Kiss My Nether Yay Yah

Ah the Miller's Tale, how sweet is the quest of two people and their battle to share their love... not. A young girl marries an older guy. With the rules and regulations of fixed marriages in place back in this day and time, one cannot expect this child not to search out a younger companion. The carpenter is smart to keep his eye on her, but he should have been watching the astrologer living with him.

At first the carpenter's wife, Alison, refuses Nicholas, but it didn't take long for his advances to convince her. He grabs her between the legs and holds her by the hips, professing that if he doesn't have his way with her, he'll surely die (90-95). The tide turns in his favor. I'm not sure how. He doesn't say anything to savor.

A plan hatches from the mind of Nicholas. Alison knows the sly scheme, but it is Nicholas who pulls the blinders over the carpenter's eyes. John goes to work, thinking he's going to save his dear Alison from  a watery grave, and Nicholas and Alison commit adultery in the dark of night. Absolom, a musician from Oxford pines for Alison too, and he almost ruins the sexual encounter between the two lovers. Yet, he is tricked and kisses her backside, but he comes back and receives a fart to the face and brands Nicholas' ass, an exchange for the fragrant gift.

This piece is all about bodily functions and sexual excursions. The comedy that these things bring out is timeless. We still see these things today in literature and film. Will Ferrell comes to mind. His sexual comedy is funny to most Americans. My mother would disagree.

The Shield of Sir Gawain

A reading of the intro in Middle English.

There is a lot of information out there about the shield of Sir Gawain. Most of the sites I found say virtually the same, and mostly, it's adjacent to what we talked about in class. Go figure. Dr. H. can get a few things right every once in a while. 

Yeah, it's not red, but it's closer than some.

In lines 619-65 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the author puts a lot of thought into the shield that Sir Gawain carries. Red or "gules" decorates the background and symbolizes valor and courage. Up holding virtues, the pentangle represents more meaning in the shield than any other symbol. Five prestigious points equate to his "faultless" five senses and five fingers. (Though, the rest of us have ten fingers, Sir Gawain must be superior with only his five.) The five points also correspond to Christ's death on the cross with the five puncture wounds he received, reminding us of the divine and linking Sir Gawain to the Messiah. Representing Mary, mother of Jesus, the five points expresses the five joys she found in her Son. "These were the annunciation to Mary that she was to bear the Son of God, Christ's Nativity, Resurrection, and Ascension into heaven, and the 'Assumption' or bodily taking up of Mary into heaven to join Him" (footnote 7, 1657). Chivalry (at the time) is defined with five virtues also embodying the five points: "Beneficence boundless and brotherly love/And pure mind and manners, that none might impeach,/And compassion most precious" (652-4).

The ring surrounding the pentangle likely signifies the binding oath between a man and a woman, reminding him of his oath as a knight to uphold the honor of that position and the expectation of faithfulness to his lord and master.

Seven

"Break one commandment, break them all," My pastor said. The Evangelical stance on sin is that "sin is sin." When Adam and Eve took the first bite of the forbidden fruit, they committed the first crime. Since then every human who has walked the face of the earth has died, for "The wages of sin is death." It is human nature to sin, so no one can avoid it. In the eyes of God, one cannot lie and it be counted as a lesser transgression than murder. All sin is the same, and all punishment is the same. This fundamental Bible rule is different than society's laws, and I'm wondering how much of Dante's descriptions of the different levels of Hell and different punishments for different sins help to define our societal rules for today. Dante expounds on the punishment for different sins in his fiction work, The Divine Comedy, but he wasn't the first to define mortal sin. 


The idea came from a monk, Evagrius of Pontus in 400 AD. He said that there were eight forms of self-love that separate us from God:



Gluttony and lust concern concupiscible appetites (the “body”). Sadness and anger, are associated with the irascible part of the soul; they concern things we don’t have, and finally there are temptations regarding ourselves (pride and vanity) or those which arise from the specifically human side (logistikon of ourselves (sadness, vain glory, and pride). Acedia arises from several parts of ourselves.

Gluttony. Anxiety about one’s health, leading to inordinate concern about food. When Evagrius’ own diet of uncooked foods made him sick, he switched to cooked food.

Fornication. Desire for imaginary bodies, as unreal as the sicknesses mentioned above. This vice like the preceding tries to seduce us from orderly moral regimen. •Greed. Futile planning for an unreal future.

Sadness, which often follows from indulging in foolish wants or not getting what we want.

Anger. Can ruin health and cause bad dreams. Rather than brooding on our wrongs, we should go out of our way to do good to the person who wronged us.

Acedia (melancholy; depression). Listlessness, weariness of heart, which tempts the monk to abandon his calling.

Vain glory: Vain glory is daydreaming about our greatness, holiness, etc. •Pride: supposing we can do anything without God.

According to the Skemmata (53) these eight all arise from self-love. They all involve the wrong notion about God. They trap us into an unreal world centered on ourselves and lead to a false God. Thus they make impossible the pure prayer which is our supreme goal.

John Cassian

John Cassian translated the Greek into Latin for Christian use, and it Pope Gregory I in the late sixth century who changed a few things around and came up with the list of the seven mortal sins we know of today: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. 


And I couldn't resist, but I had to put a link to the scene of "The Box" in the film Se7en just because Kevin Spacey is so awesomely creepy.

Similarities and Differences

I was excited about discovering the Koran. I have wanted to read it for some time now to try and understand our Muslim friends. I wanted to learn the differences and the similarities between our cultures, to search for solution to the problems that we face. (Yeah, I hold all the answers to the world's problems in the palm of my hand. I am that good.) After reading the excerpts that we had with us, I came to realize that those differences are far too great for any simple solution. After all, if it were simple, wouldn't we already be getting along? 

I was sort of angry when reading the "Women" excerpt. Slaves are permitted. Women aren't to inherit the same amount of a legacy as a man and are to be subservient (1151). Our western culture has grown to include women as equals and slavery has been abolished. We're not totally on track with equality yet, but we're making progress. Progress that is leading away from the way the Bible has been translated and interpreted. "But that's not a difference," I said. "That's a similarity! The very fact that our culture has in its history the oppression of women and other humans is a comparison."

I began to look for more coincidences. The Koran preaches that it is right. There is no other scripture out there that any man should live his life by ("The Table" 1153-62). Well, so does the Bible. There is no difference between how growing up in a Baptist community and following God's word through the Bible and how Muslim children grow up in their own religious communities, following the word of the Koran. We are congruous in that respect. We also liken in our fear God.

Sassy Satire

We were a little off the wall in class today. In fact, we were "satirical." I didn't quite get the deeper meaning of Menippean satire because of the hysterics, so I ventured on my own and searched it out.

One of the examples given today was T.C. Boyle's "Modern Love." Luckily, I found a link to the short story and was able to read it. I really enjoyed it, but I still didn't see the link to Menippean satire. To me, the story was plainly satire. So, what's the difference?

I took from several definitions that satire can be a whole piece (novel, short story, poem, play) or it can be only a small part of that piece. Menippean satire consists of the whole piece and is based on philosophical arguments and traditional culture.

A Journey into Hell

I don't think that "Sexy, Soulful Music and Dance" is what Dr. H. had in mind when he was talking about Nekyia, but it looked semi-interesting in a WTH is this sort of way. Upon further investigation, I found that the site explains that Nekyia is a ritual journey into darkness. Well, I thought. That sounds familiar.

"Nekyia's Pure Catnip" on the right is here for your entertainment.

Traveling around the internet, I happened on a book that should explain myth in simple linguistics: The Complete Idiot's Guide to World Mythology. Aha! A book that caters to my pea-sized mind.

Evans Lansing Smith and Nathan Robert Brown are eloquently simple in explaining Nekyia. The word is derived from the Greek word, necro, meaning dead.

"Nekia was a word used by the Greeks to refer to the eleventh book of Homer's Odyssey, in which Odysseus travels into Hades to consult the spirit of the blind prophet, Tiresia, so that he might find out how to get back home."

As we said in class, Odysseus isn't the only one to travel into the afterlife. Orpheus travels to the underworld to save his love Eurydice. In the near future, we'll discover Dante's journey through hell. Persephone is kidnapped by the god of the underworld, Hades, who tricks her into becoming his wife. However, the journey into hell for all the characters who dare venture there is always followed by a return to the land of the living.


So I learned a new Greek word, but that's not all. There's another word I picked up, necrotype. These fellows might have made it up because Merriam-Webster says a necrotype is "an extinct organism or group of organisms." But we're complete idiots after all.

Smith claims "universal structures and collective archetypes make up all heroic journeys/descents to the underworld. Necrotype is an integration of the Greek word necro (dead/death) with the word "archetype." this word refers to universal symbls of the human imagination catalyzed by the journey to the underworld (nekyia)."   

He has got to be making this up, but it sounds really good.

To Know No Evil

I hate it when I have an idea and I don't write it down. Somehow, I had connected both pieces that we had discussed today in a really cool way, but I lost it. It went right out of my head somewhere on the journey to take my youngest daughter to the pool. My kids tend to converse about stuff irrelevant to early western literature, and they fill my head full of middle school drama. I could care less, but it does tend to push my important thoughts into a dust covered box in the back of my brain in which great shit disappears and never sees the light of day again. Without kids I could have been some great scholar or the next Einstein. Like the death of Socrates, it's all sad, but true.


I do remember the first part of my premise, so I'll write. Maybe the rest of it will surface eventually, or maybe I'll think of something better. Here are some random ramblings.


Speaking to Meletus, Socrates says, "You know bad people do something bad to [whoever's] closest to them at the given moment, and good people something good?" (766). I believe that Socrates is saying that people don't intentionally do evil things to one another. If a person doesn't know he's doing something wrong, then how can he be blamed for the fault? So, it's that simple. Ignorance is bliss, and all is right with the world. 


However, two other assumptions need to be considered. There are many believers whose idea of evil stems from the biblical meaning of sin. There is a right and a wrong, and anyone with intelligence knows the difference. He chooses his own actions. And then there's justification: (an eye for an eye (Mattew 5:38)) a person commits a wrong and is legitimized in performing it.

In regarding the Bible, I went looking for an ally for Socrates in Aristotle. In Poetics, Aristotle defines the Tragedy, but using his definition of Character we help Socrates make his case."Character is that in virtue of which we say that the personages are of such and such a quality; and Thought is present in everything in their utterances that aims to prove a point or the expresses an opinion" (780). In class today, we discussed further on Aristotle's clarification of character. A weak character caves easily under pressure. This pressure can be anything to drive a character to do something he or she wouldn't normally do. A Strong character holds out till the bitter end. His suffering progresses up a figurative mountain to a precipice. To escape he gives in and jumps off; either he commits a crime, or he willingly receives any consequences (i.e. death) for not performing the crime. The Bible implies that we all have a choice. We choose between right and wrong. Aristotle suggests that a weak character has no choice, and if I understand correctly, a strong character still has a choice, which brings morality into the argument.


What Socrates says, is without instruction, then one cannot realize his fault. If we relate this reasoning to the Bible, then a person who has not read the Bible cannot be accountable for his actions. Yet, there is the whole social/moral code in which we all experience and learn while growing up and integrating into society. That accounts for something, even if one hasn't read the Bible.

So... we're all strong characters... The End.