elit 46a – day two. olympic opening idealized past – our entire course

ELIT 46A – Day Two

Olympic Opening

Idealized Past – our entire course

Danny Boyle sees England as the island ruled by Prospero in The Tempest

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears, and sometime voicesThat, if I then had waked after long sleepWill make me sleep again; and then in dreamingThe clouds methought would open and show richesReady to drop upon me, that when I wakedI cried to dream again.

– Spoken in Shakespeare’s Tempest by Caliban (a colonized subject on the point of rebellion)

Stops before industrialization

What makes us human?Elizabeth Kolbert in a recent New

Yorker magazine.• From the archeological records, it’s inferred that

Neanderthals evolved in Europe or Western Asia and spread out from there, stopping when they reached water or some other significant obstacle but our ancestors did not stop – they kept going, against all logic. This is one of the most basic ways modern humans differ from Neanderthals and, in Pääbo’s view, also one of the most intriguing. If the defining characteristic of modern humans is a sort of Faustian restlessness, or “madness,” then, by Pääbo’s account, there must be some sort of Faustian gene.

In this class:

Compare to other cultures• Gilgamesh: Sumerian Civilization• Inanna : descended to the underworld to get back her

beloved • Egypt: the story of Isis traveling all over the known world

to find Osiris• Homer:

– Iliad and Odyssey• Japanese: stories of Momotaro• China: Journey to the West (Monkey, Tripitaka, Horse,

Sandman, etc.)• India: Baghavad Gita and Ramayana• British Isles: Beowulf

What makes a hero?

• 1.• 2.• 3.• 4.• 5.

What makes an epic?

• 1.• 2.• 3.• 4.• 5.

According to Joseph Campbell, the typical “Hero’s Journey”

A heroic epic written in Old English

Here’s what it says

ELIT 46BeowulfThemes

StructureWays of Looking at Beowulf

Zits doesBeowulf

Hear how the scop would have told the story

• From the British Library

Why start with Shield? Parallel to Beowulf, who is going to win fame himself Funeral – so the shape of the epic is clear Funeral Feast Battle Feast Battle Feast 50 years Dragon Battle Funeral Heorot (civilization) vs. Barbarism (Hrothgar vs. Grendel) and Barbarism is winning

Which means

• To read the original with translation next, click on this.

Look at Unferth vs. Beowulf