Reading Diary Part A Week 13

The Thumbling

The Brothers Grimm Unit

I love all the Grimm tales. I was familiar with most, but the one I found really interesting because I have never heard of it was “The Thumbling.” A husband and wife want a child to liven up their house. The say that even a child as big as a thumb would be fine. The wife has a baby after nine months the exact size of a thumb. They love the child. The child grows up and wants to help his dad. He hops on a horse and talks in its ear and takes the horse to his father, who is working in the forest. Two men see him and buy him from his father. The boy is a trickster, and escapes the men by crawling into a mouse hole. Then he comes across two robbers looking for a way to steal someone’s riches and tells them he will help, when the men place him in the persons house he starts yelling to wake everyone up. The thumbling then falls asleep on some hay and then is eaten by a cow. In the cows belly he yells and the woman milking the cow is frightened and the cow is killed. When the thumbling is crawling out of the stomach of the cow, the stomach is eaten by a wolf. He tells the wolf he knows where there is more food and the wolf goes to a house and crawls in and eats all the food. When the wolf tries to leave he is too fat, and the boy starts yelling. This is his parent’s house and they hear him inside the wolf and kill the wolf and they all live happily ever after.

Picture Attribution

By Philipp Grot Johann (1841-1892) (http://ru-book-illustr.livejournal.com/231754.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Diary Part B Week 12

Robin and Maid Marian

Robin comes across a Bishop and Robin is in disguise. The Bishop tells Robin that he is taking him to the king, and robin begs for mercy but the Bishop says no. Then robin blows his bugle and his men appear, the Bishop begs for mercy but robin says no. Then little john and Robin steal the man’s gold and make him dance while they escape.

A Woman hides Robin Hood from the Bishop. This is another retelling of how Robin robbed the Bishop. It is pretty much the same story but in this story Robin is dressed as an old woman I think. They rob the Bishop and Little John makes the Bishop sing so that they can escape.

This is the story of Robin and Maid Marian. The story starts out telling how rich and noble and beautiful Marian is. Marian goes into the woods looking for Robin. She is in disguise and so is Robin so when they meet they begin to fight. Robin admires her vallour. They both discover that each is in disguise after a while and then they celebrate. This story ends with Robin and Marian living together.

Picture Attribution
Robin Hood and Maid Marian (poster, ca. 1880)Category:Robin HoodCategory:Maid Marian

Reading Diary Part A Week 12

Robin Hood

The Robin Hood Ballads Unit

Oh These are in song form. So the first story has Robin hood drinking with his men when he finds out about the shooting contest. Robin boasts that he will hit the mark better than anyone. So Robin killed 14 men. Then Robin escapes.

I think I have heard this song before. The robin hood and little john. Talks about meeting little john when he was 20 years old. He was 7 ft tall. Robin hood leaves him men and goes into the forrest and then he came across little john on a bridge. John and Robin fight with one another. John knocks Robin into the water. I think Robins men show up and I believe that John and them fight or are about to fight.Then Little John is named by Robin and he joins Robin in the forrest.

Robin and John try to rod a pedlar and they tell him that they will steal half his stuff. The pedlar tells them they won’t. The pedlar and John fight until John surrenders. Robin laughs at them and says he can beat the pedlar. The pedlar and Robin fight until Robin surrenders. Robin and John and the Pedlar become friends.
In Robin hood Delight the story starts out talking about robin, john, and will.

 They come across three men in the forest and there is an argument about something. Robin challenges them to a fight because they are cowards. Robin and his men could not beat the men. So they goto Nottingham and fight for three days and Robin still couldn’t get the men to give up. Robin says they are honorable and brave and they all become friends.

Picture Attribution\\

• CC BY-SA 3.0
• File:Robin Hood Memorial.jpg
• Uploaded by Soerfm
• Uploaded: February 1, 2013

Reading Diary Part B Week 11

Geoffrey Chaucer

The Cantebury Tales Unit

This is a new version I have never read before, so I am pretty stoked about diving into this unit. Most people are familiar with some of the Canterbury Tales such as the Miller’s Tale and a the Knights Tale, but I don’t see them listed here, the one familiar one I do see is the Wife of Bath’s tale. This is a great unit because it opens up the reader to the other tales they may not know about. 

A lot of people have trouble with Chaucer because of the language. I have found these stories are easiest to understand when I read them out loud. This version is good because the translation is good throughout all the stories. The Author’s did a good job of remaining to true the originals while making the stories accessible to readers that may not have an English Degree and that is always a good thing. 

One of the stories that really caught my attention because I have never heard of it before what the Story of the Summoner. This is a story about a summoner the meets I am guessing he Devil on a road. The two become friends and agree to share all the money they can get from people. The devil comes across a carter in the story but doesn't take his belongings because he doesn't truly offer it to him. The summoner wants to show off so he tries to force a woman to pay him money to avoid court, but he woman says she has done nothing wrong and says that she wants him to goto hell if he doesn't repent. The devil asks her if she means it and she says she does and takes the summoner to hell. The Summoner had been tricked into sharing all the money and prizes people would give them with the devil, so when the lady offered the devil the summoner the devil took him because he was a prize. 

Bibliography

"The Chaucer Story Book" by Eva March Tappan

Picture Attribution 

Description

Geoffrey Chaucer

Date 17th century, artwork is well over 100 years old.

Source Government Art Collection

Author anonymous portrait

Permission

(Reusing this file)

PD-Art

Reading Diary Part A Week 10

New Mexico Mountains

Apache Tales


This creation story is a bit confusing, it seems like it was translated exactly word for word which makes it a bit hard to follow. I think it would have been better if the author had expanded on the story a little more to give some context to the story and the characters. The first war is a bit confusing also at the beginning, but the story settles in and it becomes more of an easy story to follow. Though the story still seems dry and should be spiced up with some details. It is just too straight forward. These stories seem to be focused on the same character, Naiyenesgani.Naiyenesgani is almost a mesiah figure. He even leaves and promises a return, this is very similar to the story of Jesus returning one day. These stories don’t seem to have the same type of depth and richness as the Cherokee stories that I have read. They do begin to change once Naiyenesgani leaves his people and then the influence of western culture is somewhat seen in the stories, but these stories still come across as very dry. This is too bad because these stories really have a great potential for expansion.



Bibliography
Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico, collected and translated by P. E. Goddard

Picture Attribution

CC BY-SA 3.0
File:New Mexico Mountains.jpg
Uploaded by Atsme
Created: March 30, 2012

Reading Diary Part B Week 9

Black Rattlesnake

Cherokee Myths Unit

My Favorite story from the second half of this unit was the Rattlesnake’s Revenge. I think this story really highlights the connection between Native people and nature. Something that the wife saw as a threat she killed and for that she was punished. This really spoke to a broader issue for me because I think that we react to people and things in our lives that we don’t understand with hostility and we never think about the consequences of these actions. In the story the rattlesnake that the lady killed was the chief of the rattlesnakes and because she did not take the time to talk to the snake she made the mistake of acting before taking the opportunity to live with it in peace. Ultimately the husband who came across a whole bunch of snakes instead of panicking took the time to investigate the problem and nothing bad came of it for him. In fact because of his choice to seek understanding he was able to show the snakes that the Cherokee were honorable people and they eventually were given the ability to never be harmed by a rattlesnake again.

Picture Attribution

By Tim Vicekrs (St Louis zoo, self-made) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Diary Part A Week 9

The Hummingbird

Cherokee Myths Unit

I love Native folklore. My favorite has always been the Cherokee stories. These stories have multiple purposes. Most of them seem to focus around a reason for something to have existed or way in which a problem was solved. One of my favorites so far has been the tobacco story. This story reminded me so much of the origin of fire story. This is not a story about the origin of tobacco so it doesn’t resemble the story of fire in that way. Instead this story is like the origin of fire story because it is about not overlooking the ability of the least likely character to accomplish a deed that others have failed at, so this story second purpose is about overcoming obstacles. When all the other animals failed to get the tobacco the hummingbird steps up to try, but the other animals do not think it has a chance so they at first disregard it. After convincing them that it is possible the animals allow the hummingbird to go after the tobacco and the humming bird succeeds. I think this is one of the reasons I love these stories so much because they really seem to focus on the power of the individual regardless of physical appearance and assumed strength.

Picture Attribution

By User:Mdf (Image:Archilochus-alexandri-002.jpg) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Diary Part A Week 7

Japanese Goldfish

Japanese Fairy Tale Unit (Ozaki)

My Lord Bag of Rice

For some reason this reminds me of a mix of Beowulf and an Arthurian quest type of story. The spin of the dragon turning into a man is a nice twist. I wonder if most of the Japanese tales have people changing from animals to humans. So saliva is deadly to centipedes, but why did the weather and everything else goto crap once the centipede was killed? Hmmmmm, the rewards seem to be a bit crazy, the rice however reminded me of Jesus and the bread and fish miracle.

The golden boy

Like the other story this one focuses more on the surroundings of the action rather than the battle. While it is the end that brings the boy the glory, this story focuses on his upbringing and life as a child and there is very little about his adult life.

The man who did not wish to die



I didn’t know that hermits were like superhuman. I always just thought of them as being more a monk type of figure. A land without death or disease? These people wanted to die, so this is kind of a mirror of the wants of the main character. So this story teaches the value of death and how knowing you are going to die makes you appreciate living each day. The people in the perpetual life town could not be happy because there was no fear of death so everything was taken for granted.

Bibliography

Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki in the untexbooks web page http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/myth-folklore-unit-japanese-fairy-tales.html

Picture Attribution

Ryukin goldfish, Plate XIX in: "Goldfish and Their Culture in Japan", by Shinnosuke Matsubara. Bulletin of the Bureau of Fisheries, Vol. XXVIII 1908, Part I. P. 397.
Scan from the NOAA Photo Library:
Image ID: Image ID: fish3168, Fisheries Collection

Extra Reading Diary Week 5

Sinbad

The Unit on Sinbad is told in first person which I found interesting because I was able to get a sense of the mindset of Sinbad. I found it interesting to read the motivation that made Sinbad kick off his adventure was that he was going broke and was thinking about the future. Finding out that he was sea sick was funny because I have always thought of Sinbad as being of the Sea. This is because as a child I saw the movies about Sinbad and they always portrayed him as a Sailor, so seeing that he was sea sick for the first part of his voyage was something new.

The whale being mistaken as an island seemed a little bit of a stretch to me, though it did make me think of Moby Dick. Another thing that was interesting was that Sinbad was just a crewman and not the captain. I had always thought of him as being the Captain of the Ship. He gets shipwrecked and then taken in by the King. The king gives him a ship and he gets a crew and then he encounters his old captain that thought he was dead. This part of the story seemed to scream Dharma to me. The captain gives Sinbad his stuff back and Sinbad rewards him for being honest. This for some reason reminded me of the Ramayana.

The king and everyone else treats Sinbad much like people treat Rama. The king gives him a bride. Though Sinbad does not really exhibit the same personality of Rama. Though he takes the bride he is planning on returning home at the first chance he gets.

Sinbad is horrified understandably at the custom of Burying living spouses with the dead spouses. He tries to find a way out of this when his wife dies but if buried with her. He is given water and bread to eat. When a woman is lowered into the hole with her dead husband, Sinbad kills her and steals her supplies. This really kinda casts Sinbad in a poor light. He is not really coming across as heroic. He escapes by following an animal that leads him through a passage to the sea. He then returns and steals the Jewels from the dead. He seems like a really poor character. I am not sure what this is supposed to teach other than the fact that he continually cheats death.

Bibilography
Arabian Night's Entertainment by Yang

Picture Attribution
René Bull [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Diary Part B Week 4

Map of the Bengal Region
 

For this weeks story I read the Folktales of Bengal. The one I found most ineresting was the Origin of Opium. I picked this story because Indian folklore is full of origin stories and this is one that I have not read. I have read a few other Indian tales. I found that this one differed from the ones that I have read in that its length was much more than the others. This story is interesting because it works to explain the origin of the poppy tree and also teaches a lesson. This is something that seems to be a common thread in Indian folk-lore. The mouse kept wanting to be everything that it was not, and eventually that led to its death once it found happiness. So possibly the moral of this story is to find your happiness with who you are and don't attempt become someone you are not, because either way you are goin to end up dead.

Folktales of Bengal

Picture Attribution
A map showing the location of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea in southeast Asia.
Created by NormanEinstein, September 15, 2005.

The Odyssey Reading Diary Part A

Circe from the Odyssey

I love Greek Mythology so this week I read the Odyssey by Homer. One of my favorite parts of this story is the section on Circe. I have two ways of looking at this section. The first being that this is an example of a woman in Greek Mythology causing chaos and death for men, after all in the Illiad it was a woman that caused the war of Troy, and here it appears that this is another case of Women getting a bad rep in the Greek mythology. Still when I read this story I can’t help but think of Circe as an heroic woman of sorts. The men first see her and call out to her in hopes of finding refuge. They don’t look at her as a danger and they are more than happy to feast and get drunk. I love the character of Circe in this book because she turns men to pigs. By today’s standards this is would be how we would look at men that acted in the way most male figures did in the stories in Greek mythology. So I am able to view her as an empowered woman of sorts. The relationship she shares with Odysseus works to add to this view of empowerment. Though she does sleep with him and frees his men it is only after Odysseus proves he is worthy of her love that she gives into his wishes. So she in a way forces him to pass, albeit small, a set of heroic trials. The relationship does have a sad ending for Circe, but I feel that has more to do with Homer’s view on women than a character flaw that exists in Circe. So I tend to look at Circe over all as an empowered heroic woman in a male dominated Mythology.



The Odyssey







Bibliography
The Story of Circe from The Odyssey by Homer, translated into English by Tony Kline

Picture Attribution
By Wright Barker (British Painter, 1864-1941) (Wright Barker, 1889) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Gospel of Mark Reading Diary Part A

Jesus Performing the Miracle of Bread and Fish

The Gospel of Mark Unit

The Miracles of Jesus

I have never considered that there were different accounts in the bible about the life of Jesus, but in my spring semester I took a Bible class and realized that the disciples all differed in their telling of Jesus’s life.  This part of the Unit was particularly interesting to me because I have done a close reading before, but the way this unit is set up the chapter and verse numbers are removed so I was able to read this from a strictly literature point of view. I have never stopped to imagine the feelings the men must have felt when they realized that there was not enough bread. I have always thought that this was just kind of a silly thing to place into the Bible as a miracle. When reading this version of the Bible I began to realize that there was a crowd of people that showed up and should they not have had enough to feed the people then quite possibly the story of Jesus would have ended right there, so it was an important miracle because by performing this miracle Jesus was able to preach to the people and his message was then able to be spread out. This is not to say that there would have been no possibility that the Jesus we think of today would not have existed if this miracle didn’t happen. Still after seeing this unit in this format I was able to better connect with the story and understand why the miracle was placed in the Bible.

 

 

Picture Attributes

Giovanni Lanfranco [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons