3/28/13

Aristotle

     I must say that this was hard to understand while reading. I believe he means that happiness is not just a state of mind, but a person is only happy when they are doing positive things to make them happy. I myself don't agree with him, I believe happiness is a state of mind. I believe you can do good activities and still not be happy. You mus have happiness in a state of mind in order for you to be truly happy. Here is what he believes is the happy man,

Telescope

     "For no function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities (these are thought to be more durable even than knowledge of the sciences), and of these themselves the most valuable are more durable because those who are happy spend their life most readily and most continuously in these; for this seems to be the reason why we do not forget them."
     I believe the happy man is a person who is happy not matter his situation, someone who loves and enjoys life. I believe Sheryl's song is and Aristotelian because it seems like no matter what happens, the person will be happy.

3/26/13

Joseph
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images
/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/07/07/joseph460.jpg

     Joseph is considered an epic hero due to his wisdom and faith in God. Without these two things, he would not have been able to save his father’s people and all of Egypt from the seven years of drought.  If he hadn’t have been faithful to God, God wouldn’t have used him to provide the wisdom in order to save Egypt. Joseph, however, was blessed with the wisdom to interpret dreams by God already. The bad thing was that his brothers sold him due to jealousy, but he still stayed faithful to God and God blessed them. Even when he is tempted by Potiphar’s wife he remains faithful to God. When he is thrown in jail, he may be at a low point, but he still keeps his faith in God. Finally, when he is brought to Pharaoh due to his remaining faith he is blessed by God, who makes is possible for him to save Egypt.

     I don’t think this is the first time she has done this. I always wondered what happened to his other servant who ran the house before. I believe she did the same with him, but he actually went with it. I believe that if he had fallen to her, he would have been killed or God would have taken his gift away. All the lives of Egypt and his father’s people are saved due to his choices and actions.

     I believe that God helped Joseph become a trusting person, but his choices and fear of God are what shape him into the man he becomes. Yes, I believe God helped him become the trusting man he was. He uses his gifts very wisely at the end, but not at first. A politician nowadays would use it unwisely like he did and first and end up getting in trouble. I mean he was basically seeing the future through the dreams so if a politician saw that he would probably try to change it or brag about it.  

3/14/13

Van Helsing Werewolf

Medieval Man

     A Breton lay is a fairy tale of the Medieval times. Much like our fair tales today, they had to do with witches, demons, fairies, etc. This particular fairy tale is about a werewolf, which is still an iconic creature in many fairy tales and monster movies of today. The author, Marie de France, was a woman, which wasn't a common occurrence of the day since women were treated as property rather than people. Women were in no way equal to men in Medieval times. According to the introductory material, the clothes don't always make the man. In the world of beasts, man is the only beast that covers up their nakedness with clothes, which is why whenever he becomes a man again, he has to have his clothes. I myself am not too familiar with the Harry Potter series, but I believe that it shows the importance of clothes just like this story whenever two of the characters transform into a werewolf and a grim, a dog-like creature. When they are the beasts, they are naked, but whenever they are the men they are clothed.  It shows the difference between a beast and a man.

Harry Potter Grim

     What is beast? What is human? Both of these questions are shown greatly in this Breton lay. We have a man who turns into a beast, betrayed by his wife, and taken in by the king. We have a knight who along with the wife prevent the man from becoming human again. This question really comes down to what aspects of man make a man man. From the good side of man, the beast of our story is more of a human being, but from the bad side of man,  the wife and knight are more human. Both good and bad qualities make up a man, so it is hard to say which one shows humankind more. Although if I must choose, I think man is ultimately good so in this case the werewolf is more of a man than the knight and wife. He is open and honest. An example is when he finally tells his wife the truth and even when he is before the king he attacks the knight and wife.The other two are deceitful. An example of this is when she finally gets him to tell her and then decides to betray him by stealing the clothes. This is why i would view the beast as more human than the other two.

Harry Potter Werewolf

Bisclavret

     I believe the significance of her nose is to show just how ugly she really was on the inside. As humans, noses can make you beautiful or ugly, which explains why people nowadays have plastic surgery to fix certain parts of their bodies like their nose. It was a sign of beauty. Since she no longer had her nose, it showed her as ugly. This is what I though about it.
     I must say that reading this story reminded me greatly of Samson and Delilah. In the Biblical story, Delilah does just what his wife did to him in Bisclavret. She nags him until he finally tells her his secret and the details of it. I must say, I believe Marie de France must have read the story of Samson when she wrote this because both stories are really similar. All in all I enjoyed reading this fairy tale. As you can tell from the pictures, I like werewolves.

3/7/13

     I believe she changes the story in order to make men not look as good and honorable as they did in The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell. In the original, the king is the one that must find the answer in order to be spared by another knight, who wants to kill him because one of his knights has ruined his life. In The Wife of Bath's Tale, a knight is on trial for raping a woman in the kingdom, and he must find the answer for the queen instead of the king. I believe she puts the queen in charge as a sign of women's sovereignty. She makes the knight's crime rape, which shows more sensitivity to women.

Chaucer
http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography
/Images/Profiles/C/Geoffrey-Chaucer-9245691-1-402.jpg

     In The Wife of Bath's Tale, the woman has "pillow talk" with the knight in which she wants to know why he is so gloom. He tells her that her ugliness and lack of nobility is upsetting to him, since in this time it was more of a "who your daddy was" that defined you. She comes out and tells him that true gentility isn't about that, but really about how you live. It is who you are, not who your dad is. I believe this matters to the Wife of Bath because to her many may look down on her since she has been married so much. I also believe it is because she wants people to remember her for her, not for who are dad or husbands were.
     First off, I wanna say that I really didn't understand the retraction. I searched the web, but couldn't find an answer that I saw fit, but I went back and read it again and this is what I came up with. I believe he is saying that things we read or see in life may not always be things we like, but we really cannot control them. Chaucer was just telling us that he didn't mean to offend anyone with his writings. I do not think he is taking anything back. I believe he is just saying sorry if it offended someone, because he didn't mean to offend them.
     I believe that Chaucer didn't really like the Roman Catholic Church. His characters like the friar, nun, and other religious figures are all in some form corrupt like the Cardinal from The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster). He may have been pressured by the church to write the retraction, in which case he apologized for the stories about the corrupt church leaders. However, he really never took anything back, he just told people that there are things that are good and some that are not. Either way he still proved his point.

3/5/13

     First, I must say that I really don't like her character from the reading. To me, she sounds like a gold digger and a "insert bad word here". She uses sex to control her first three husbands. The fourth one could control himself. She also married them for their money, gold digger. The last one she married for love so he was a different case.

Wife of Bath (http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/wife.gif)

     When she begins to speak about marriage and laws of marriage she decides that the Medieval Church is wrong on its view of marriage. She uses the Old Testament as a way to help prove her point on their first fallacy. She uses Solomon as her main example of this. Solomon was the wisest king in history according to the bible, besides Jesus. Yet, he had more wives than any other man in history. She uses him as an example against the church saying that one should only be married once. 
     The second fallacy that I noticed that she uses is when God told man and the animals to be fruitful and multiply. She takes this to an extreme in my opinion. She thinks it as if man is like a beast and should be able to multiply with as many partners as they see fit. Only those who are to be perfect like Jesus should not be allowed to do this.
     I believe that she would really like the song, Maneater by Daryl Hall and John Oates. This song in my opinion describes her completely. The woman goes through man after man taking what they have and is not effected by the men at all, just like she did with her first four husbands. They may have even written this song after reading her prologue, just kidding. The song just describes how the maneater is watching her prey and learning how to manipulate the man, like she used sex to manipulate her first three husbands. I believe that she would like the song simply because it is about herself. In my opinion she seems very stuck on herself.
      Maneater http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRYFKcMa_Ek

She'll only come out at night
The lean and hungry type
Nothing is new, I've seen her here before
Watching and waiting
Ooh, she's sittin' with you but her eyes are on the door
So many have paid to see
What you think you're gettin' for free
The woman is wild, a she-cat tamed by the purr of a Jaguar
Money's the matter
If you're in it for love, you ain't gonna get too far
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Watch out boy she'll chew you up
(Oh-oh, here she comes) She's a maneater
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Watch out boy she'll chew you up
(Oh-oh, here she comes) She's a maneater
I wouldn't if I were you
I know what she can do
She's deadly man, she could really rip your world apart
Mind over matter
Ooh, the beauty is there but a beast is in the heart
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Watch out boy she'll chew you up
(Oh-oh, here she comes) She's a maneater
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Watch out boy she'll chew you up
(Oh-oh, here she comes) She's a maneater
------ saxophone ------
Ooh,
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Here she comes, Watch out boy she'll chew you
up
(Whoa-oh, here she comes. Watch out) She's a maneater
(Oh-oh, here she comes. She's a maneater) Ooh, she'll chew you up
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Here she comes, she's a maneater
(Oh-oh, here she comes. Watch out) She'll only come out at night, ooh
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Here she comes, she's a maneater
(Oh-oh, here she comes. She's a maneater) The woman is wild, woo
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Here she comes. Watch out boy, watch out boy
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Oh, watch out, watch out, watch out, watch
out
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Yeah, yeah, she's a maneater
(Oh-oh, here she comes. She's a maneater) She's watching and waiting,
ooh
(Oh-oh, here she comes) Oh, she's a maneater
Lyrics from <a href="http://www.elyrics.net">eLyrics.net</a>