1. Is Felicite a saint or a simple-minded servant? Or is she both? Or is she neither? Outline your perspective of her character as compared to Mme. Aubain’s. How do they differ?

I sort of think she is both a saint and a simple-minded servant. Everyone knows that nobody is really a saint, maybe even saints aren’t really saints, but there are people in life or in stories that sit well in your heart, and I feel like if there is ever a character like that it is Felicite. Her character is much more pure and simple compared to Mme. Aubain’s.

2. How are women imagined and characterized in the poems you read? What attitude is implied? Is it dual or contradictory? Does Baudelaire give similar weight to the description of men? What definitions of womanliness are depicted, affirmed, or criticized in his work?

I think Baudelaire’s work is pretty much obviously misogynystic as he writes women FOR the men, which belittles the characters of both sexes.

3. How are Chidam and Chandara distinct from Rama and Sita?

They differ in terms of levels of subserviency, which probably has to do with modernity.

4. Pick a Yeat’s poem and discuss what it communicates to you and why.

When You Are Old is short and sweet. For me it communicated a sense of gratitude that in life maybe I can appreciate that at some point my partner and I will be old and one of us will go first, and we can be thankful now that we were loved by the other in youth. I thought it was sweet. But I could have not interpreted it too well either.

1. Is Tartuffe in fact anti-religious, or does it only attack corruptions of religion?

I don’t think that Tartuffe is anti-religion in the sense that the play is putting down religion itself but it is a progressive work in terms of pointing out that there are aspects of organized religion that were then, and perhaps will always be corrupted. Any extremely wealthy entity is likely to be vulnerable to corruption because of the association with power. In Tartuffe, the commentary is absolutely focused on that corruption of power where the primary symptom is hypocrisy, and where that would be ineffective without the blindness or foolishness of those who blindly follow power.

2. In what respects is Hugo’s Satan a heroic figure? How does Hugo’s account differ from Dante’s?

I feel like if we look at Hugo’s Satan in terms of what we have studied about the Hero’s Journey, then yes we have to call him a heroic figure. This is especially true when you look at Hugo’s account of Satan’s transformation, or journey. His fall from heaven, and this is also exactly the way that it is distinguished from Dante’s account where the devil was sort of a stationary figure. For Dante, the character of himself was the journeying hero and Satan made an appearance.

3. Discuss and compare the images in any two poems assigned for this week.

I suppose one of the clearest images to pull out of these poems is the concept of death as discussed in poems by Heine and then Leopardi. There’s also a ton of references to the natural world in poems by these two. In Heine’s Ah, death is like the long cool night, he really speaks of the coming end as a break and relieving gift, as does Leopardi in To Himself, although Leopardi whines a little more about why it will be such a relief to kick the old bucket.

1. As I understand it, Machiavelli is pretty well known as the great granddaddy of political science, focussing far more on what it takes to maintain power over people than on the wellbeing of a nation of citizens. He describes some pretty cut-throat tactics.
Most of us are probably recovering from midterm election hangovers at the moment and there has been plenty of evidence in our view of how far reaching those Machiavellian patterns of contrast between political ideals and concrete realities really do apply. The most obvious example that comes to my mind is the mass coercion that has recently take place by big money from both parties to either keep their guy in or get their guy in. Getting out the vote is important on many levels, but the barrage of commercials that we all just survived was unreal, and it was controlling! I’m an enthusiastic voter, but that election was ballistic and it interfered with my life in a negative way. However, even though it wasn’t good for the people necessarily, all of that fighting had to happen so that there could be decisions about who will “rule”.
Machiavelli is credited with the seed of the much debated idea that ends might justify the means, as in that it may be necessary to approach difficult scenarios in ways that might be immoral, violent or disturbing if the intended result will be considered worth it. Other Machiavellian concepts include a wide array of devious tactics that may have to be employed in order to rule effectively. He suggests that if you’re in charge, you might have to take people out. I think that if you look at intelligence operations, negative advertisements, and war itself you will see evidence of all of that.

2.  The first thing I thought of in regards to this question was Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. The character Fantine becomes so desperate for income that she is forced into prostitution and the selling of her possessions and even her teeth and hair. This is seen as particularly tragic because of the quality of her hair and teeth. Hugo even says that Fantine had gold and pearls for her dowry, but the gold was on her head (presumably the quality of her hair) and the pearls were in her mouth (teeth). These events, and the shaving of her head are closely associated to Fantine’s death following an assault. It’s almost as if when Fantine sold her hair she had given up hope of living life and just began selling herself for parts until the end.

I think the symbolism of a woman’s hair across cultures is a complex issue and I don’t dare try to simplify the issue or boil it down at all, but among many other things I think the reason hair has such a significant place in the stories of women in liturature is because of the link between feminine beauty and a woman’s worth. Hair is beautiful, almost undeniably, across the earth. Women are valued for beauty and maternity and sexuality, almost undeniably, across the earth. To loose ones hair is to loose value as a woman, and perhaps in some circumstances this is an extremely liberating thing.

https://msmagazine.com/blog/2011/03/16/my-favorite-feminist-sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz

3.  The best I could make of it is that flowers might be the warriors who have died with honor and song might be whatever god is going to then take care of their souls or what the Aztecs may have thought of as a soul. So perhaps this is from the perspective of that god, who is clever with the knowledge that these warriors have fallen and are going to be taken and is asking those still in the war to seek honorable deaths and respect those who have been killed?

1. The Tenth Story of the Tenth Day: Why is Griselda being tested?

I think that in a sense, Griselda is initially being tested because of Gualtieri’s boredom, although this is later transformed into a sort of more complex set of Job-like events that prove her character over time. Before the more extreme fake child killings and so forth, Bocciaccio writes, “…Gualtieri was seized with the strange desire to test Griselda’s patience, by subjecting her to constant provocation and making her life unbearable.”. He starts out with a little verbal abuse before moving on to the torturous acts of taking her babies away. Bocciaccio’s motives for this probably had something to do with claims that these stories were lessons for female readers to learn, that these men and women, but mostly women, who took refuge from disease wanted to convey in their stories for women to learn from for their own safety and well being.

2. Compare the frame tales in the Decameron, and The Thousand and One Nights. In each case, what is the reason for telling stories? Do the stories accomplish the purpose for which they are intended? How important is the relationship between the tale and the teller?

Shahrizad has a much more noble purpose in her story telling than the narrator of the Decameron in my opinion. She is telling her stories to teach a murderer compassion and forgiveness while simultaneously saving lives, literally. With each night of teaching lessons and telling stories she is preserving her own life and the life of another woman. That’s sisterhood. Shari’a does accomplish her purpose, both within the frame tale and in terms of the stories preserved in The Thousand and One Nights. I think that Bocciaccio via his narrators is less successful simply because Shahrizad’s purpose was so noble. The seven women and three men who make up the tellers of The Decameron are portraying lessons and also telling jokes, providing an account of life in that part of the world at that time. The stories there serve that purpose. I think the relationship between the tale and tale teller is as important as the piece and the writer because it holds a lot of information about motive, whether economic or social or religious.

3. In Laustic, what does the nightingale symbolize? Explain your answer.

I think that the nightingale symbolizes the tragedy of love lost, or perhaps grief. It seems that this would be a question with many answers, all true in their own way. The nightingale serves as a way to communicate a break up, and then the receiver of this information treats it as a keepsake. The fact that he puts this bird in a tiny coffin which he then carries with him could be seen as both a constant reminder of his love for her, or a constant reminder of his grief that the relationship never got a fair chance and had to end. Either way I think this is a symbol for emotions we all have regarding past love and loss.

1. How are we to understand Shahrayar’s madness? Does it make sense to you? That is, are male egos in macho societies that frail, or is his a special case?

I think we are supposed to understand Shahrayar’s madness as related to trauma, and yes it does make sense to me. While I do think that his behavior and level of trauma related to his wife’s infidelity portrays this character as a baby-man, when bad things happen to people their reactions are theirs and while those reactions can be judged, they cannot be changed. He was scorned, and it really hurt him bad. From where I stand, male egos in macho societies are ABSOLUTELY that frail, Shahrayar is no special case. Having been cheated on is a chronic and played out excuse for men to do wicked things across time and cultures. It is the most outstanding response men give in defense of themselves being abusive to women and I guarantee if you work a few shifts at any women’s shelter or read a handful of DV police reports you will see that this is true. It’s absurd and it’s been happening for centuries.

2. Both the vizier and his daughter, Shahrazad, tell tales that surround their human characters with important animals, but the animals play different roles in the imaginative worlds of father and daughter. Compare and contrast the powers attributed to the animal world in The Tale of the Ox and the Donkey and The Tale of the Merchant and His Wife with those described in The Story of the Merchant and the Demon. How may these differences reflect the contrasting visions of gender relations so central to The Thousand and One Nights?

In The Tale of the Ox and the Donkey, and The Tale of the Merchant and His Wife, the stories told by the vizier attribute powers to the animal world to have conversations amongst each other, to make plans and conceive of tricks and punishments. The donkey has an ability to foresee what actions a human might take if the ox takes his advice to not perform his oxen duties but, not knowing that the merchant understands the plan is unable to foresee himself being a victim. In the second tale told by Shahrazad’s father, the animals are simply conversing amongst each other, aware of what is going down in the larger household. The merchant is then able to take the incredibly misogynistic advise of the raping rooster. Whereas in the vizier’s stories the animals are animals by birth and simply have language amongst themselves, in Shahrazad’s The Story of The Merchant and the Demon, animals exist as having been previously human and are made animals as some sort of punishment. The animals in her story are either victims as in the merchant’s mistress and son, or perpetrators who have been caught in their bad act and are now living as deer and dog as punishment. I suppose when thinking about how these differences reflect the contrasting visions of gender relations in the stories, you sort have to look at the larger story. The vizier’s stories have animals coming up with tricks and acting badly, not foreseeing what the real consequences of their actions might be. Like women perhaps? In Shahrazad’s stories, animals are former people who are either victims of other’s crimes or have committed their own, however their punishments are not death even though it is suggested in most cases that death will be what happens to them. Instead, they have to live as animals. Maybe she is suggesting that there are punishments less severe than death.

3. Do you believe the penalties suffered are appropriate to the sins committed in Dante’s Inferno? Why or why not?

In one sense, no of course I don’t think the penalties suffered are appropriate to the sins committed in Dante’s Inferno because I don’t subscribe the worldview where these correlations are presented. I don’t believe in hell and don’t really believe in sin in the way that this story presents sin. I don’t think that suicide and being non-Christian or not baptized warrant any form of hell. On the other hand, I do appreciate the fact that the sins committed (being an unbaptized pagan vs. the sin of violence) have penalties residing in corresponding worse and worse realms of suffering (a lesser heaven vs. a river of boiling blood).

I find Rama just as, if not more, interesting than the other heroes we have reviewed. His calm attitudes and code are more aligned with what is familiar to me as being a good path, and so the study of those values within a hero are easier to digest than some of the other ancient text. There are indications in our readings that Rama’s perfection is not totally innate and that his way of being is a state that takes an ongoing practice to achieve. It is described quickly in our reading, in ayodhas’ 17 and 18 that Rama experiences significant anxiety as he approaches his father before being told what will soon happen. He worries about what he has done to anger his father, and seems to be not at all in a peaceful place but in a fearful one. Kausalya is also experiencing fear and anxiety I think, shortly after in ayodhya 21 when she tells Rama that he must not do as he has been ordered because of her own fear of not being able to survive without him. I don’t know if I understand the question, “How would that be consistent with the Hindu religious beliefs that imbue this work?”. There’s a forest dweller piece to the four stages of life.
Arjuna’s hesitancy to go into battle are seemingly more righteous than that of either Achilles or Medea. His hesitancy is based on his sense of morality and devotion to the divine, and it is not until the divine intervenes on his sense of right and wrong that his mind is able to change about going into battle. On the other hand, warriors such as Achilles had hesitancy that were based on things like strategy, glory, and self preservation. Codes of behavior according to Krishna are in terms of devotion, whereas it seems that codes of violence in the other examples mentioned might have more to do with things like honor or revenge.