Obviously I am one of those who doesn't update his blog enough. So, as penance, but with the added self serving function of review, here is a post of all my class notes to date. Caveat: DO NOT come to my blog if you want good, complete, logical, easy to follow, worthwhile notes. I've always been a horrible notetaker. If you want good notes go to Emily's blog. If you feel like sifting through layers of silt to find a tiny gem, get out your screen and shovel because here we go.
From 8/29
Repetition is good
In illo tempore and the power of the originary
mythos=story
use hebrew scriptures, not old testament (we don't want to offend, after all)
From 8/31
For every metaphor of ascent, there is one of descent
From 9/2
Theodicy: the actions of god that don't make sense to man (theo:god dike:justice)
3 Great tragedies: The Brothers Karamazov, Oedipus, and the Book of Job
We inherit the secular worldview of the greeks and the religious of the judeochristian
Theocentric: God Centered. Judeochristian
Anthropocentric: Man centered.
from 9/7
repetitive parallelism
4.kerygmatic (speculative, romantic, metaphorical, mythic, imaginative)
3.Ideological/rhetorical
2.conceptual.
1.descriptive.
Vico understood origins of humanity in poetry and metaphor
that which is true is that which is made. Poesis: Maker
In the beginning was the age of gods and the language spken was hieroglyphic
hiero:sacred or holy glyphic:pictures
gods-hieroglyphic; sacred
heroes-aristocratic; poetic
men-economic; practical
chaos-gibberish of the vulgate
from 9/9
Documentary hypothesis says that as you analyse the bible you find literary signatures which point to multiple authorship.
Torah: law. Pentateuch.
from9/12
talmud:commmentary on scripture
canonical: sanctioned as the official books.
iconoclastic: anti-image, comme biblical trad.
image/break
metempsychosis: the transmigration of souls.
Sources for the Greek story:
Hesiod: theogony-the birth of the gods
Homeric Hymns: collection of poems on the major gods and goddesses of the Greek tradition
Classical Greek playwrights: Sophocles, Euripides, Aesculus, Aristophanes(comedy)
Virgil: The Aenid
Ovid: Metamorphosis
Central events:
Greek: The Trojan War
Hebrew: Exodus
Hebrew:
1) Creation
2) Revolution (exodus)
3)Law (torah)
4)Wisdom
5)Prophesy
Christian:
6)Gospel (good news)
7)apocalypse (unveil)
9/14 - 9/19 I was out of town
From 9/21
PAtriarchs:
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph
Muses: 9 daughters of Mnemosyne (memory)
Freudian: Can remember everything in life, even back to the womb, but repress it.
Jungian: Collective unconscious. You can remember everything that ever happened to everyone; from the beginning.
Leth (gr): truth lit trans:to remember. Lethia:to forget. alethia:unforget; approaching truth.
chaos to Eros to gaia and uranos (who pushed his kids bck into gaia) to cronos ( who ate his kids) and rhea to Zeus who devours Metis (wisdom) and gives birth paternally to Athena to break the cycle. And was advised not to 'lay with' Thetis.
Dios Pitar (sanskrit God of Day)-Zeus-Deus-Diety
Age of Cronos=age of anarchy, humans dissatisfied, Prometheus (pro-matis, forethought, representing man in the face of gods) helps. nature is also dissatisfied. Around 3000 BCE cmoes the event which occasioned the primordial battle (of which thunder is a vestige).
From 9/23
Sacrifice. Make sacred... Hiero/gamy sacred marriage
ONe facet of PRometheus: he knew who was to opverthrow Zeus, but wouldn't tell.
Yeats: Every two thousand years or so a bird knocks up a lady and starts a new cycle of history.
Leda raped by Zeus 2 eggs Dioscuri from one (Castor and Pollox) Helen (Menelaus) and Clytemnestra (Agamemnon) from the other.
Pelops son of (and cooked by) Tantalus eventually spawns Menelaus and Agamemnon.
From 9/26
Tantalus is the guy in the underworld who is eternally hungry and thirsty.
Ixion is eternally crucified on a wheel.
Tantalus cooks Pelops who becomes the dad of Atreus and Thyestes. Thyestes seduces Atreus' wife. Atreus cooks Thyestes' kids, except Aegithus who has Agamemnon and Menelaus. Agamemnon has Iphigenia, Electra, and Orestes
1st stage: Conviviality
2nd stage: rape (possesing and possesion)
3rd stage: indifference (powerless gods)
Thyestes curses the house of Atreus after he finds out he ate his own kids.
Parallel this with original sin and God's cursing the whole of humanity.
Paris abducts Helen from Menelaus, who goes to Agamemnon and says 'lets go get her' winds won't blow, sacrifices Iphigenia by ruse, in Euripedes' play she asks to look back on the light one last time, winds blow, 10 yrs war, Troy falls, Hecuba and the corpse of hectors son, Agamemnon gets Cassandra (who has prophetic gift but no one believes because she broke a pact with Apollo), Greeks get home, Helen shows Menelaus her thingies so he won't kill her, helen deals drugs, Agamemnon comes home, CLytemnestra kills him....
From 9/28
Frye : All literature is a displacement of myth (Pale Rider e.g.)
Legal system comes from Orestaia
Auerbach: Mimesis (imitataion) Representation of realiy in western lit.
Lacunae: gap, hole
Homeric Greeks: Life is fleeting so everything is uniformly illuminated hence the backinfo in THe iliad and Odyssey like Odysseus' scar.
Bible: only the impoirtant parts are illuminated.
Homer can be analysed but not interpreted because everything is deja la.
Joseph and his generation died. Israelites multiply, Pharoh oppresses, kills all the male children, one women hides her son in a basket, Pharoh's daughter finds him, Moses thinks he's Egyptian, sees an egyptian mistreatinga hebrew, kills the egyptian, flees, takes refuge with Jethro, god calls him, says go back to egypt and tell the pharoh to let my people go, plagues, escapes, red sea parts, Ima gonna lead you to the promised land, 40 years, commandments, moses dies on top of a mountain fulfilling the mythological hero structure.
YHWH: IamwhatIam. Popeye too.
Portashrine: tabernacle housed in the arc of the covenant.
9/30 I was otherwise negaged
From 10/3
Joseph and his brothers
Abraham-Isaac-Jacob(wrestles divine personage who changes his name to Israel)-Joseph
Joseph=tattletale and 'prig' The dreams.
Shaol: akin to Hades in Gr. Trad. Not punishment, but nonexistance.
Thos. Mann fills in Lacunae in Judah story.
Duty of brother in law is to impregnate his brother's wife (assuming death of bro).
book: "The Harlot on the Side of the Road"
temple prostitue from Hebrew sacred woman.
Joseph was handsome AND goodlooking. Repetetive parralelism
AT THE LIBRARY: Joseph and Potifaris wife; an anthology of stories from ancient times
Euripides 'Phaedra'
Sparagmos: Rending or Tearing of live flesh.
Educated imagination: not to reveal things until the right moment.
FRom 10/5 guest lecture Linda Sexson
women:societal designation; female:biological designation.
distinguish between women and feminine. Women are in society, feminine is in literature and symbolic.
Levites Concubine: Odd having man without name but common for women in bible.
Book: Mieke Bal "death and Dyssymetry". (r.e. booke of Judges)
patrilocal (wife at her dad's) virilocal (wife goes with husband)
city dwellers want to treat Levite like a woman, so woman becomes a social condition.
MOST MEN ARE WOMEN IN A PATRIARCHY
prralel Levite with sodom and gomorrah. Disparage the other sexually, in terms of the feminine. Moabites descend from drunken incest, Benjaminites like sodomy.
Hospitality is key. (to men)
Song of Deborah. Judges 5 possibly oldest writing in Hebrew bible. Deborah is a judge (someone with the capacity to know the will of God). A mediator god to tribe.
Whatever is smost sacred is sent into battle (little girl of beduin, now Koran) woman in battle tells of mens cowardice, and thus inspires through fear of shame.
Judges5: 1part: Should we go to war? Yep. I'll go if you go. I'll go.
2part: Jael. Woman with own tent on Hebrew side. Sisera asks for water. She invites him in, feeds him curds, he passes out, Jael takes tent peg and drives it ino his head. Reverse rape imagery.
3part: MOther of Sisera looks out latticed window, asks where's my son? wise women say he'll be home soon with spoils of dye stuff.
Spoils: stuff and a vagina or two for every man. (Hebrew: woman reduced to body part)
feminine=prime metaphor for understanding reality. Patriarchal story can't be told without these ambiguous feminine metaphors.
HJacob works 7 years for rachel, gets leah oinstead, 7 mor for LEah, Laban keeps changing his wages, let's go, shhh, laban finds daughters, grandkids, flock, teraphim gone.
From 10/7
Song of Debvorah and laughter. Tradition of exclusivism. Canaanites are living inn Palestine where land has been pomised away (according to this trad)
Devotional reading seeks to harmonize from the point of view of the modern reader.
teraphium may have been associated with fertility, could have been preliterate contracts, deeds... Regardless, stealing of teraphim is funny.
Decalogue: 1st bit is religious, indicates struggle with monotheism. 2nd bit is social. Worship divine not through sacrifice, worship thhrough good behavior, justice, righteousness.
Book: "Homer's Daughter" by Robert Graves.
bit about taking Lords name in vain means don't utter casually the sacred name of YHWH, only cerimonially.
Torah, story of fathers, is 1000 years of text.
Hebrews: Patriarch stories, nomadic
Israelites, settlement (postmoses to judges), Kingship (c.1000 BCE) N. kingdom Israel say Elohim, out by 721 BCE, S kingdom Judah YHWH lasts until 586 BCE
Jews: Exile (540 BCE Cyrus the Persian).
950-850 BCE 1st collection of Torah stories.
E&J difference in Isaac's birth. E:abe falls on his face and laughs. J:sarah laugjhs behind the tent.
Will of YHWH done through treachery of younger sons and women.
from 10/10
YHWH as trixter.
synechdoche: part for whole
Shamed into doing this big ejournal post. Will make efforts to post regularly like a good kid.
