stepping stones to wisdom

Here is a picture of my "Alice in Wonderland" I felt so connected to the Tartar book of fairytales, a feeling that you get from a book that delights and lets you in on all the minute details that may or may not matter to the book as a whole is nice, they are there for the taking yet aren't an integral part to the story; they remind me of the Tidbits. The Tidbits is a news column that has little 'tidbits' of information in them which is why, in the end I decided to buy The Annotated Alice. This fascination with tidbits, small facts of such minute information how could they hardly help or be interesting? Well I will tell you... they seem to open up your mind to endless possibilities. I feel myself scanning over them after I have read and interpreted a passage in whatever way my mind put the pieces together and the tidbits are almost a stepping stone to keep my thoughts, my ideas moving, sometimes they help and sometimes they hinder. These 'stepping stones' also remind me of Alice In Sunderland. Yet I have only made it a few short pages into this book it feels to take the same structure as this idea of 'stepping stones.' Except with Sunderland the 'stepping stones' are right in the text, no sidebar needed. It is like the idea of six degrees of seperation where the degrees are plotted for us and all it takes on our part are the 'steps.'

My Book and Heart Shall Never Part response

The most interesting thing of My Book and Heart Shall never Part for me was the cap the small child was made to wear that had a message on each of the three sides; one side said "It is fifty to one but you are," another said " I'll consider it," and the last said "I may be wrong." These sayings, usually put on a type of thinking cap was most notably written down in The History of Little Goody Two Shoes which is why it seems so relevent to the class. A cap and saying like this was eluded to in some Sherlock Holmes books I used to read as a child where Sherlock would settle down in his smoking jacket to consider difficult 'three-pipe' problems. It is fascinating to see a connection like this, where in my child hood I used to religiously read all of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, I grow up to settle them in the back of my mind to collect dust, I take a class involved with children's literature wherein the professor of this course makes a movie that has a cap that Sherlock Holmes used or was used as a type of model for his and other peoples ways of figuring out problems.

notes for October 27th

Notes:
-chello music
--the serenity of music and how this serenity is often used as the music during the playing time. What types of music were used in the play of fairy tales?
-where words are impossible to describe?
=what world...
=What did she mean by that? Absolutely nothing, its music...

-Isaac Watts How doth the busy little bee
^-"Idleness was the devil's playground"
-- "How doth the Little Bee" is one of Isaac Watts's didactic poems for children that Lewis Carroll parodies in Alice in Wonderland:

How doth the little busy Bee
Improve each shining Hour,
And gather Honey all the day
From every opening Flower!

How skilfully she builds her Cell!
How neat she spreads the Wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet Food she makes.

In Works of Labour or of Skill
I would be busy too:
For Satan finds some Mischief still
For idle Hands to do.

In Books, or Work, or healthful Play
Let my first Years be past,
That I may give for every Day
Some good Account at last. [1715]

-Matrix is based on Alice in Wonderland
--make you be moral and busy
--eviscerate/disembowel
-My Book and Heart shall never part
--Plato's allegory of the cave
-if it can't be seen; deceive
--misplaced concreteness
--inadequate responses; questions still need to be asked
--wolf mask- boy behind mask- girl steals mask from boy
-- Children's lit. goes beyond the what is needful; all stories are portal stories...The subersion of child's lit.
--ironic- "a movie that teaches us that books aren't for teaching"

The real 'morals'

Cinderella

The beautiful woman should take hast,
for coming upon them only hell will create.
Yet they believe beauty is the right path,
I am sorry to say, I only see rath.

The tale that is to be spun and pondered,
is tainted by the people who forever wonder.
Searching for beauty with sight only,
they will find this path very lonely.

And for the women who believe this,
who beautify themselves with out amiss.
You will find one day, the man with you,
is not a man, but only part of a selfish few.


Bluebeard
Oh, ye, with curiousness and charm,
you do no good, but only harm.
If this is a moral, then listen well,
since curiousity came from hell.

Your multi-tracked mind shouldn't wander,
for your husband is all you should ponder.
Through fire and brimstone, look ahead,
if you stray, I only see dread.

So to all you newly married wives,
I hope you have enjoyed your lives,
since now has the time come
for you to be content with dumb.

Linda Sexson lecture

Dr. Linda Sexson was gracious enough to come speak to our class today. The following contains some brief notes that I took on this day:
Fairtales: Didactic-god, morals, etiquette, pragmatic, nature.
-begin to become speculative
--literacy
-when child starts to become literate- lose childhood
--nature - bird hatching- writers hope kids relate/think God

Charles Dickens is re-defining himself...

I was struck by a question on this quiz, where someone in the class
came up with; What author wanted to marry Little Red Riding Hood and
the answer Charles Dickens. I feel that this is a regression of the
Oedipus Complex. This, where instead of having the boy love/obsess over
the mother, the father is now reversing the roles wanting to marry the
innocent child- L.R.R.H. Through Dickens obvious ties withchildrens
literature I feel that he had become what he did, he became so engulfed
in his work that he became the child in his work, loving another
(child) in what he himself was so deeply submersed in. He not only
loved L.R.R.H. because first off, how could you not love her, but also
in that he felt like a child again, re-defining his lines of gender,
realizing that this object in front of him is slightly different; now I
am not implying that this relationship is sexual in anyway (if you look at an early post of mine on the oedipus complex you will see why).

I mean who wouldn't want to marry that:

Oct. 10th, QUIZ NOTES FOR MONDAY

List of items on quiz...
-L.R.R.H.
-Cindy vanity
Hanzel and Gretel
The Little Mermaid
Beauty and the Beast
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White
Rapunzel
East of the Sun West of the Moon
Juniper Tree
Bluebeard

Test Questions:
What is archetypal lady-Prank Queen
Portmanteau-multi-level word; many levels of meaning.
privelaged #'s in Fairy Tales: 3, 7
What is misplaced concretness?
Type 333-Little Red
collective unconscious manifests itself as archetypes
"If your really crafty you will get both."
What are the three parts of the universal quest? seperation, initiation, myth
Triple Goddess: mother maiden crone
Why is there no original? All lit. is displaced myth
bow-recognition of the devine
Aladdin, genie-"I'm not history..."
Grimm's Cinderella-Ashgirl
motif index- Hans, B&B, East of Sun..., what motif? Searching for missing husband/beast groom
mother daughter duo; Demeter and Persephone
Fairytale haikue of moral...
What is the significance of Blue in Bluebeard?
B&B-transformation by love
Archetype for talking animal- the goldan ass
Why did Cupid wake up? Hot oil
Spoonerism- 'flop moor'
Which romanitc poet believed? Already know everything there is to know... Wordsworth
What mythical story is B&B come from? Cupid and Psyche
Bluebeards-against 'female curiousity'
Which Grimm story has a witch? Hansel and Gretal
What author wanted to marry Little Red? Charles Dickens
What phrase begins most fairy tales? Once upon a time
Keltic version of cinderella- her mother was a ewe/sheep