Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

So, instead of 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' we're watching 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.' Infinitely better, in my opinion. However, finding a way to relate it to the particular time period this class covers is not so easy. One of my favorite scenes, though, is the one in which Sir Bevedere is helping to determine whether or not a woman is a witch. This scene is hilarious. Mostly because the "logical" conclusion they come to is completely ridiculous, but also partly because they are using a somewhat skewed version of the scientific method developed around the time of the Scientific Revolution. They have a general hypothesis - that she's a witch. They make observations, use deductive reasoning, and experiment (weigh her against a duck), to come to the conclusion. The fact that the reasoning behind the reasoning makes some sense makes the situation all the funnier.
This film should be shown in any classes dealing with natural sciences ("It's a simple matter of weight ratio. A five ounce swallow cannot carry a one pound coconut!"), political sciences ("Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony."), or history. I'm just saying.

Candide

This is by far the most humorous, entertaining text we've read so far. The first half was pretty good, but the second half was better. What makes it so funny is that he really seems to poke fun at people indiscriminately - the young, old, rich, poor, religious, slave, and every nationality Candide encounters, except the Eldoradeons. I could cite dozens of things I found funny, but I'll restrain myself to a few. One that cracked me up outright occurred in chapter 23. "Candide was so stunned and so shocked by what he saw, and heard, that he refused even to set foot on English soil, but bargained with the Dutch captain (without caring if this one fleeced him as the other had done, in Surinam)..." I don't know if that particular pun is in the original text or a product of the English translation, but I like it. The first Dutch merchant stole his sheep, "fleeced" him; how can you not laugh at that?
The visit to Signor Pococurante in Venice is also good. The Signor is described as a man of taste, so superior in his own thoughts that he is bored by marvellous works of art around him. He is bored to dead reading Homer, Virgil, Cicero, owns paintings by Raphael but says they are not perfect enough, and do no look like "nature itself" so he ignores them.
After reading a little Rousseau earlier in the week, centering on the "natural state of man," the episode with the cannibals is an obvious jab at those ideas. Eating each other is a natural state, says Cacambo, and the only reason Europeans don't do it is that they have a sufficient alternative food supply.
Candide and the rest of the characters suffer many misfortunes and setbacks; nothing ever seems to go right or as planned. They just can't catch a break. Not even Pangloss, who didn't even receive the courtesy of being properly hung.
On a side note, reflecting on the allegory of the Fall present in chapter 1, the rest of the book seems like a skewed version of the book of Job. Candide encounters many obstacles and disasters, however, unlike Job, he repeatedly renounced optimism only to return to it when the smallest thing went right.

Back and Forth

Tonight, I watched 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' and though it is far from the scope of this class, it made me reflect on something we discussed the other day. Thinking about the rigidity of the social customs of the play compared to time periods after is much like the ebb and flow we talked about, or rather, the great pendulum. It's odd to think about, how we as a civilization seem to go through periods like this, on again off again, full speed or at a crawl, forward progress or near stagnation. Like the swing between the belief in rationality as a supreme virtue and the praising of irrationality. This transition was observed between the era we are currently studying, the Enlightenment, and the following one, the Romantic. It's almost as if people take something so seriously for a while that they can't possibly stand it anymore, so they feel compelled to swing over to the other side. What's even more remarkable is that these transitions involve not just a few human beings, but many, whole societies even. Makes one wonder which side of the pendulum's swing we're on at this moment. Reason seems likely, but so does Irrationality. I suppose there's really no way to accurately analyze our own time, we're far too biased and involved.

Essay on Man

I have to admit, I'm a little confused. The poem starts out saying that man is not the measure of all things, and continues as if he is no more important than any other living thing on the planet. He dismisses the idea that everything in the world was made for us, and says it's more likely we are made for the use of everything else. This I get. But by the end, it sounds like he thinks man is something special. It could be the poem form that's throwing me off, I don't know. The tone just seems different at each end. Maybe it would help to read through it again...

Hamlet

I liked this play, I really did. Almost as much as Macbeth. I still can't decide whether Hamlet seems genuinely crazy or if it is an act. Reading it, he seems more conniving. But watching it on film, he seems truly insane. That could be the particular performance, though. Someday I'd like to see it as a play as well as on film. Anyway, by the fourth act I knew where the story was going. Everyone was going to die. The poisoned cup, the backup plan, was just too much. Things were bound to go south from then on. And lo and behold, all the main characters, except Horatio, were killed by their plotting and crimes. It just goes to show that poison, like faking your own death, is always a bad idea.

That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die

In this essay, Montaigne makes his case on why people should not fear or try to avoid death. Many of his examples, I admit, make sense. Near the end, when he is speaking as Nature, he says, "A thousand men, a thousand animals, a thousand other creatures, die at the same moment that you die." This reminded me of a novel I read recently for a literature class, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Death is a strong theme in that book as well, considering it is set in a post-apocalyptic world where everything is either dead or dying. In one point, the man and the boy come across an old man, Ely, with which they share some food. The man and Ely are talking about being the last man on the earth. The man says, " How would you know if you were the last man on earth?" Ely replies, " I dont guess you would know it. You'd just be it." "Nobody would know it." "It wouldnt make any difference. When you die its the same as if everybody else did too." (p. 170) In a way, the characters of the novel have embraced Montaigne's ideas. Though only because there is little hope left in living; those that have not died or committed suicide wish they were no longer alive. Anyway, that passage of the essay made me immediately think of the one in the novel. And they make a lot of sense. As far as you're concerned, when you die, nothing else continues to exist; for you, everything has died with you.
(p.s. Please ignore the lack of apostrophes in the McCarthy quote. That's just the way he wrote it.)

Twelfth Night, or, What You Will

This weekend I saw 'Twelfth Night,' as put on by the Casper College Theatre department. What does this have to do with class? Well, it was set in the Renaissance. Plus it was hilarious. I haven't really had many opportunities to read or watch any Shakespeare, and seeing that makes me look forward to the upcoming section on the Catholic Counter-Reformation, in which I believe we are reading 'Hamlet.' In that particular play, the one I saw, I did notice a few things that allude to Shakespeare's participation in or support of the Counter-Reformation. For example, there was one rather amusing part in which Viola, Sir Andrew, the Uncle whose name escapes me and Maria are talking, well, conniving really. They discuss one of Olivia's ministers, who is a Puritan; each time, upon saying the word "Puritan," they all spit on the floor, showing their obvious distaste for such reformed religions.