I want to start right off with love here. HOW DID AENEAS JUST LEAVE HIS WIFE TO FEND FOR HERSELF??????? I DONT UNDERSTAND. He does go back to look for her, which was a fairly depressing moment in the chapter, but I guess I don't see how someone could be so blinded in the face of danger to forget about someone they love. Also, when Aeneas single-mindedly leaves his home to go defend Troy, he totally leaves his family behind, and it takes his mother to call him back to reality. It's interesting how Virgil says that "youthful courage is thus augmented by rage," and rage also blinded Aeneas when it came to protecting the things that he loved. However, I guess it's fair to argue that Aeneas loved his city too, so he naturally went out to defend the one that was more in danger. So basically everything I've written up until this point has been crap. Okay, now I'll start to make sense. I'm sorry, it's late, but I just feel like writing now.
By the way, am I allowed to make these blogs semi-informal? Or are they supposed to be actual formal writing tasks...?
Back to love: My favorite part in the chapter was when Coroebus "hurled himself" at Cassandra's captors to protect her. His love for her was so strong that he didn't think twice about giving his life for her, but instead threw himself into the fight completely willing to die. Virgil already depicts love as something so strong it can kill you, which is a beautiful image, but also a really terrible image at the same time. Next, Venus's love for her son once again shows when she appears in the middle of the chaos to bring him back to reality. This is interesting because on one hand the reader sees Juno, who is a goddess with immense rage, but the reader also sees Venus, who is seen as a goddess with immense love, so the immortals are given a full span of emotions, which are very human-like qualities, making them very relatable. After Aeneas returns home, he almost leaves once again, but ends up taking his family and fleeing the city. My last example of love is when Creusa reminds Aeneas to take care of the son they both made. I thought her ending speech was amazing because she displayed no contempt for Aeneas after he semi-abandoned her. She completely forgave him, or possibly was never mad to begin with, but tells him to keeps going on with his life as he was fated to.
Fate once again plays another big role in this book. I started to notice that the humans in the book keep referring to "god-given fates" and I was wondering if the Gods actually do have something to do with fate. I always thought it was a force above even the Gods, but maybe they play a bigger role than I originally thought. Whoever controls it, Virgil still implies that it completely controls the way life turns out, and there is no use in being mad when it doesn't go your way, because that is how fate wanted it to be. After Creusa dies, she certainly just accepts that it was fated to be this way and has no hard feelings. I don't think I have much more to say about fate that I haven't already covered, but this topic seems to be growing on me more and more.
Is line 66 an unfinished line??? There was a star next to it in my book, but I never looked it up because I didn't want it to give it away!!
For the women in the Aeneid, I'm mainly going to focus on Creusa and Hecuba in this chapter. When she stands up to Aeneas and tells him that his duty is to protect his home, it showed a moment of strength that we've seen in other human women in the epic. So far, I don't think we've encountered a woman who does not have a fairly strong, independent demeanor. Hecuba I think is an interesting woman to look at just from her one line. I may be reading a little too into this, but I know Virgil put her in here for a reason. She tells her husband to give up the fight and join her at the altar, which could either show that women have a tendency to give up when they think all hope is lost and are not brave enough to fight until the death, or show that women are logical and know when a good time to give up is. I haven't decided which one works yet, but I think both are feasible. Last line I chose was "you don't win a glorious name if you punish a woman" which could either portray women as weak and easy to beat, or something to be respected and cherished.
My last topic for tonight, or this morning is morals. I don't really have much to say, just a little to ponder about. Mr. V somewhat brought this up in his comment on my second blog, (By the way Mr. V, I commented back on your comments to the first blog, can you look at them??), but I was wondering if morals changed when you were put in different situations (such as war) or if a person just disregarded them to do what is appropriate at the time. The way the Greeks destroyed Troy was in my mind similar to the rape of Nan King or a genocide. What happens inside a person's head to make them do awful things to another person? Do people just blot out what they're doing in their mind and assume because they didn't think about it, it was acceptable? I feel as if there is a difference to defending or fighting for your country and totally wreaking havoc on the other side, but I'm not sure where people draw that line or how they do. Do the havoc wreakers know what they do is wrong and absolutely repulsive? I'm not sure.
Okay, it's time for me to sleep now. I'm going to post this and edit it in the morning. It's 2:04 and I'm tired.
"I want to start right off with love here. HOW DID AENEAS JUST LEAVE HIS WIFE TO FEND FOR HERSELF??????? I DONT UNDERSTAND."
ReplyDeleteWell, there are a ton options here, right? 1) He doesn't love her, 2) He doesn't love her enough, 3) He loves her, but forgot about her for some reason, etc. (basically any permutation of those - and other - options you can think of.)
Any of those answers will, however, turn out to be unsatisfying, if you ask me. What happens if we step back from the situation and, rather than question Aeneas' behavior, look at our perspective of it. Can we presume that Aeneas "loves" his wife in the way we think of love today? Can we even presume that the ideas of husband/wife and the relationship they imply was the same then as it is now? What happens if those things aren't the case? What if the Romans viewed the concepts of love/marriage/etc. from a different perspective than the one we have (ironically, often called the 'romantic' perspective)? If that's the case, is it fair for us to judge his actions using a system of measurement (our moral values) that would never have occurred to a Roman reader? On an even bigger literary level, does Aeneas even have a 'choice' in the matter? In terms of any normal story it might likely seem that he does, but what do we know about his fate already from other sources? Even if Aeneas himself doesn't know it, we do. Does that make a difference for how we read things?
"Also, when Aeneas single-mindedly leaves his home to go defend Troy, he totally leaves his family behind, and it takes his mother to call him back to reality. It's interesting how Virgil says that "youthful courage is thus augmented by rage," and rage also blinded Aeneas when it came to protecting the things that he loved. However, I guess it's fair to argue that Aeneas loved his city too, so he naturally went out to defend the one that was more in danger."
What does Aeneas himself say about all of this? He's very clear about why he decided to go out into the battle. Take a second look. What were his thoughts and feelings at the time? Was he even thinking about his family? If he was, what was he thinking in particular? If he wasn't, what does that say about him? (bearing in mind, again, the points I brought up above about how our perspectives of the issue might be different from his or your average Roman's.)
"So basically everything I've written up until this point has been crap. Okay, now I'll start to make sense. I'm sorry, it's late, but I just feel like writing now."
Not crap. Thinking. Thinking is NEVER crap. It's just really Really REALLY HARD. and frustrating. and difficult. and contradictory. But totally worth it. NEVER apologize for your thinking. That's the whole point of this assignment.
"By the way, am I allowed to make these blogs semi-informal? Or are they supposed to be actual formal writing tasks...?"
I'm not particularly concerned with tone, provided it still falls under the category of 'school appropriate' in terms of language (no cursing, etc.). The goal for the summer assignment is to get you to engage the reading, reflect on it, and express yourself in the process. Demanding a formal writing piece with totalitarian application of grammar/syntax would defeat that purpose entirely. As long as you're communicating clearly, you address the themes/topics/etc. that you picked out in your first entry, and your response is of the minimum 3 paragraph length, the rest is up to you.
"Virgil already depicts love as something so strong it can kill you, which is a beautiful image, but also a really terrible image at the same time."
Isn't it? Or maybe even sometimes do things to you that are worse than death. There's nothing more powerful - for good or for evil - than love. Best lesson of the Harry Potter series by far.
"Demanding a formal writing piece with totalitarian application of grammar/syntax would defeat that purpose entirely."
DeleteJust clarifying: I still want you to use conventional English spellings, grammar, etc. I don't want to see net lingo (e.g. lol) or abbreviations (e.g. totes), but in terms of whether you approach the writing like a formal essay response our more colloquially (conversationally) - that's up to you.
Any of those answers will, however, turn out to be unsatisfying, if you ask me. What happens if we step back from the situation and, rather than question Aeneas' behavior, look at our perspective of it. Can we presume that Aeneas "loves" his wife in the way we think of love today? Can we even presume that the ideas of husband/wife and the relationship they imply was the same then as it is now? What happens if those things aren't the case? What if the Romans viewed the concepts of love/marriage/etc. from a different perspective than the one we have (ironically, often called the 'romantic' perspective)? If that's the case, is it fair for us to judge his actions using a system of measurement (our moral values) that would never have occurred to a Roman reader? On an even bigger literary level, does Aeneas even have a 'choice' in the matter? In terms of any normal story it might likely seem that he does, but what do we know about his fate already from other sources? Even if Aeneas himself doesn't know it, we do. Does that make a difference for how we read things?
DeleteThis didn't occur to me as I was reading, but it makes a lot of sense. The way I view love made this and other actions of Aeneas totally unacceptable, but like you said, the Roman reader or simply a reader from a different era would look at this differently. I suppose to Aeneas, his father and son took a higher priority than his wife, which could arguably be because of fate or the way the system of loved was viewed then. You honor your direct family more than your family by marriage? Would that even be a possibility?
What does Aeneas himself say about all of this? He's very clear about why he decided to go out into the battle. Take a second look. What were his thoughts and feelings at the time? Was he even thinking about his family? If he was, what was he thinking in particular? If he wasn't, what does that say about him? (bearing in mind, again, the points I brought up above about how our perspectives of the issue might be different from his or your average Roman's.)
Delete"Mindlessly" that's how he storms out into battle. He realizes his father's house is tucked away and I suppose figures that his family is safe for a while if he goes out to fight. This behavior somewhat reminds me of a teenager not thinking their actions completely through before executing them, but I'm not entirely sure what it says about him.
Isn't it? Or maybe even sometimes do things to you that are worse than death. There's nothing more powerful - for good or for evil - than love. Best lesson of the Harry Potter series by far.
J.K. Rowling, a Classics major, was bound to have read this. It doesn't seem a far stretch to assume that she got that idea from Virgil. But I'm sure that there were other places she could have gotten this idea, but this makes an interesting connection. Did she get anything else from Harry Potter from Virgil?
"I suppose to Aeneas, his father and son took a higher priority than his wife, which could arguably be because of fate or the way the system of loved was viewed then. You honor your direct family more than your family by marriage? Would that even be a possibility?"
DeleteMaybe. This is a question I haven't really spent a lot of time pondering, so I don't have a good answer for it. It could certainly be an avenue for research and discovery. One of the big lessons in modern literary scholarship is the idea that we can't presume that our values/perspectives/ideas/definitions translate across cultures, eras, or social groups. It's tough to wrap your head around (since it means literally questioning *everything*), but the more you develop the ability the more interesting reading (and the world) becomes.
""Mindlessly" that's how he storms out into battle. He realizes his father's house is tucked away and I suppose figures that his family is safe for a while if he goes out to fight. This behavior somewhat reminds me of a teenager not thinking their actions completely through before executing them, but I'm not entirely sure what it says about him."
Doesn't it also mention that he rushes out into battle hoping to die, not particularly caring about what happens? He presumes that the fall of Troy and the death of his family are somehow foregone conclusions, and so goes out on a suicide mission of sorts - to take down as many Greeks as he can along the way. (At least, that is, if we believe his side of the story, which brings up the big question: Should we? Who is he telling his story to and how might that impact the way he chooses to relate it? Does he gain an advantage from omitting or changing details to suit his current circumstances? In short, is he what the literary world likes to call a 'reliable narrator' and what implications do his status as such (or not) have for our understanding of his words?) And what does this mindless suicide mission imply? Why doesn't he want to stay and at least try to protect his family? There are a TON of questions this scene opens up. Keep asking them.
"J.K. Rowling, a Classics major, was bound to have read this. It doesn't seem a far stretch to assume that she got that idea from Virgil. But I'm sure that there were other places she could have gotten this idea, but this makes an interesting connection. Did she get anything else from Harry Potter from Virgil?"
I've never really stopped to consider the question. I'm sure she's read the Aeneid, and this very well might have been a lesson that she took away from it. It's hard to ascribe intention to an author (the 'intentional fallacy'), since a lot of what we pick up in reading is determined by our own perspectives and experiences ('reader response theory'). It's certainly not a far stretch to make that assumption though. Ancient literature is packed with all sorts of lessons like these, so she really could have gotten the idea from anywhere. It would certainly be interesting to ask her though. Why don't you send her an e-mail and find out? (I'm 100% serious about this. You'd be surprised what kinds of 'famous' people are willing to respond if you just take the time to reach out and engage with them about a shared interest.)
"I started to notice that the humans in the book keep referring to "god-given fates" and I was wondering if the Gods actually do have something to do with fate. I always thought it was a force above even the Gods, but maybe they play a bigger role than I originally thought."
ReplyDeleteFrom my post on Parth's blog: "Some of this is a matter of things being 'lost' in translation. Virgil uses two distinct Latin concepts to refer to 'fate' in the Aeneid - 1) Fatum, -i (from For, Fari, Fatum "to speak") and 2) the Goddesses (the Parcae) embodying the idea of 'destiny'. The etymological relationship between Fatum, -i and its verb (Fatum is the perf. pass. participle) is essential. a Fatum is a future event that has been decreed or spoken - i.e. by a God (Jupiter, usually). The Parcae, however, are goddesses responsible for *everyone's* destiny, including those of the other Gods. Aeneas' destiny in terms of founding Rome is governed by both the Parcae ("hinc populum late regem belloque superbum/venturum excidio Libyae: sic volvere Parcas" I.21-2) and Jupiter ("Parce metu, Cytherea: manent immota tuorum/fata tibi" I.257-8 and "fabor enim, quando haec te cura remordet,/longius et volvens fatorum arcana movebo" I.261-2). If you're reading closely the Latin citations I gave, you'll notice that the two ideas are very intertwined. "Parce metu, Cytherea" recalls the name of the Parcae from line 22 (Jupiter/Virgil is punning here) as Jupiter is about to explain/declare his stance on the issue (a Fatum) for the first time."
"Virgil still implies that it completely controls the way life turns out, and there is no use in being mad when it doesn't go your way, because that is how fate wanted it to be."
Now THAT is a very Stoic perspective (a la Marcus Aurelius)!
"Is line 66 an unfinished line??? There was a star next to it in my book, but I never looked it up because I didn't want it to give it away!!"
Well, GO LOOK IT UP!!!
"I may be reading a little too into this, but I know Virgil put her in here for a reason."
You can almost never read too much into Virgil. He does everything for a reason. Everything. I'm going to show you just how far this fact goes during the first two days of class.
"I haven't decided which one works yet, but I think both are feasible."
Why does it have to be one or the other? Couldn't it be both? In fact, couldn't there be other reasons/interpretations/etc. out there too? E.g. couldn't Hecuba believe that she is about to die (or at best, be taken prisoner and turned into a slave), know that her husband is about to die (for sure), and just want their last moments to be together? The more options you can think of, the richer your reading will turn out to be. Just remember you should be able to "back up" what you think by making references to the text.
"By the way Mr. V, I commented back on your comments to the first blog, can you look at them??"
Totally. I'll respond to them when I'm done here.
"Well, GO LOOK IT UP!!!"
DeleteThe note wasn't helpful!!! It didn't say anything about an unfinished line!!!
From my post on Parth's blog: "Some of this is a matter of things being 'lost' in translation. Virgil uses two distinct Latin concepts to refer to 'fate' in the Aeneid - 1) Fatum, -i (from For, Fari, Fatum "to speak") and 2) the Goddesses (the Parcae) embodying the idea of 'destiny'. The etymological relationship between Fatum, -i and its verb (Fatum is the perf. pass. participle) is essential. a Fatum is a future event that has been decreed or spoken - i.e. by a God (Jupiter, usually). The Parcae, however, are goddesses responsible for *everyone's* destiny, including those of the other Gods.
This makes a lot more sense!! Thanks for clearing that up!!
You can almost never read too much into Virgil. He does everything for a reason. Everything. I'm going to show you just how far this fact goes during the first two days of class.
Teachers say that a lot about authors. Do you think some authors just say, "I just feel like putting this in my book. I don't have any particular reason"? Not Virgil in particular, because I do believe, with him, everything is put into the epic on purpose, but it's so hard to believe that every word in every piece of literature I've read was thought out.
"The note wasn't helpful!!! It didn't say anything about an unfinished line!!!"
DeleteThe line is 'unfinished' in the Latin, meaning that it's not a complete line of dactylic hexameter. What that means for us and how we should interpret it are up for debate. Some people would say that 'obviously' Virgil hadn't gotten around to fixing it before he died. Others could argue that we can't presume that - maybe Virgil wanted to leave the line 'unfinished' for some sort of dramatic effect. It's really a debate that is tough, since it all hinges on presumptions about Virgil's thoughts and plans (the intentional fallacy again).
"Teachers say that a lot about authors. Do you think some authors just say, "I just feel like putting this in my book. I don't have any particular reason"?"
Isn't that still a reason? ;-)
"Not Virgil in particular, because I do believe, with him, everything is put into the epic on purpose, but it's so hard to believe that every word in every piece of literature I've read was thought out."
Well, let's base things on life experience. How often have you written a paper for class and not thought, on some level or another, about every word on the page? I'm not going to be so bold as to argue that the author 'intends' (that fallacy just keeps popping up!) every single possible meaning, allusion, interpretation, etc. when writing something, but I do think every word was was put there for *some* reason (even if we can't figure out what it was). Lots of critics have raised this point, and there's a whole school of literary analysis that says the only things that really exist in a text are those which we read into them (Reader Response Criticism). The French theorist Roland Barthes wrote an essay titled "La mort de l'Auteur" ("The Death of the Author") wherein he essentially argues that the author's intentions, thoughts, etc. are utterly irrelevant to the meaning of a text. It's a bit far for most people, but not an unreasonable argument. The Latin verb for "to read" (lego) also (and more originally) meant "to pick." I like to think that the Romans recognized that what we read is very much determined by what we "pick" up from the text based on our perspectives. (In reality, I think it was more the idea of 'picking' letters off the page.)
I think the challenge is that lots of teachers, myself included, often shortcut the complexities of how we arrive at literary interpretation in favor of trying to get students to see the point of a lesson. It's a tough balance, since a lot of the process depends on ideas that many people (including lots of very well respected people with PhDs) think high school students just aren't ready to handle (see, e.g., Suassure or Derrida). I don't really agree with that standpoint, and am working very hard to bring these more complex ideas down to the high school instructional level (if you haven't noticed), but it's a long road. I believe that the limits imposed by the unwillingness to expose students to these forms of analysis make a lot of what literary critics and teachers do seem like 'magic' and very 'made up' to students since they don't understand the process we use to arrive at conclusions and ideas. It's like teaching algebra without showing work - how are students supposed to figure out the pattern without a guide? This raises questions like yours and, I think, in the end, disillusions many great readers and students from the study of literature, since it makes the whole field seem completely arbitrary. (I know this paragraph is a bit off topic, but I wanted to take the time to address your question seriously.)
I forgot to mention this in my post, but if you're intrigued enough about the question of Virgil's nuance and intentionality (for lack of a better term) in his writing, you can read ahead. If you check the "Course Materials" folder on Google Docs, you should find a folder labeled "Martindale, C. (ed.). 2000. The Cambridge Companion to Virgil." Inside that folder there's an article: 15. Farrell, J. "The Virgilian intertext." I'll be assigning that article for homework on the first day of class. Joseph Farrell is one of the world experts on Virgil, a rockstar in Classics, and his article does a lot to bring to light just how nuanced Virgil is in his work and ideas. If you'd like to get a head start and look at it now, it certainly won't hurt you, though I do hope you make sure to get your other reading and responses done along the way.
Delete"I was wondering if morals changed when you were put in different situations (such as war) or if a person just disregarded them to do what is appropriate at the time. The way the Greeks destroyed Troy was in my mind similar to the rape of Nan King or a genocide. What happens inside a person's head to make them do awful things to another person? Do people just blot out what they're doing in their mind and assume because they didn't think about it, it was acceptable? I feel as if there is a difference to defending or fighting for your country and totally wreaking havoc on the other side, but I'm not sure where people draw that line or how they do. Do the havoc wreakers know what they do is wrong and absolutely repulsive? I'm not sure."
ReplyDeleteThe ability to provoke thoughts like these consistently over millennia is what has made the Aeneid arguably the most important literary work in western literature besides the Bible. I'm glad to see that it's got you questioning and thinking so deeply already. In general, the greatest power of literature is it's ability to make you think about things and ask questions from an infinite number of perspectives. There's a quote (from George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series): "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." The sort of questions you raise here are the types of questions for which I'm not really sure we'll ever have *right* answers. But that's what makes them so deep and so interesting. Coming to terms with things like these is the process that makes us - or at least those of us who choose to come to terms with them - truly human. Keep thinking about them and see if you can at least come up with answers that work for you for now. Sometimes that's the best we can do. But feel free to share whatever you come up with; we should always work to learn what we can about life from one another.
P.S. - Sorry for the massive responses. I swear that I only reply when I've got something that I think is worth contributing. Your posts just happen to solicit a lot of that.
In general, the greatest power of literature is it's ability to make you think about things and ask questions from an infinite number of perspectives.
DeleteI think that's why I like to read so much. Thanks for this comment, it's been my favorite so far.
"I think that's why I like to read so much."
DeleteMe too! :-)