class 2-24-13

April 24, 2013 · by · in Class, Uncategorized
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Agenda

Orgasm and Death
Quiz 13
Plot/Sentence Questions
Synthesis and development of Monday’s discussion
Discussion of Act 3 via Jazz’s blog post
Scenes from the play

 

Orgasm and Death

Ben Jonson’s translation of a Roman poem by Petronius:

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;
And done, we straight repent us of the sport:
Let us not then rush blindly on unto it,
Like lustfull beasts, that onely know to doe it:
For lust will languish, and that heat decay.
But thus, thus, keeping endlesse Holy-day,
Let us together closely lie, and kisse,
There is no labour, nor no shame in this;
This hath pleas’d, doth please, and long will please; never
Can this decay, but is beginning ever.

……………
[The idea that orgasm is “the little death”]  finds its authoritative source in Aristotle’s ‘De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae’, where ejaculation is represented as life- threatening, an idea which appealed to the quirky intelligence of John Donne, … in the lyric ‘Farewell to Love’ (24–5):
each such Act, they say, Diminisheth the length of life a day
………………………..
Since Aristotle had argued that semen, both male and female forms of which he thought essential to conception, was made of the best blood of the body, the loss of that blood in ejaculation could only be debilitating if too frequently indulged: ‘salacious animals and those abounding in seed age quickly’. Popular English authorities reiterated Aristotle’s (and Galen’s) opinion, Thomas Vicary confirming that ‘by the labour and chafing of the Testikles or Stones, [the best and purest] Blood is turned into another kind, and is made Sperme’.  A rewritten Aristotle warned that:
They that would be commended to their Wedlock actions, and be happy in the fruit of their Labour, must observe to Copulate at distance of time, not too often, nor yet too seldom, for both these hurt Fruitfulness alike; for to eject immoderately, weakens a Man, and wasts his Spirits, and too often causes the Seed by long continuance to be ineffectual, & not Manly enough.”

From Paul Hartle, “‘Fruition was the Question in Debate’ Pro and Contra the Renaissance Orgasm,” Seventeenth Century 17, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 78-96.

Quiz 13

  1.  What do Sir Toby and his friends manipulate Cesario (i.e.Viola) and Sir Andrew into doing?
  2. How do these two feel about doing this thing?
  3. Who steps in to defend Cesario?
  4. What motivates him to do so?
  5. How does Cesario end up disappointing this person?

Bonus: What does a “roman hand” refer to in this act?

Feste.  A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit: how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!

Viola. Art not thou the Lady Olivia’s fool?
Feste. No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly: she  will keep no fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings; the husband’s the bigger: I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words.

Twelfth Night, 3.1.11-13; 32-36

Binary Opposition – Refers to our tendency to organize ideas through two opposite: Example: civilized vs. savage; mind vs. body; idealism vs. practicality; high culture vs. low culture, etc.  (Note: especially in modern literary and cultural studies, one interest is in how such binaries tend to break down and at key moments blur into one another.)

Foils – Two literary characters who share some qualities but are in at least one respect associated with opposite ideas, feelings or values.

Image – in literary studies, a visually rich moment in the text, which also often suggest broader ideas, feelings or values.  Other senses may be evoked as well.

Polysemy – Refers to words with multiple meanings, but also, by extension, whole texts with multiple meanings.  These meanings can even be antithetical to one another (see Binary Opposition)

becoming = proper (1.2.54-55)

becoming = changing (1.2.54-55)

ordinary life

holiday life (carnival; “feste”)

“real” world

comedy, theater more generally

essentialism

  • theological

  • biological (3.4.302-303)

social constructionism

  • self as role (theatricality), shaped by self or the expectations of others (3.4.302-303)

  • identify is flexible

duty and goal oriented

play and pleasure driven

Malvolio

Toby, Viola, Orsino

suit–proper dress

taffeta suit; self as taffeta (2.4.72-78); multiple, unfixed

But:

Malvolio changes suits and wants to change his role, by becoming Olivia’s husband.

Ambivalence of the play: rewards “becoming” for some, demands more “becoming” behavior for others.

Discussion of Act 3

From Jazz’s blog post
Does anyone else think there’s more than a bromance going on between them [Antonio and Sebastian]? It’s understood that relationships between males were more common and had much more importance than those with women, but all the desire and the erotic nature of some of Antonio’s words blur the lines.