Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
-Freuds Castration Compled: males fear of castration due to guilt for desiring
mother
-Cronus swallowing his children: Ancient and Modern interpretations
-Swallow his children whole because he doesnt want his power to be overthrown
by his children
-Tell the children apart from his bite marks
-Cannibalism
-Symbolic aspects of Crouns Cannibalism
-Social: intergenerational hostility
-Anthropological: fathers resentment of his children (because children represent
burden upon the household)
-Political: leaders violence against their people
-Zoological: male animals often kill their young (because they see some sort of
competition; also the mothers behavior only tends towards children not father)
-Biological: the rarity of meat; heavy stomach
-Metaphysical: human fear of chronos (time) and death
-Aesthetic: babies are vulnerable in dads hands
-Eros as creative force (Hesiod)
-Movie: The Fifth Element w/ Bruce Willis
-Why does the representation of Eros change form non-representational to
anthropomorphic?
- Incarnated as human, Eros becomes comprehensible
-Why are wings a feature of Eros?
- Wings express physiological symptoms: felling of high, jetlag, or dream state
(endorphins)
-Why is Eros represented differently in the social contexts below?
-Eros deceives women, but is more honorable with men (erastes-eromenos
protocol)
-Thoughts on Eros
-Incarnated as human, Eros becomes comprehensible
-Wings express physiological symptoms: felling of high, jetlag, or dream state
(endorphins)
-Eros deceives women, but is more honorable with men (erastes-eromenos
protocol)
-Heterosexual Eros seems younger and ore playful
January 21, 2016 (Chapter 4: The Creation of Mortals)
-Titano/Gigantomachy (almost one and the same)
-Palazzo del Te, 1524-1534
-Interpretation of Titano-Gigantomachy
-Historical: conquest and amalgamation b/tw Minonans and Myceaeans (20001000 BCE)
-Religious: progressively less fear of celestial phenomena
-Cultural: from (monstrous) chaos into (anthropomorphic) order
-Tom Tsuchiaya, Atlas Recycled, 2010
-What is a common element in these images and how does it relate to Classical myth?
-Not completely omnipotent: threatened by uprisings and subject to the Fates and
the power of Aphrodite
-Not completely omniscient: deceived by Prometheus and Hera
-Philanderer with uncontrollable sexual appetite and the ultimate virility and
potency
-Zeus and Ganymede
-Zeuss affair with Ganymede as lover
-Look on slide
-Hephasestus (Vulcan)
-Acts as a mediator warning Hera not to approach Zeus because Zeus is more
powerful than her
-Son of Hera (and Zeus)
-Physically lame and object of ridicule
-Object of laughter
-Possesses metis: cunning intelligence
-God of technology, crafts, and skills, especially of the forge
-Parthenogenesis
-When a female gives birth autonomously, without sexual intercourse with a male
-Virgin (parthenos) + Birth (genesis) =Parthenogenesis
-Beauty and the Beast scenario
-Hephasetus marrying a beautiful wife Aphrodite even though he is ugly
-Aphrodite cheated on Hephasetus with Ares
-Who are the winners and the losers in the Song of Demodocus? What do the narratives
of Iliad 1 and Odyssey 8 together tell us about the world and lifestyle of the gods?
-Takeaways from the Song of Demodocus
-Desirable female chooses handsome brute over deformed craftsman
-When Hephaestus outsmarts, entraps, and exposes his wife in adultery he also
exposes himself as a cuckold, and ends up again as a butt of the divine joke
-Ares becomes object of admiration more than laughter, as Hermes and Apollo
identify with him; he gets off relatively scot-free
-Male gods, but not female goddess enjoy pleasures of voyeurism
-Aphrodite is an object of voyeurism and she is exchanged b/tw male gods like a
piece of property
-The World of the Gods
-Gods each have their own decked-out houses on Olympus, but they also have an
active social life
-Gods enjoy leisure, spending most of their time feasting, listening to music, or
making love; they dont have regular work, except for Hephaestus
-There are factions, conflicts, and rivalries b/tw the gods, but these are all
resolved non-violently
-Divine social structure is patriarchal, although goddesses have some degree of
autonomy and power
-Aphrodite (Venus)
-Daughter of Zues and Dione OR arose from the semen of Ouranos
-Goddess of desire, sex, and fertility
-Dominates mortals and immortals
-Ares (Mars)
-Son of Zeus and Hera
-God of War; God of the Battlefield
-Bloodthirsty, violent, and dislike by Zeus in the Iliad
-Giver of martial vigor, ferocity, courage and appropriate restraint in the Homeric
Hymn to Ares
-Tyrant against the rebellious, champion for the righteous in the Hymn
-Aphrodite and Ares: A Perfect Pair
-Represent physical perfection
-Connected with force and domination
-Cause sleep or death
-Bring bodies together in union (mixis) in bed or on the battlefield
-Sexual partners and allies in myth
-Worshipped together in cult
January 28, 2015
-Man setting up an ithyphallic herm
-Attic red-figure; ca. 440-430 BCE
-Representing and Defining Divinity
-Protesting Dogma
-In 1999, Lionsgate Films released Dogma, a religious satire focusing especially
on the Roman Catholic Church
-It spared protests and was denounced by the Catholic League as blasphemy
-At one point, a cardinal (played by comedian George Carlin) introduces Buddy
Christ, a new, more inspiring sigil.
-Why offensive Buddy Christ?
-Making light of divinity
-Novelty (departing from established conventions of representation)
-Humanity (too much humanity; wrong of humanity)
-Greek Anthropomorphism
-Greek gods and goddesses typically conceived as human in form and characterfor better and worse
-Sexual relationships, including affairs
-Fight humans and each other
-Feel pain, bleed ichor
-Lie, cheat, steal
-Not omnipotent; omniscient
-What Makes Them Divine?
-Greek gods and goddesses are:
-Immortal above all
-Superhuman powers
-Superhuman beauty
-Superhuman knowledge
-Lives easier than humans
-Involved in the lives of humans
-Divine Interventions
-Nestors sons (princes) lead the heifer to the altar and kill it
-Nestors wife (queen) and daughters (princesses) raise a ritual cry when the
animal is struck
-Members of the community receive a share of the meat
-Sacrifice and Cosmic Community
-Puts the community right with the gods
-Defines the boundary b/tw humans and divinities
-Gods get bones and enjoy the savor (undecaying)
-Humans get meat and organs (decaying)
-Humans mortal and subordinate to gods
-Defines the boundary b/tw humans and animals (cooked vs. raw meat)
-Religion, Community, and Politics
-Primary site of religious experience would be local (polis-level) for most people
-Local gods and heroes
-Local faces of Olympian gods
-Local myths and festivals
-Priests and priestesses come from the community
-No hereditary class: elected, auctioned and appointed
-Sacrifices, upkeep of temples, finances-learn from doing
-Often coextensive with political/economic elites
-From Polis to Pan-Hellenic
-Different poleis have their own versions of certain myths
-Reflexes of variant local traditions
-You want your poetry to be popular or authoritative across the Greek World?
-Find a way of dealing with and negotiating diverse local traditions
-Religious Authority
-Homer and Hesiod authoritative because Pan-Hellenic
-Suppress myths that are strictly (or controversially) local
-Help forge Greek identity
-Common body of myth and ritual
-Common sites of myth and ritual
-Religious authority shades into political authority (Delphi vs. itinerant seers)
-Protest
-Religion and civic community coextensive
-Religion implicated in and a venue for conflicts w/in the community
-Expedition=conflict between masses and elite
-Herms a symbol of mass, egalitarian ideology
-Attacking the herms=attacking the (democratic) civic community
-The Lessons of Croesus
-Croesus guilty of hubris (excess)
-Doesnt respect the boundaries b/tw humans and mortals
-Blessings only to be counted in death
-Human=mortal + suffering
-Gods=immortal + carefree
-Excessive faith in own power, wealth and ability to control fate
-Offerings at Delphi
-Poseidon>Teseus
-Apollo>Sibyl, Cassandra
-Zeus>Semele
-Midas gets away with unbreakable vow=
-Dionysus: less authoritative, but also: more irrational
-Satyrs, Silenoi, and Pan
-3 male attendants of Dionysus
-Satyrs looks human but horse tail and chin; shown in sexual arousal; chasing
nymphs, woodland animals; black beard=young one
-Silenoi are satyrs grown old; hair and tail are white and not shown as sexually
aroused; portrayed as philosopher and wise people
-Fruit of Dionysus is grapes
-Satyrs have hooves because accompanied by another deity known as Pan
-Pan was son of Hermes and a nymph
-When Pan was born mom abandoned him because he was ugly
-Pan a woodland God; intoxicated and surreal; depicted as always aroused
-History, myth, religion, society
-Pan-ic and goats
-Pan and Zoophilia
-Sexual relation with animals and humans
-Pan has a dark side
-Taboo behavior (incest)
-Classical paintings of Narcissus
-Modern painting
-Thoughts on Echo and Narcissus
-The dangers of coming of age; wandering away from home
-The ambiguous sexuality of the teenager
-Mishandling of Eros at this stage can destroy
-Narcissus:
-Eros as a liberator from the tyranny of the self: ec-stasis
-Eros is possible only though the absence of the other
-The reality of ancient mirrors: distortion
-The stranger in the mirror predicament: dissociative disorder, an ecstatic experience
-Need for external validation of ones uniqueness
-Obsession with self-image>Freuds narcissism (=physical into
psychological)
-Thoughts on Pan, Echo, and Narcissus
-Echo:
-Scientific reasoning, action
-An inferior caught between superiors
-Female ignored by self-involved man
-------------------------------------------------EXAM #4---------------------------------------------March 24, 2016 (Chapter 20: The Odyssey)
-Example of the Odyssey