February 7

Assignments:
-Read and respond to a classmate's blog.
-Find one page in Steiner and do a close reading of it. Then, blog about it.
-Choose one of the five conflicts in Antigone that interests you.

Georg Wielhelm Friederich Hegel: a German philosopher that wrote about and was fascinated by Antigone
-Antigones page 40: Hegel puts Antigone above Socrates and Jesus
--Soren Kierkegaard: "the 2nd most solemn Dane" found this blasphemous
-Other odd obsessions: Charles Dickens was obsessed with Little Red Riding Hood
-Q: Why would grown men be so intrigued with unreal women?
-Carly's page has a link to an explanation of Hegel's interpretation of Antigone

Antigones page 18: discusses the Gothic fascination with entombment and people's fear of being buried alive

-On a side note: hysteria: originally meant that a woman's womb had come loose and went wandering through the body

Five areas of conflict in Antigone (and page numbers in Steiner):

-man v. woman (234)

-young v. old (242)

-living v. dead (263)

-individual v. society (247)

-men v. god(s) (266)

Mythos: story

A woman was arrested for murdering her husband with a meat cleaver.

-They ended up letting her off because she could tell a good story

-She could tell a good story to save her life!

-Other times this theme comes up: The Book of One Thousand and One Nights better known in our culture as Arabian Nights

Tragedy: "It's all in the family"

-Europa should have known to watch out for Zeus because of what had happened to Io

--However, she allowed herself to be abducted by a bull (Zeus)

-The moral of the story: learn from the past or you will be destined to repeat it.