"now gods, stand up for bastards!"
11.05.02 @ 11:15 a.m.
So. Last night.
I'm rather naughty. I didn't actually do the assigned reading for King Lear, but I read Lear in Comparative Lit: The World of Elizabethan Drama last year so I could get away with it. Reading it would have just been a refresher. That's my twisted logic anyway. So I knew enough that I could easily answer the pop quiz we had, though I had a moment of panic when I thought "Oh crap, Edgar and Edmund's father, he's Gloucester, right?" I was a little uncertain on the name. And I got that Kent came back to Lear in disguise and became one of his knights. Yay me. At any rate, Saunders realized that a good number of the class didn't do the reading. He seemed to think that since the class is so lecture oriented, people have decided that they don't need to do the reading. So he got frustrated and ejected everyone who hadn't done the reading and told them to go to the library and do the reading. He said he was feeling charitable and wouldn't count it as an absence. I stayed because I had read it before and I knew enough. Funny, he actually said something along those lines when a good portion of the class got up and left. Those of us who were left, those of us who'd either done the readings or had read the play before and remembered enough to finish the quiz. Anyway. I stayed because I really wanted to hear what he had to say. With Saunders, I get a different viewpoint that I don't think I would have come upon by myself, but once it's brought up, I completely understand. We were supposed to watch Se7en, but we didn't. He cancelled the movie because he didn't want to hang around campus and he was kind of depressed by the fact that he had just ejected half the people who intended to go to the movie from class. We were not to take it personally since we were 'good' students.
There were some interesting ideas about King Lear being a nihilistic play. We talked about philisophical arguments against the existance of God. We talked about misogyny in the play (women bring to mind the flesh which brings to mind mortality). It's occurred to me that our villians are getting progressively more complex. We started with Aaron, who was pure, baseless evil incarnate. Then we had Iago, who had a manic hatred that was never quite explained. Now we have Edmund, who has all the backstory of being a neglected bastard child of Gloucester to fuel his hatred. Saunders called him "Iago with a backstory." Our homework is to find our favorite image or metaphor for the vagina. We've had a couple already ("do you smell a fault?" "I eat no fish"). I have to say, King Lear has some great lines.
Normally I don't eat before Yoga and I'm getting kind of caught up in Hamlet, which E* is watching, but I'm STARVING. Ta.
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
