The Gospel According to Mark

I heard this piece a little while ago and I highly recommend it,
especially in light of what we are reading for class tomorrow.

"Paul Theroux reads Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Gospel According
to Mark” and discusses Borges with The New Yorker’s fiction editor,
Deborah Treisman. “The Gospel According to Mark” was published in The New
Yorker on October 23, 1971."

It's about 20 minutes long. You should be able to download it to your ipod
or listen to it on your computer. I'd love to talk about it with anyone
who listens to it.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/10/15/071015on_audio_theroux

Confession in "The Aeneid"

I've been meaning to ask this question since our second discussion on "The Aeneid." During Aeneas' tour through the underworld, the Trojan comes across an interesting scene:

"The king of these harsh realms is Rhadamanthus/ the Gnosian: he hears men's crimes and then/ chastises and compels confession for/ those guilts that anyone, rejoicing, hid-/but uselessely-within the world above,/ delaying his atonement till too late,/ beyond the time of death" (Book 6, 749-756).

I'm curious if anyone can commit on this conception of confession in terms of how it would relate to early Christian theology on the subject. I'm not sure when/if confession enters into the New Testament, but I was surprised to see this ritual in Aeschylus' writings. Does it have a Roman parallel?

Sappho's fragment order

Hi guys! Quick question that I thought I'd ask y'all for help with: (yes, that's a dangling preposition, sorry)

How arbitrary is the fragment order of Sappho's poetry? Was it just put together by the translator in this order, or did it appear this way somewhere? There seems to be some order to it, as the last ones have to do more with her death, but since he put titles on the fragments, I don't know what to trust anymore...

-jacqui

Coming Attractions: Comps

Hello Juniors,

I’m writing to you because I remember that last year, Comps was a big, terrifying event looming in April, and what was most scary about it was how very vague it all was. I had no idea what to expect, mainly in terms of the weeks leading up to comps and the three days of the tests themselves. I don’t know if it would have made me less nervous to be able to picture vividly what those days would be like, but it’s worth a shot. So, I’m going to give you as concise a rundown as I can manage.
A disclaimer: please, please, please do NOT start stressing out about Comps now. It is way too early in the year, and we don’t need any ulcers come springtime. This description is meant to quell fears, not encourage them.

OK. You probably know the basics already: upon returning from winter break (or thereabouts), your class will most likely split into several study groups. The groups will decide how they want to go about reviewing the material, and will probably meet once or twice a week throughout February, March, and April. As Comps draws closer, you’ll start looking at previous years’ test questions, maybe doing a dry run a few days beforehand, etc.
The actual days of Comps go something like this:
9AM on the first day, you go to the COL office and each pick up an envelope from Eugenia. Then the seniors will whisk you away to have a lovely home-cooked breakfast. You will schmooze, have some nice food and perhaps some coffee, and then head over to begin work. (You are given thesis carrels, as the seniors will already be done with their theses – yikes. You, of course, can choose not to work in your thesis carrel, but the option is available to you.)
-The questions themselves: depending on your examiners (they are different every year) you will probably have somewhere between 2 and 5 questions. Normally (though your examiners may structure things differently) you will choose 2 of the essay questions and begin figuring out how you want to write your essays. You have 3 hours of actual writing time (that is, 1.5 hours per essay) and the rest of the time should be used for preparing (creating an outline, rereading parts of works that you might want to use, etc) as well as other important activities including eating, taking a break to shower or take a walk or a nap, and sleeping. Once you have finished your 3 hours of writing, you are done for the day! Go home, get some rest, watch a movie, etc.
-This process repeats 2 more times. So, if you receive your first set of questions on Tuesday morning, you will hand those in at 9AM Wednesday morning, get the next set, answer those, turn them in Thursday morning, receive the last set, answer those, and hand them in Friday morning.
-The oral component: once all your essays have been handed in (and you have recovered from the shock/revelry), you will have the oral part of the exam. This happens during reading/finals week, and basically means meeting with the two examiners who wrote the questions. At this point, they have read your essays, and want to talk to you about them. Maybe there was a part they didn’t understand and want you to elaborate on; maybe they loved a section and wanted to hear more about what you thought. It is basically a chance for you to re-explain any parts of your writing that could have used a little more work had you been given more than 1.5 hours to write.

OK. I have talked way too much, as usual. Thanks for slogging through all that. I hope this helps clear up some of what might be worrying you all. I just have 2 more quick things to say, and then I’m going to shut up:
1) I was thinking it might be useful to have an in-person information session with a handful of the seniors and all of you guys to talk about comps, answer questions, give tips, etc. This would probably happen at the very beginning of next semester, if there is general interest.
2) If you have any questions now – if something in this explanation was unclear, or if I forgot to touch on some aspect of Comps that you’re really concerned about, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. You’re welcome to email me (tmatz@wes) and we can even set up a time to talk in person if you’d like. I’m also sure that any and all of the other seniors would be more than willing to talk to you guys. I know these exams can seem a little terrifying, but they can also be really rewarding and often help to solidify your COL experience. And in any case, you’ll feel really, really good once they’re over and done with….

Be well,

Tamar

Greeks and Persuasion

After reading the Oresteia and the first two Platonic dialouges, I'm interested in what exactly Persuasion means (also the difference between Persuasion and persuasion, if there is one). In Timaeus, Plato portrays perusaion as the means by which replicas for the forms are taken to be the form itself. Persuasion can't really do any good in this sense since true intelligence is not affected by it. It has no role but to further cloud an individual's mind.

In the Oresteia, Persuasion has a more dynamic role. In Agamemnon Persuasion is the "maddening child of ruin" (ln. 390). It is destructive in nature. But skip to the end of The Eumenides and Athena says, "I am in glory! Yes, I love Persuasion; she watched my words, she met their wild refusals" (ln. 981). Not Persuasion is constructive and doing good. Not only is Persuasion doing good, but Athena relied on it to counteract the irrationality of the furies. I'm not sure where I'm going with this idea, but it seems like persuasion has now helped Athena to realize justice. It's clearing things up instead of leading people away from the truth. Is this a valid reading? Are they even talking about the same thing?

Plato's idea of "god/gods"

One thing I wanted to bring up in class that we didn't get around to talking about is what exactly is Plato's idea of who or what created the universe.  Does he have an idea of how many of these gods there are?  Because he switches back and forth from using the singular and the plural to refer to god(s).  To me it seemed that he was specifically refering to one god who created the universe, but later he talked about others that exist so to me it was unclear.  Also, the first dialogue we read showed Socrates questioning the existence of multiple gods, but this doesn't affirm a belief in only one god and this also does not necessarily mean that what Socrates is saying is the same as what Plato is saying.  Professor Horst explained that monotheistic religions who like Plato have attempted to baptize him as a monotheist, but that this is a highly debated issue and one without a really clear answer.  Does anyone have any thoughts?

-Emily

Shakespearean Solution

6

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface
In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed:
That use is not forbidden usury
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier be it ten for one:
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,
If ten of thin ten times refigured thee.
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

Sappho, Love vs. war

We talked briefly about Sappho's poem "To Anaktoria" in colloquium, but I don't think we lingered long enough on Kate's point about the comment it may give on the Iliad. That's something to revisit perhaps, in light also of our exploration of the Chorus' viewpoint on the Trojan war in Agamemnon. Does Sappho present the woman's point of view on war? I have a question too about her poem #149, and the sentiment she expresses in the line (more or less) "you helped the house of Atreus, now help me." How are we to read this? A conscious poetic juxtaposition of love and war? Critical? Ironic? None of the above?

Song of Solomon-Narrator

"The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's" (1:1).

How should we interprete Solomon's role in this poem. Is he narrator or is it a tribute to him? The mention of "queens and concubines" approving the female voice would point to a more royal heritage of the characters in the book. I also think it's worth mentioning that Solomon was a king renowned for his wisdom, bolstering the legitimacy of a section of the Bible devoted to pleasures of the heart (be it love for God or a mortal).

Homosexuality in Ancient Greece

In the article "Apostrophe and Women's Erotics in the Poetry of Sappho," Ellen Greene wrote a paragraph about the differences between the roles of female and male homosexual bonds. I think the brief discussion we began of this in class would be greatly aided by the introduction of this text to it.

In her study of the historical and cultural context of homosexuality in ancient Greece, Eva Cantarella (1992) points to a sharp contrast between the social roles of male and female homosexual bonds. The male pederastic model, with its distinct roles of dominance and submission, served as an instrument in the education and political development of young men. Sex between man and boy symbolized the transfusion of political power from the superior older man to his younger beloved (cf. Dover, Foucault 1985). By contrast, although homosexual erotic relations among women may also have had an educational and social role, these relations were not linked to the institutional structures of power as male pederastic relations were. As Cantarella puts it: "But what symbolic and social significance could be attached to the love between women? Sex between women takes place on an equal basis, it does not involve submission, it cannot symbolize the transmission of power (not even the power of generation, the only power held by women)"(83).

In the article, Greene discusses the way Sappho speaks of her beloved, and the way the beloved is often elevated from object to subject. Sometimes the beloved does this through dialog and calls out to Sappho, having a voice and so also a self and the ability to speak. Sometimes also the beloved is the subject of a sentence and so acts, rather than being an object, upon whom or in relation to whom Sappho acts. In fact, in the article, Greene stresses the difference between tradition sexual roles (active v passive) and a kind of sexuality that is specific to sex between two women, where there isn't as defined defined difference between the body which acts and the body which receives.

This doesn't speak at all to the issue of taboo, which we flirted with for a moment in class, but I do think it is an interesting point which we didn't discuss in class.