Gods, Monsters and Windmills

INSIDE MAN
A cop has to talk down a bank robber after the criminal’s perfect heist spirals into a hostage situation.

THE HANGOVER
A Las Vegas-set comedy centered around three groomsmen who lose their about-to-be-wed buddy during their drunken misadventures, then must retrace their steps in order to find him.

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION
Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

THE HELP
An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maid’s point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.

THE ARTIST
Hollywood, 1927: As silent movie star George Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, he sparks with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break.

FORREST GUMP
Forrest Gump, while not intelligent, has accidentally been present at many historic moments, but his true love, Jenny, eludes him.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
Blacksmith Will Turner teams up with eccentric pirate “Captain” Jack Sparrow to save his love, the governor’s daughter, from Jack’s former pirate allies, who are now undead.

The poetry of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) is considered the high point of Chinese poetry. Every educated Chinese during the Tang Dynasty was expected to be able to dash off a poem with grace, or at least technical competence. The poetry served as parting gifts, descriptions of pleasure excursions and journeys, praise of the imperial court, and criticism of policies.

Wang Wei’s (699-761) nature poems are compelling in their simplicity and quiet presentation of nature – this is achieved partly through his selective and disciplined attitude toward the poetic subject. He doesn’t attempt to describe an entire scene. For instance, “Deer Enclosure” doesn’t mention an animal but man, and in fact says that he is only heard, not seen. The poet’s language incorporates a simple juxtaposition of the massive and the minute, such as the mountain and moss.

Li Bo’s (701-762) poetry is a poetics of immediacy, the concept that poetic expression ought to be a spontaneous expression of emotion. His poems are dramatic—a contrast to other types of contemplative poetry—and through these dramatic elements he conveys the sense of poetic immediacy.

Du Fu (712-770) is considered the “poet-historian” of Chinese literature because he chronicles and criticizes the events of his time. He writes with a particular poetic realism in both thematic subject and language. He neither dampens emotion, nor exalts it beyond normal experience.

“DJJ 1 Catacombes de Paris” by Djtox

The Catacombs of Paris

Visiting the tombs

Face of Mae West (1935) by Salvador Dali

History Painting (1626) by Rembrandt

From Shakespeare’s As You Like It

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. (II.vii.139-66).

The Ship by Salvador Dali

Hell (1485) by Hans Memling

Mirage by Dali

The Great Day of His Wrath (1851) by John Martin

Stephanie Desouza’s Presentation

Charlene’s Work of Art

Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) by Dali

Renoir’s Image

From an edition of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium showing Lady Fortune spinning her wheel.

In the seventh canto of the Inferno, when the Pilgrim asks his guide who is Fortune and “what is she like / who holds all worldly wealth within her fists” (Musa 65), he responds:

For worldly splendors, He decreed the same

and ordained a guide and general ministress

who would at her discretion shift vain wealth

from nation unto nation, house to house,

without a chance of mankind’s interference;

…………………………………………

Your knowledge has no influence on her;

she provides for change, she judges, and she rules

her domain as do the other gods their own.

Her changing changes never take a rest;

necessity keeps her in constant motion;

men quickly come and go to take their turn. (Musa 65)

Her role is clearly defined and though “she is blest” (Musa 67), she “turns her sphere and, blest, turns it with joy.” The Pilgrim is incapable of denying his desire for heavenly intelligence, suggesting that man must therefore submit to Fortune since “vain wealth” changes hands at her will. She is constantly rearranging the world to alter the fates of men. Boethius echoes this sentiment in Philosophiae consolationis when Fortune claims it is impossible for her to remain stagnant:

Shall the insatiable desire of men tie me to constancy, so contrary to my custom? This is my force, this is the sport which I continually use. I turn about my wheel with speed, and take a pleasure to turn things upside down. Ascend, if thou wilt, but with this condition, that thou thinkest it not injury to descend when the course of my sport so requireth. (Stewart and Rand 181)

The significance—if not beauty—of Fortune is her ever-changing nature, which gives men hope that their fate may improve when things are seemingly difficult and hopeless.

A Tale from the Decameron (1916)

by John William Waterhouse

From Wikipedia on The Decameron’s frame story:

In Italy during the time of the Black Death, a group of seven young women and three young men flee from plague-ridden Florence to a deserted villa in the countryside of Fiesole for two weeks. To pass the evenings, every member of the party tells a story each night, except for one day per week for chores, and the holy days in which they do no work at all, resulting in ten nights of storytelling over the course of two weeks. Thus, by the end of the fortnight they have told 100 stories.

Frame Tale is an open-ended genre, in which an outer story or “frame” provides a structure within which other, shorter stories can be told. In the first frame, the Prologue, we get the event of telling the story.

Some examples are the Odyssey, Metamorphoses, Thousand and One Nights, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Some reasons for frame tales:

• a frame tale is a way of organizing short stories
• a frame tale allows a narrator to go outside of a linear narrative
• a frame tale shows that things affect one another and that actions cause reactions – often what happens in an inner story will affect the frame story as well
• a frame tale gives background to a story
• a frame tale gives an explanation of why things happen as they do

Some characteristics of frame tales:

• they are associated with travel
• each frame must be told by an eye witness
• they will have multiple characters and multiple perspectives
• not every frame is thematically joined to every other frame
• they tend to be open-ended
• they allow for a diversity of experiences, and not always positive ones

Ultimately, frame tales are evocative of boundlessness and infinity, which is a characteristic of ancient Arabic culture.