Wednesday May 2

Individual Presentations 4:

Ross Jenson:

• Symposium: The immortal presence of Socrates
• Socrates goal: attain greater knowledge and virtue
• all we know about him is through other people, so it is questionable if we really know anything about him at all
• Recipe for Socrates:
• 1 cup Plato
• 1 tbs Aristotle
• 1 tsp Xenophon
• a pinch of Aristophanes
• all to be taken with a grain of salt
• a contemporary illusion: Braveheart~ William Wallace
• brave
• pious
• influential
• leaders
• died for a greater cause
• Socrates death at court: he was accused of corrupting the youth and was sentenced to death by Hemlock

Sarah Flemming:

• women abducted:

1. Persephone
2. Europa
3. Psyche
4. Agave
5. Herself- marriage

Doug Fejes:

• Pythagoras from Metamorphoses
• not transformed physically like the others, but transforms the readers
• capstone of what Ovid was saying
• showed what man could hope to be someday
• was a parallel between the darkness of the rest of the stories, and Pythagoras
• Framed speech:

1. vegetarians
2. reflects on the themes in Ovid:

• physical changes of the human body
• physical changes of the elements
• where life comes from, and how it circles back around
• vegetarians (a lot of the same ideas are held by PETA members, and vegetarians today)

Katie Crystal:

• how her life (present) possesses the past
• connect stories from the world with her own life
• Bacchus: shares the same morals (peace, love, etc.)
• Athena: Daddy's girl
• Demeter: her mom and Montana is Hades
• Europa: taken away from her father by Montana
• wants to be a teacher: tells her stories to children, so they will tell theirs too

Tyler Engel:

• "love will tear us apart"
• love destroys boundaries
• Antigone: loses her brother, and wants to join him in the underworld
• Lysistrata: destroys boundaries~ dresses the man as a woman, and helps men realize that they need women
• egoism destroys love because it doesn't want to be sparagmosed
• rape: unfortunate to have a pretty face in Ovid, ruins what should be sacred
• 2 types of love: 1) love and 2) desire
• Lucius shows us how to properly love- same morals as Diotema
• though voluntary death you become something else bigger and better

Carly Parelius:

• collective unconscious
• something that you read/hear that speaks directly to you
• exists prior to the experience
• 'reservoir of the experience of our species' ~ Carl Jung
• 'all things change, but never die' ~ Ovid
• timeless mythologies
• Synchronicity: Carl Jung

Dustin Cichosz:

• past possesses the present
• wrote a creative story about his experiences from last Sat
• everything he did connected to stories that we have read
• he was 'wasted' like Bacchus
• Lysistrata: his roommate being controlled by his girlfriend
• Dionysus: drinking a lot
• Golden Ass: did stupid things
• Hermes: wasn't his fault because he was under the influence of Dionysus
• Symposium: talked to his roommate about love
• everything that he experienced had happened before

Cassi Clampitt:

• was inspired by my being 'mental impaired' by Zeus
• the many rapes of Zeus and their children:

1. Alcmene
2. Danae
3. Europa
4. Naiad
5. Semele (was willing)
6. Ganymede
7. Leto
8. Callisto
9. Io
10. Leda

• 150 total
• moral: gods can do whatever they want

Monday April 30

Individual Presentations 3:

Luke Klompien:

• counter argument for the men in Lysistrata
• men love power and sex
• he found nothing tangible
• he found that the reason that women need men is for security
• statistic: more people have been in love than have belly buttons, have been intoxicated, and wear underwear
• "I shall have life" all the pain that we go through is worth it because we learn something
• "If you do something good for your mind, your body and for someone else you will be good" ~ the man at the bank

Ashley Kirchhof:

• "The Homeric Hymn to Demeter"
• about the Eleusinian Mysteries- women's initiation rights
• "A women born" by Adrien Rich
• female quests are defined by fertility
• it shows the symbolic death and rebirth of women
• all of us have both the male and female quests

Melissa Kelsy:

• about scapegoats
• culture fascinated by scapegoating people
• amazon: 39,000 books about this
• 3.4 million hits on Google
• image: faces on the goat
• "scapegoats are more welcome than a solution"
• 5 ways to avoid being a scapegoat:

1. avoid being the new guy in town
2. be on time and attend everything
3. avoid taking the winning shot- fake an injury
4. avoid being different in any way
5. be well liked or blame someone else

Brian Judge:

• scapegoats
• inability to take responsibility
• biblical- Leviticus- tell it their sins and push it off a cliff
• Emperor Nero: set Rome on fire~ blame the emperor, who blamed a religious group
• pick a person to blame and brings everyone together (unifying)
• past possessing the present- happened then and now

Alex Johnson:

• 5 Antigone conflicts in the top 100 movies:

1. individual and society: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
2. old and young: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
3. men and women: My Fair Lady
4. living and the dead: Frankenstein
5. men and gods: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Danielle Heinle:

• the triple goddess
• compared it to her grandma, mom and herself
• viewed as 3 separate women, or 1 being that has 3 aspects
• pagans believe that the triple goddess is very high up and important

John Horner:

• science fiction as an extension of mythology
• Frank Herbert's Dune: Paul Atreides as Tiresias because he can see the future
• main problem is that when you know the future you are trapped by it
• primary difference- there are gods and goddesses
• superman is a mythical hero

Sereta Heser:

• The Doors and Jim Morrison and Dionysus
• named after 'The Doors of Perceptions' ~ Aldous Huxley
• 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' ~William Blake
• 'The End' song from Oedipus
• he created a frenzy with the women
• to become a classic you must invoke the classics

books to look up:

'The White Goddess' by Robert Graves

'The Scapegoat' by Rene Girard

Friday April 27

Individual Presentations 2:

Emily Lewis:

• muses and herself
• Terpsichore, the dance muse
• from the Homeric Hymns

Daniel Prill:

• Daedalus and Icarus
• redemptive powers of art
• the labyrinth and flight
• 'carry on our wayward sons' a Canvas song based on Daedalus and Icarus

Jared Porter:

• Calvin and Hobbes and the 5 conflicts in Antigone
• men and women: Susy Jerkin
• old and young: he always fights with his parents
• individual and society: he feels forced to go to school and learn
• man and god: he has no strong faith, but he has a personal relationship to God because he pretends that he is god
• living and the dead: the raccoon incident showed how sensitive he really is. Was very upset when it got sick and died

John Orsi:

• Metamorphoses and daily life
• Perseus, Andromeda and Atlas
• didn't need Atlas because his love for Andromeda was enough
• search for something that they had to have (ex- Pilgrims and the Indians)
• when they find true love, they stop searching

John Nay:

• Metamorphoses of Holden Coffer from Catcher in the Rye
• also 5 conflicts:
• individual and society: goes against 'phonies'
• living and the dead: brother passed away and haunts him
• old and young: he hates the world and the old ways, wants to save the children
• men and women: summer hookup makes him crazy
• man and god: his loss of faith and the way he holds onto his idealistic outlook of what the world could be

Will Mezharich:

• immortality and storytelling
• classic authors are still alive today because of their stories
• "the story is immortalized, and the author is riding the coat tails'
• told a story about how the way to immortality is to tell a story

Mick Leslie:

• sequence of events based on the past, showed him that the past effects the present
• 'Walkabout' by James Vance Marshal
• a 'walkabout' is a walk to gain knowledge
• coincidence is actually providence
• 'Songlines' by Bruce Chatmin talks about 'walkabouts' "I'm singing up the land boss"

Wednesday April 25

Individual Presentations 1:

Alison Zobel:

• 'can't touch this: nether regions 101'
• Lysistrata- reversal of men and women
• the refusal of sex

Chase Wright:

• Dionysus and Jesus Christ
• both martyred and then reborn
• D is a dead religion, while JC is modern
• both fathered by the Kingdom of Heaven and mothered by a human
• both turned water into wine
• both have rituals where you eat the flesh and drink the blood (or wine)

Hannah Vidrich:

• Lysistrata and real examples
• women compared to: 1) a dog, 2) sea, 3) a bee

Brittany Taylor:

• story by her grandma 'Nana'
• the story was about misbehaving and breaking the rules, which is what all of the people in our books did
• this is a way to create stories

Meagan Thale:

• love is intertwined in each story- especially with the women
• their reactions
• love is confusion
• poem 'She is found' by Elsa Giblow

Jesse Stolba:

• skit about a mommy and her son

Jan Sprizziri:

• Dionysus and Virginia Tech shooting
• he created a video on u-tube which was like D's speech at the end of The Bacchae

Me:

• women's roles in the texts and contemporary comparisons:
• Lysistrata= Rosie the Riveter
• Agave= a sheep
• Europa and Arachne= themselves
• Psyche= Jessica Simpson
• Diotema= Grandmother Willow
• Antigone= Lara Croft

Barbra Ralston:

• told a frame story about the myths found in her life

Monday April 23

Group 5:

Agon Support Group:

• Tiresias
• Philomela
• Daedalus
• Antigone
• Agave
• Creon

key ideas:

• a sly stichomythia
• they needed the scapegoat for the group to exist

question:

What was the most important aspect of the group?

answer:

the notion of the scapegoat

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Group 6:

• the 5 conflicts from Antigone and how they work today

1. living and the dead: the 'Marley and Marley' song from Muppet's Christmas Carol
2. Women and men: first date and mindsets of men and woman (with Cosmo and Maxim)
3. individual and society: Urtle the Turtle
4. man vs god: court case about the man in trapped in the garage
5. old vs young: the 'iceberg metaphor' from Big Fish

Friday April 20

Group 3:

Cast of characters:

• Tiresias
• Demeter
• Hermes
• Creon
• Dionysus
• Arachne
• Aphrodite
• Antigone
• Steiner

pres:

• mortal vs immortal
• Midas and Antigone= Asses ears
• you can't tell the truth, you must show it
• the stories came from Shakespeare (12th Night, Macbeth, Mick and Tiresias)
• it was a frame story
• Steiner had ate with Antigone

question:

What was Antigone's secret?

answer:

joy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Group 4:

Ovid's Metamorphoses revisited, with the stories of:

• Daedalus and Icarus
• Phaethon
• Galatea and Acis
• Iphis and Ianthe
• Rape of Europa

question:

Who was Stromboli?

answer:

Daedalus

Wednesday April 18

Group 1:

• Zeus
• Dionysus
• Semele
• classical song at the beginning about Persephone and Demeter

question:

What did Bush die from?

answer:

high heals

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Group 2:

• Bush and the drinking law (Antigone)

question:

What was the stichomythia about?

answer:

the best rock concert ever

question 2:

What was on the cheese grater?

answer 2:

a lioness (like from Lysistrata)

Monday April 16

Demeter and Persephone: we end where we begin

T. S. Elliot: The 4 Quartets:

1) Burnt Norton
2) East Coker
3) The Dry Salvages
4) Little Gidding

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time" ~Stanza 10 of Little Gidding

In the Meta you end up where you started, but are in a different place. Like Dorothy with Kansas and Oz

Lucius has to eat roses to transform: "... and the fire and the rose are one"

"I'm sorry but you are all asses, and you all need to be transformed" ~ Dr. Sexson

1 Corinthians 15: 52- "we shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye"

Wallace Stevens transformed religion: "To believe in a fiction that you know to be fiction and there being nothing else."

"The great goddess" with many functions

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" ~ King Henry VI, part II

Joyce had to beat Shakespeare, who had to beat Ovid, so Joyce really had to beat Ovid

It took Shakespeare 36 plays to beat Ovid

Aros and Psyche is the best version of a woman's psychology

psyche = the soul

This is the Ulysses butterfly!

CUPID AND PSYCHE:

• falling in love with love
• then Cupid runs home to mommy when he gets an owy
• mommy makes it all better
• he leaves Psyche pregnant and barefoot
• Cupid is a displacement of the Greek god Eros- who was strong and powerful
• The fulfill her tasks she has to get her wings and develop her soul
• she got revenge on her sisters though, although she is Innocent
• she made them think that Cupid wanted them, and told him that the wind would 'wafe' them down the hill like she did, but they fall to their deaths
• Cupid:
• allegory: can't help it because the names of the characters mean what they represent: soul and love
• Hans My Hedgehog: the Storyteller
• Mother's in law: critical, and demanding for their son

Psyche's tasks:

1. separate wheat barley, etc pg 132


2. get the sheep's wool pg 134


3. get the water pg 135


4. get the box of beauty from Persephone in the underworld pg 137

Persephone:

• likes it in the underworld because of the power that she has there
• Psyche has to follow specific and direct instructions to get to Persephone
• the story to get to the underworld reminds you of the major story
• Lucius has to go through his trial in order to transform into what they had to be

WARNING:

• when a fairy tale tells you "don't do it" they always do
• you have to disobey to get a moral, there is no story if you obey
• you need to do the thing that you should not do because you were supposed to
• this reminded me of the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter

• Psyche opened the box because she was supposed to
• Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty fell into a deep sleep and had to be rescued by their Prince
• it wasn't Zeus's fault that he was a man whore because he had been stung by the arrow of love - HA!
• voluptuous= pleasure
• "Every man you ever slept with is a man in transformation" ~ Dr. Sexson
• Bestiality= disturbing

Wednesday April 11

THE MORALS OF OVID:

1. shit happens
2. things change

"All life is suffering"


Robert Graves


T.E. Lawrence: from 'Lawrence of Arabia'


CUPID AND PSYCHE:

• Mister Ed~ Mickey Rooney
• Bottom's ears= Lucius
• visualized western culture
• 'The Oldest Love Stories in the World' ~ book
• Psyche thought she would see a beast, but she saw the most beautiful man in the world instead
• like in these fairy tales:

• 1942 version of La Belle et La Bete by Jean Cocteau
• "Lend me your ear, you generations of readers" - Apuleius
• the moral of the story is the experience of the story its self
• The Tempest= Medea
• "What seest thou in the dark abyss of time..." ~ Prospero
• "All heroes are fools" ~ Dr. Sexson
• stories within Lucius: Arachne's victims, slave economy of ancient times, beasts of burden story of the ass
• Ass- both the lowest and the highest of animals
• Ass= the Bishop
• "That which is at the bottom is at the top"
• is a story about your eventual transformation/metamorphoses into initiation
• Isis: mysterious initiation
• is definitely and frame story: told by a bandit lady to the captive woman, and then retold by Lucius
• Fred Astaire: "He can't act, can't sing, but he can dance a little"
• "the power of laughter"
• like The Game with Michael Douglas
• Venus is like Jane Fonda in Monster in Law
• "but not by the shell she starts, archaic by the sea" ~ Wallace Stevens
• 'Amore and Psyche' by a Yung Scholar
• the verdict on marriage is not pretty because it is all about rape and abduction
• women go through the 'male tasks' and trials
• moral: 'Don't look back" Actaeon, and Orpheus especially
• "All weddings are funerals"
• falling in love with love reminded me of a song from the movie Cinderella with Brandi:

FALLING IN LOVE WITH LOVE

Falling in love with love is falling for make believe

Falling in love with love is playing a fool

Caring too much is such a juvenile fancy

Learning to trust is just for children in school

I fell in love with love one night when the moon was full

I wasn't wise with eyes unable to see

I fell in love with love with love everlasting

But love fell out with me

Falling in love with love is falling for make believe

Falling in love with love is playing a fool

Caring too much is such a juvenile fancy

Learning to trust is just for children in school

I fell in love with love one night when the moon was full

I wasn't wise with eyes unable to see

I fell in love with love with love everlasting

She fell in love with love with love everlasting

But love fell out with me