Mapping the Ancient World

This is the third play of The Oresteia. In this story Orestes is being judged for the murder of his mother Clytaemnestra who killed his father Agamemnon. Orestes killed his mother as an act of vengeance but at the same time he was encouraged by Apollo. The trial of Orestes was addressed by Athena, who was trying to find justice at all time. On the other hand, “The Furies”, the goddess of vengeance, want to punish Orestes and Apollo was defending the murder with very “interesting” reasons.

I would like to focus my discussion in the most important element of this story: justice. Should be Orestes punished for this crime? And more important, how can be he get away with murder?

Scholar Article

“The Problem of the Eumenides of Aeschylus”

The central argument of this article is that the author does not have any adequate ground for Orestes’ acquittal. According to the article in this story there is not trace of grace, pity or higher justice.

Author: R. W. Livingstone

Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 45, Part 1 (1925), pp. 120-131

http://www.jstor.org/stable/624909

Agamemnon’s story can be seen as an example of Greek tragedy. Upon the Greek’s victory at Troy, the people of Argos eagerly await the return of their king, Agamemnon. However, the queen Clytaemnestra has different plans for the king. As an act of vengeance for the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia, Clytaemnestra murders Agamemnon upon his return. In the play, the queen is portrayed as untrustworthy and believed to be incapable of committing such an act. On the contrary, she proved to be correct in her news of the war, and she successfully avenges her daughter. Is she then a character who conforms to female stereotypes or one who defies them?

Scholarly Article

In the second half of The Book of the City of Ladies, Lady Reason gives Christine numerous examples of powerful women in history who have left their mark on the world. During my discussion, I wish to concentrate on some examples of these notable woman, the contibutions they adorned society with, and what Christine’s reasons were for including the stories of these ladies.

The article I will use to accompany my discussion by Amy Hollywood, delves into Christine’s motives for briefing her audience on the lives of these women throughout history. In addition to this, Hollywood touches on the significance of these women in regard to the role women play in society today.

Discussion Question:

Name one notable woman in history and describe the contribution(s) she has made to society.

Article Citation:

In The Book of the City of Ladies, I wil focus on the first half of the book, which is including section 1 to section 15. The book open with Christine reading reading from Matheolus’s Lamentations, which is a work of attacking women and marrige. Upon reading these words, Christine becomes upset and feels ashamed to be a women. She challenged that why the God didn’t create women perfectly, since all men were slandering and attacking women in the society. In such context, I think not just Christine, most of the women in the society back then would believe that they must truely be bad because God did something bad to them. Until lady Reason appear to Christine and address her question by answering that god did not created a vile thing when he created women. Also, Lady Reason assigned Christine to built a wall to protect women from attacking. So I think this book is not just about Reason assign Christine to built a wall around the women city, but also about how christine built a wall to protect women. My reading question is: In the last paragraph of Chapter 15, it states that ” but we must follow it up with many more stones in order to raise high the wall of the building”. What do you think the “stones” symbolize?

Before I get to my leading question, I would like to talk about how Lady Reason dispel Christine’s past belief, which is that women must truely be bad. She believes all the work she read rather than using reason to discover the accomplishment of women. Christine creats the Lady Reason in the book, to give herself and the other women reason to believe that women are not evil or useless but instead have a significant place within society. To built a wall that would never fall, if Lady Reason didn’t carry away the uncorrect belief from women, it is impossible to built a good foundation to support the wall.

Citation:

The other half of the text is narrated by Shahrazad father, the vizier. He tells his daughter the first story “The Tale of the Ox and the Donkey” in order to warn her that the idea of becoming the King Shahrayar’s wife and the effort of trying to save the women of this Kingdom is foolish. She will also killed by the King no matter how brave and smart she is. And the second story “The Tale of the Merchant and His Wife” implied that the vizier will have no choice but beat her daughter mercilessly in order to change her mind. In the text, it is not hard to find a lot of stereotypes that we encounter again and again in real life. For example, the stereotype of violent Arabian men, the stereotype of  that women are emotional and stupid, and the stereotype of that Arabian women should be submissive.

With all these in mind, I decided to look more into stereotype regarding Arabian and Muslim that still exist in nowadays while my partner Boran Kim will look into gender inequality and gender stereotype in her research. And I found out that it still broadly exist in today’s world. As Mavin Wingfield and Bushra Karaman pointed out in their article “Arab Stereotype and American Educators”, the opening song in Aladdin and Jasmine film sets the tone,

“Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam, where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s Barbaric, but hey, it is home.”

Thus the film immediately characterizes the Arab world as alien, exotic, and “other”. Arab American see this film as perpetuating the tired stereotype of the Arab world as a place of desserts and camels, of arbitrary cruelty and barbarism.

So my question are,

In One Thousand and One Night, do you find any other implicit or explicit stereotype ? Where are they and why? Has there ever been a time in life that you feel you’ve been stereotyped?

Thank you!

After I read the first 7 pages which is my part, I realized that the story contains the topic of gender inequality. In the story, king Shahrazad’s wife was killed for excursion. However, the Kings used to have a lot of concubine beside there wives. Thus, I would like to focus on the women’s right from the past to today, from Islam even to western women.
According to the the article, “Gender Inequality In The U.S. Today” by Laura Ferro, there still exist gender inequality in jobs and education. The author says men are still occupying most high position jobs than women, and many women have been paid less than men. Thus, today we will discuss women’s status in this society.

Hi, here is the link of Timeling of Marco Polo.

http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0AijROJIHQ_4NdFptTlhMb2txVjI1MlA4LS1wc2xmUWc&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&maptype=toner&lang=en&height=650

Thanks!

Hi everyone! Below is the link to my timeline:

http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0ArB1Sz8ZyyBEdDRrNVR1MnlUWThlN2JUMks4N2JqTkE&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&maptype=toner&lang=en&height=650

The theme of my timeline of events is the occurrence of Athena’s help in Odysseus’ successful journey back home.

Hi everyone,

Please find the link below to view my digital project on Marco Polo: The Diversity of the World.

http://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/builder#play/ahJzfmd3ZWItdG91cmJ1aWxkZXJyEQsSBFRvdXIYgICAhMKSqggM

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!