined as (1) person, and (2) the characters of a drama, novel, etc. It is related to the familiar words personality, personal, personify, personate, and impersonate, each suggestive of the individual identity, and the ways in which that identity is manifest or portrayed–distinctive appearance, behavior, attitudes, voice, etc. In Carl Jung's writings, the Persona–the social face or mask– is an aspect of the totality of Self. It, along with the Shadow, Anima and Animus, coexist in the greater whole. The Shadow/Unconscious Dark elements of Self stand in contrast to the Ego/Conscious Light elements and bear a compensatory relationship to each other. Shadow elements are associated with animal nature, the instincts, that which is wild and uncivilized within us, but which is a source of primal energy, creativity and spontaneity. Anima and animus are aspects of the Soul Image, an archetypal image of the opposite sex which may appear in dreams and fantasies and which is often projected onto others, particularly in the experience of falling in love. The study of archetypes and symbols encourages understanding of how opposites may be transcended or bridged, with the resultant experience being one of wholeness, consciousness and the unconscious melded. The psychic reality is an essential aspect of Jung's thought, and includes even what is strictly "illusory." Inner and outer worlds are perceived in images and the contents of psychic processes and experiences at times personified, as in the figures of gods and goddesses.
The ancient goddess figure called Aphrodite/Venus personified feminine beauty, the bloom of spring, love, and uninhibited, unself-conscious sexuality. Only the virgin goddesses Athena, Artemis, and Hestia were said to be immune from her power (Huffington The God of Greece). She has a heavenly and earthly aspect, a light and a dark side, to which our instinctual desire for love may have acquainted us. She is not to be toyed with. The arrows of her son Cupid (Eros) will magically transform some, and fatally poison others.
Venus at Her Mirror
In the Morning by Steve Kowit (1938- )
In the morning
holding her mirror,
the young woman
touches
her tender
lip with
her finger &
then with
the tip of
her tongue
licks it &
smiles
& admires her
eyes.
Cosmetics Do No Good by Steve Kowit (1938- )
Cosmetics do no good:
no shadow, rouge, mascara, lipstick–
nothing helps.
However artfully I comb my hair,
embellishing my throat & wrists with jewels,
it is no use–there is no
semblance of the beautiful young girl
I was
& long for still.
My loveliness is past,
and no one could be more aware than I am
that coquettishness at this age
only renders me ridiculous.
I know it. Nonetheless,
I primp myself before the glass
like an infatuated schoolgirl
fussing over every detail,
practicing whatever subtlety
may please him.
I cannot help myself.
The God of Passion has his will of me
& I am tossed about
between humiliation & desire,
rectitude & lust,
disintegration & renewal, ruin & salvation.
Response 4 (350 words minimum, due week 7 or 8): Discuss what you find most compelling in recent story, poem or film presented thus far. Refer to specific scenes and images and the ideas and feelings they elicit. You may convey freely your personal associations and /or memories of like experiences in the development. Handout with questions included for film option.
At the following URL is an excellent essay by one well known American best writer on the human-animal relationship in historical and cultural perspective. Animals, Lewis Lapham writes, elude our attempts to define them, even as we push so many to the brink in our "conquest" of the natural world:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lewis-lapham/the-conquest-of-nature_b_2859691.html
In the short video found at the following URL, you can see the power of imagination exemplified in William Blake's lines beginning "To see a world in a grain of sand" magnified by application of modern technology: https://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_hidden_miracles_of_the_natural_world
excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without pre-established harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.
Final Project Composition Description
Due week 10 or, if you must, week 11, the final composition is an individual creative piece of 1000 words length, fictional or non-fictional: poetry, short story, brief play, essay, or some combination of the genres. You might consider rewriting or remaking some well-known story, myth, or fairytale. If you choose to write a short story or other fictional piece and the word count falls short, an introduction to the piece, discussing your creative intent and influences, may serve for any shortfall in the main text. Short stories or fictional works should be plausibly developed and structured to maximize aesthetic and dramatic engagement of the reader.
Original illustrations in whatever medium you choose may be used to enhance the presentation and substitute for any minimal word shortfall (of 200-300 words). Double space and title your piece.
All essays must address themselves to a literary text(s) and/or theme and make reference to particular textual sources. You may write on a theme developed in any one or several of the various texts looked at this quarter. You may choose to write a personal essay that recounts your own “journey,” with references to and/or comparisons to stories or poems read; in short, you may write a piece that illustrates certain literary plot lines or themes in terms of your own personal experience. Double space and title your piece.
If you are writing a standard interpretative essay that focuses on the specific construction and meaning of a text, introduce subject texts by title and author up front. The introductory paragraph(s) should make clear what point you intend to develop as a thesis, and the body paragraphs should set forth the material textual evidence and examples that have led to your thesis claim. Your aim is to show readers how a text may be read in the manner you are claiming. Provide support for your thesis through use of direct quotation, paraphrase and summary where necessary.
Topic Suggestions:
*Explore natural images that provide us with a way of thinking about human feelings and the self, the life cycle from birth through death, the effects of time’s passing, our place in the natural world, what we need and want from life.
*Explore stories that illustrate particular conflicts between generations, as between children and parents, men and women, or between the relatively powerless and those who have power– be it superior physical strength, age, or perhaps the authority of tradition, custom, and law on their side.
*Explore the individual’s search for meaning in the world, or of those characters whose experience is of a kind that seems to offer insight and understanding as regards some particular subject, whether the importance of family, role models, the need for independence, distance, freedom, strength, courage, fortitude, a quiet space to reflect and create, etcetera.
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