Notable Class 24 Jan

In "Bleak House," Mrs. Flight collects birds and names them all sorts of things which turns out to be a sort of litany/liturgy of names when recited aloud. In the spirit of, we are each assigned a name from the Praxis chapter of Hillman. I am Retardation & Time. Nice name. Perhaps apt in more ways than one.

Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" has always been a favorite of mine and I saw a delightful production of the play at Cardiff Castle this summer. The metamorphosis of Bottom the Weaver is of concern for this class. He is "translated" into an ass and participates in the heiros gamos - the sacred marriage with Titania.

All literature is a displacement of myth (the underlying premise for the course). My question is, if this is true, where does myth come from? Is reality TV displaced myth? What is a dream covering up?

Translating a dream into grammar distorts it (another premise). Is this true? If all translation is a distortion, it assumes that the original is pure and true. What is the background of this assumption? Are we always moving further and further away from the truth and originality?

Displacement in life: "existence itself may be said to have a 'narrative' or 'story' quality" Does this suggest that we are always just acting out something that has happened before in the elevated and 'pure' realm of myth? Couldn't it be that it is just the opposite: myths are desplacements of our lives? Which is more real?

"rebel against the tyranny of the representational fallacy"