Famous Last Words: Through the Looking Glass

This week I read about Britomart in The Faerie Queene, and I really enjoyed that story. As per usual, the women did not get a lot of the rights and respect that I would like, but I did enjoy that it was about a female knight who was breaking the mold and going out to find her love. That style of writing was really enjoyable to me, and flowed really well. I did not realize that The Faerie Queene was so long, and I do not know if I would want to read all of the books published for the entire epic, but I did enjoy the short segment that I read. I finished up the second half of Through the Looking Glass too, and was extremely impressed by the intricate detail of Lewis Carroll's writing. There were so many ways that he fit a chess match into his story without being obvious or obtuse. I would really like to go back and read the entire story. I also did not realize that Alice was only seven years old in both those stories, because she has been portrayed as so much older in recent movies that I have seen. There is kind of a darkness in his writing, or at least a queerness that is not childlike at all, although I think a child could enjoy these stories very much. But it is interesting to read them as an adult because you get the sense of something much different when reading the exact same words. I also think the text has a special prose that a movie simply cannot capture, particularly since Through the Looking Glass focuses so much on poetry. All in all I really enjoyed my readings this week and I am kind of glad I have forced myself into doing some extra credit so I can do these readings.

Life-size statue of Alice Through the Looking-Glassin the grounds of Guildford Castle

(Wikipedia)

Famous Last Words: King Arthur

This week I had some readings that I really enjoyed. I read the King Arthur unit, both parts, and they were very different from what my perception of the Lancelot stories were from popular media. There was a lot more focus on the actions of the knights and how grand they were, and a bunch of focus on how some of the knights were good enough based on their passed sins and some were not. I found myself having some sympathy for Lancelot, because a lot of the story focused on how he could have been the greatest knight the world had ever seen, could have found the Holy Grail, but because of his past sins he had to sit and watch others do it. That seemed pretty harsh to me, but then at the end they redeemed him. It just seemed like they made him suffer his whole life and then at the end they were like "Oh, its all okay". But after saying all that, after King Arthur died and they talk about how sad Lancelot is and blah blah blah, he still went to Guinevere and asked her to go with him. So maybe he did not care enough about the Holy Grail at all. I also thought the whole knights going around looking for ways to kill themselves heroically was super overrated and dumb. But I enjoyed the style of storytelling and how it jumped from person to person. There were a few characters that I would have enjoyed learning more about, including Merlin and the Lady of the Lake. Women did not get a very good rap in these stories (as they usually do not in older tales) including King Arthur's sister and Merlin's girlfriend. I might be kind of mean to the knights too if they were always trying to run off and die too, though.

Sir Launcelot in the Queen's Chamber by Dante Rossetti (1857) 

Link

Famous Last Words: Creepy Fairytales

I really liked my story this week, I feel like I often try to do really deep or meaningful stories which I think are important in their own right, but sometimes it is fun to just do a funny little story that does not have to have some huge meaning. I also read the Emperor's New Clothes for extra credit this week and I thoroughly enjoyed that too. The Native American tales are really beautiful and I love how they incorporate animals and give the animals so much respect, but I am ready to move on to a new genre. I feel like I have read a million Native American stories, and that is probably because most of them are one or two pages, not like the longer stories that I have been reading in the other units. I read some of Andersen's fairy tales for this weeks extra credit readings, and I really enjoyed them. The little mermaid in particular was very different from what I expected. It is always a little sad/creepy to me when I read the original fairy tales and they are pretty dark and gruesome, not at all like the cute Disney versions that I grew up on. Like in the Little Mermaid, every time she walks she feels like there are knives stabbing her feet, but she continues to do it to impress the Prince. She also does not even end up with the Prince, she ends up trying to earn salvation and get to let her soul live on rather than end like the mermaid souls do. That does not make for a good bedtime story. But I don't know, something about them being dark and a little sad also makes them more realistic. All in all I enjoyed this weeks readings but am ready to move onto something fresh.

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