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...