Scene with my quote!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5JoMYsYQr0

The above clip is a scene of Volpone, that actually includes the quote I chose for my wildcard!

My Version of Volpone

If I were to be the director of a Volpone, I would take the play in a more modern direction. Right from the beginning of the play a quote stuck said my Mosca stood out to me. “You are not like the thresher that doth stand/ With a huge flail, watching a head of corn/ And, hungry, dares not taste the smallest grain/ But feeds on mallows and such bitter herbs/ Nor like the merchant who hath filled his vaults/ With Romagnia and rich Canadian wins/ Yet drinks the lees of Lombard’s vinegar.” This quote is obviously describing Volpone’s work ethic. The occupations described work hard for their living, and do not want to squander any profits they might be able to make. This is the opposite for Volpone. Volpone doesn’t work hard, he is a con man. With the money he “makes” he doesn’t save, he squanders.

After the above quote particularly, I think that it would be interesting to make my version of the play take place in modern day New York City. I just recently watch the movie Wall Street, and I could see how a business setting relates. I would make Volpone a CEO of a large company. He gets his money by conning other businesses, and has multiple bank accounts in other countries.

On stage, the play would take place mostly in offices. Volpone would be sitting in his office at a large desk in the beginning with many expensive things surrounding him. Everything that surrounds Volpone would be elaborate and costly. The apartments that would be in the play would also be large and Volpone would have a pent house.

Volpone would always be in Armani suits , and Mosca would always be in something much less elaborate. The Corbaccio, Corvino, and Voltore would be in nice suits as well. Cecilia would wear something the represents her purity, while still being conservative, since Corvino is so jealous and overbearing.

I would have an all star cast for this play. I would definitely have George Clooney be Volpone. He would do a good job of pretending to be sick, while also addressing the con man personality that Volpone really is. Clooney would do a great job acting the part of playing with Corbaccio, Corvino, and Voltore’s heads. Cecilia would be played by Nicole Kidman. I think that she would do a good job of being a strong character that would be committed to her husband, God and her morals. I would like Matt Damon to play Mosca because he would be good at being deceiving. Corbaccio, Corvino, and Voltore could be played by Richard Gere, Jack Nocolson, Russel Crow. I think that my version of the play would be very interesting to watch and the characters would really bring the different dimensions to the play.

Book Trailers

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Sir+Thomas+More+Utopia+book+trailers&aq=f

Check out some of these book trailers for Utopia. I think it's interesting the different spins people take on it.

Utopia versus The Republic

As I have mentioned before, I am particularly interested how Utopia and The Republic deal with the same aspect of a perfect society. We know the concept of Utopia’s idea of everyone essentially being the same. In Utopia, people are required to do a certain amount of time doing things that contribute to society. In The Republic, in a perfect society, all the people are urged to have the same morals, however everyone has a different place in the society by selection. The real question is, which type of society creates a better society for people to live?

For those of us that haven’t read the The Republic, let me tell you about it. In this “perfect society,” citizens concentrate on what make a person a good person. There are 3 types of good. The first is a good we want for what it actually is, for example enjoying something. The second is a good we want for its consequences, for example being healthy. The third is a good we want even though it is a burden, because of its consequences, for example medical treatment when sick. Citizens are expected to be good people, and choose justice over injustice. In the “perfect society” depending on how “good” people are, they are chosen for different jobs. The leaders and guardians have the highest social status in society.

Guardians are the protectors of the society that keep it peaceful and safe for citizens. Children are taught the characteristics that guardians should have at a young age. As they get older they are chosen for guardian status based on their success in certain criteria. You might think that this sounds similar to our society. Don’t you think this sounds similar to our society? If you do well in school, or internship, don’t you usually get a good job?Here’s the catch. Once you have your place in society, it is your permanent place. If you are a worker, you will always be until you are too old, if you are a guardian, you have to train new ones.

So now I ask you, what do you think of these two different societies? What are the pros and cons of each?

Want to know more about Thomas More?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d1wi4eQjNU

I wanted to know a little bit more, and videos always help me. This girl is, um, interesting, but she knows her stuff!

Letter

The Effectiveness of First Person

As we know, England during the 1600’s was not the place to be if you practiced a religion that was not tolerated. In the case of Dorothy Waugh, being a Quaker was not the route to take if you wanted to harmoniously live in the English society. During this time, women also did not have the rights that men did. They were still stick in the time when speaking against a husband was a punishable actions.

A Relation Concerning Dorothy Waugh’s Cruel Usage by the Mayor of Carlisle spoke to me. Through her writing about her experiences, I learned far more than I would ever learn by reading a text book. The fact that she was also a woman writer also made her writing more meaningful to me. The way she wrote so descriptively I could really feel for her. Like I said before, I learned a lot from this short personal account. I found it alarming the persecution that Dorothy faced even when she traveled to America. I thought that anyone who moved their life to the new world would be allowed to practice whatever religion they wanted. I thought it to be ironic that even after the Quakers followed the Puritans they were still persecuted.

Dorothy was tortured for her religious views, but also because of the fact that she was a woman. She was put in a torture device used on women who “scolded” their husbands in public. The mayor wanted to make a mockery of her, and her religious views so that no one would follow the same suit. The type of brutality did not promote a very promising life for Quakers, or women during this time period.

What I thought to be disturbing was how this would never have been reported in a newspaper in the 1600’s. Today, even the seemingly miniscule information it published. Dorothy was only published in The Lamb’s Defense Against Lies, which was made up of various accounts of Quakers being mistreated and persecuted.

First person writings are a very effective way of reporting the news and documenting events in history. If during my history classes in grade school, high school, and college we were given this type of information to read, I feel everyone in the class would have gotten more from the curriculum.

The Republic

In a comment I left about Beowulf, I mentioned Plato's The Republic. Below is a link that is an online copy of The Republic. It is a very interesting read and I suggest everyone read it at some point of their lives!

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

Good morning Love

John Donne is obviously a poet who knows how to write about love. What I wanted to concentrate on in this week’s rumination is how Donne uses the ideas of waking and sleeping in many of his poems. The common cliché that lovers often say to each other gravitates around something like, “you are the first person I think of when I wake up, and the last person I think about before I sleep.” With the few Donne poems we were assigned, the most striking occurrence was the mentioning of morning and night in relation to love.

The titles of three of Donne’s poems reference morning. These poems include, “The Good-Morrow,” “The Sun Rising,” and “Break of Day.” These three poems deal with the narrator ‘greeting’ morning in different ways. For instance in “The Good-Morrow,” the narrator speaks about not knowing what they did before they loved. They talked about a good morning waking their soul and adventuring through love. There is an interesting comparison made about discovering new worlds. I took this as the narrator promoting discovering a new world of love, just as a map would lead a sea-discoverer to a new land. It talks about that good morning is the start of these adventures, so morning is put in a good light in this poem.

In “The Sun Rising” the narrator doe not welcome the sun. The narrator feels that the “unruly sun” calls on the lovers in bed and “must to thy motions lover’s seasons run.” The speaker, who just happens to be a king, in the beginning of the poem felt as though he was more important and powerful than the sun. He did not welcome it at first. Later in the poem, the tone changes. He speaks of how if it weren’t for the light of morning sun he would not be able to see the wonderful woman lying next to him in bed. By the end of the poem, once again the morning light is an important factor in this narrator’s story of love.

Lastly, the main character in the poem “Break of Day” is actually the Light, that comes from the morning. Throughout the poem, it is Light that actually interferes with the lovers. It is written from the perspective of a woman, who is angry that the lovers must part people Light makes an appearance.

What is the fascination with morning, light, the sun, ect. when it come to Donne and love? Another cliché that I believe Donne would agree with is when a person says, “the sun rises and sets on a person.” Donne has to think that love is fresh and awakening, since he pairs it up with morning sun in his poems. We also see how he may pair love up with night and darkness and togetherness. Either way, it is clear that Donne enjoys using “Morning” as a major part of his poems.

Have someone read you Shakespeare!

I was reading some of the sonnets to myself, and I thought it might be helpful to have someone read them to me as well. Check out the links below. Its really interesting to hear them in the voice, and I was able to get a better grasp on them as well!

Sonnet 55- James Earl Jones!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HMVUoLm3dQ

Sonnet 106

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VYAefoqLtE

Sonnet138

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAKJUyUILvU

The Ultimate Love Album

Celine Dion “Falling into You”

This is the ultimate album of love. When I first heard of this assignment, this album was the first thing to come to mind. The album first couple of songs “Its All Coming Back To Me Now,” and “Because You Loved Me” talk about how wonderful it is being in love. About how it feels to have someone to depend on and how much better a person can make another. Most of the songs in the middle of the album talk about how just the same thing. Some songs talk about more physical aspects of love, such as “Seduces Me” and “Declaration of Love.” The song “All By Myself” and “I Don’t Know” deals with the loss of love. They talk about not wanted to be without love. The major theme of the album is how love is the basis of life. Every song talks about how important and uplifting a life with love is, and how without it, life would be hard.

Because You Loved Me

All By Myself

It's All Coming Back To Me Now
Because You Loved Me
Falling Into You
Make You Happy
Seduces Me
All By Myself
Declaration Of Love
Dreaming Of You
I Love You
If That's What It Takes
I Don't Know
River Deep, Mountain High
Your Light
Call The Man
Fly

The Effectiveness of Spenser's Sonnets

Let's face it, poetry is not for everyone. Even after the Pass Reading strategies, a lot of these poems do not make as much sense to me as they should. After completing the poems for this week's reading, I am able to say that Edmund Spenser’s collection of sonnets really impacted me.

Why was it Spenser’s poems that reached me? Was it because they were short? Perhaps, but that’s only a part of it. In terms of poems, it comes down to the reader’s personality at the time what reaches them. The effectiveness of any given poem can vary for a person from day to day. A poem that a person loves today, they might not like it next week. A reader’s mood is what sets a poem up for failure or flight.

I would say that Spenser’s poems reached me this week because I felt that each sonnet had a short story behind it that I could relate to. The sonnets had its own themes or situations, each containing a different story that seemed to be written about different people. It almost reminded me of one of those movies with an all star cast, where all the different stories of love eventually intertwined.

The other thing that Spencer’s sonnets from Amoretti had in common was that they were about joyous love. This is where we can see firsthand that a poets’ life does come into play. Spencer had just married Elizabeth Boyle a year before he published these sonnets. The effectiveness of a poem really comes down to the reader. Spencer’s poems reached me because it was enjoyable reading and hearing other people’s descriptions of joyous love.

Another reason that these sonnets in particular may have effected some more than others were their concentration on the idea of love. It’s amazing how the idea of love, and what it means to feel it and hang onto, it hasn’t changed much. The idea of beauty and brains are talked about throughout Spencer’s poems. However, two of his sonnets contradict each other greatly. Sonnet 64 is a poem that creates vivid imagery for the reader. The poem describes a woman’s beauty is terms of flowers. It describes her lips, cheeks, eyes, neck, ect. in terms of various flowers. In Sonnet 79, Spencer writes about how physical beauty is not important and intelligence is what he looks for. The last line in this sonnet is actually, “All other fayre, lyke flowers, untimely fade (14)”. This is a very interesting last line.

These two poems show exactly how wonderful of a poet Edmund Spencer is. How one poet could write from the perspective of seemingly two completely different people. This brings us back to the point of how it may feel that all of his sonnets are telling the love of different people. The effectiveness of poems come from the eyes of the reader, and Spenser’s poems were the ones that reached me the most.

Rumination 1: Beowulf. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even.

“Don’t get mad, get even.” In other words, get revenge. The word ‘revenge’ has many negative connotations. How much can be accomplished by achieving it? In the epic poem, Beowulf, revenge seemed to be the driving force behind every major event. It seemed ironic to me that ‘Revenge’ seemed to be the leading role in this poem, and God seemed to play the supporting actor. In a poem that seemed set on bringing forth God and religion, the plot was composed of situations and characters that were overwhelmed with the need for revenge.

After reading the introduction to the poem, I became very interested with the idea of Christianity within the poem. I paid close attention to any mentioning of God I came across. God was brought up countless times within the poem, leading me to believe that it was intended to reflect Christian beliefs. For example, line 92 says, “how the Almighty had made the earth.” This line almost directly correlates to the Nicene Creed which says, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” In line 927 and 928, Hrothgar says, “First and foremost, let the Almighty Father/ be thanked for this sight.” This is relevant because within the Christian religion, God is also referred to as Father. The characters within the poem referred to God often, which made the theme of revenge ironic for this poem.

Almost all of Beowulf’s events were stemmed by a character’s need for revenge. Right from the beginning, Grendel was described as “Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark/ nursed a hard grievance” (86-87). Grendel killed the Danes to seek revenge for being condemned. Once Grendel was killed, his mother wanted to avenge her son. She sought after and killed more Danes including Aeshere, Hrothgar’s advisor and friend.

It wasn’t only Grendel and his mother who acted out of revenge. Beowulf was the hero in the poem who was a great believer in revenge. In like 1384 and 1385, Beowulf said, “Wise sir, do not grieve. It is always better/ to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.” It seems almost hypocritical with the views of Christianity. When he actually killed Grendel’s mother the poem talked about Beowulf saying, “Beowulf in his fury now settled that score… Beowulf cut the corpse’s head off” (1584-1585, 1590). Beowulf had agreed to avenge the death of Aeshere, Hrothgar’s advisor and friend, however he took it to an extreme next level. The only need to cut off Grendel’s mother’s head was as a clear symbol of revenge.

In the end, for a poem that talks so much about God and by the seemingly monotheistic practices of the characters, it seems ironic how everything is triggered by revenge. Even our epic hero, Beowulf, is thirsty for revenge, which I thought to be a very interesting controversy within the poem.

First time on the blog!

I've been playing around with my new blog and it's great! I feel like this is going to be a great way to learn about technology while taking a class at the same time. Can't wait to do more with it!