All the results are in.
Seems like scholarship will be in good order.
That is a relief.

Will have my first thesis meeting next Tuesday and a expert tutorial with a Research Librarian to improve my online skills. Not sure, if I will pick up anything useful but you know the saying "leave no stone unturned".
Two HDs and 6 Distinctions.
I thought I would get an HD with 20th century lit but fell 2 marks short.
However my research Comms course which was my weakest link - I got 39.5/40 for the last assessment which brought it into High Distinction territory.
Shame I didn't get 3 out of 4 HDs this semester. But, at least with 2 out of 4 I improved from 1st semester and whilst ever I keep on improving then I will be happy.

Heraclitus of Ephesus (/ˌhɛrəˈklaɪtəs/;[1] Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος, Hērákleitos ho Ephésios; c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the apparently riddled[2] and allegedly paradoxical[3] nature of his philosophy and his stress upon the needless unconsciousness of humankind,[4] he was called "The Obscure" and the "Weeping Philosopher".

Heraclitus was famous for his insistence on ever-present change as being the fundamental essence of the universe, as stated in the famous saying, "No man ever steps in the same river twice"[5] (see panta rhei, below). This position was complemented by his stark commitment to a unity of opposites in the world, stating that "the path up and down are one and the same". Through these doctrines Heraclitus characterized all existing entities by pairs of contrary properties, whereby no entity may ever occupy a single state at a single time. This, along with his cryptic utterance that "all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos" (literally, "word", "reason", or "account") has been the subject of numerous interpretations.


Heraclitus, the Weeping Philosopher, c. 1630

Saenredam was born in Assendelft, the son of the Northern Mannerist printmaker and draughtsman Jan Pietersz Saenredam whose sensuous naked goddesses are in great contrast with the work of his son. In 1612 Saenredam moved permanently to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of Frans de Grebber. In 1614 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke.[1] A painting in the British Museum by his friend Jacob Van Campen shows him to be very short and hunch backed.[2] He died in Haarlem.

He was a contemporary of the painter-architects Jacob van Campen, Salomon de Bray, and Pieter Post. Saenredam is noted for his surprisingly modern looking paintings of church interiors - the great bulk of his production. Saenredam achieved this modern look by using very even light, subtle modulation, and by removing any detailed depiction of textures, in meticulously measured and drawn sketches. He would make his sketches in pencil, pen, and chalk, then paint in watercolor to give the image texture and colour. His sketches are very detailed, conveying the interior atmosphere through the clever use of light and graduated shadows. Saenredam often deliberately omitted people and church furniture from work, thus focusing more attention on buildings and their architectural forms. Only after having made precise measurements, and precise sketches and drawings of the churches, he would take them to his studio where he started to create his paintings, often after a delay of many years. His emphasis on even light and geometry is brought out by comparing his works with those of the rather younger Emanuel de Witte, who included people, contrasts of light and such clutter of church furniture as remained in Calvinist churches, all usually ignored by Saenredam. Unlike de Witte's, Saenredam's views are usually roughly aligned with a main axis of the church.

William Hogarth (/ˈhoʊɡɑrθ/; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art.

His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".[

William Hogarth was born at Bartholomew Close in London to Richard Hogarth, a poor Latin school teacher and textbook writer, and Anne Gibbons. In his youth he was apprenticed to the engraver Ellis Gamble in Leicester Fields, where he learned to engrave trade cards and similar products.[citation needed]

Young Hogarth also took a lively interest in the street life of the metropolis and the London fairs, and amused himself by sketching the characters he saw. Around the same time, his father, who had opened an unsuccessful Latin-speaking coffee house at St John's Gate, was imprisoned for debt in Fleet Prison for five years. Hogarth never spoke of his father's imprisonment.[2]

Hogarth became a member of the Rose and Crown Club, with Peter Tillemans, George Vertue, Michael Dahl, and other artists and connoisseurs

The Rose and Crown Club "for Eminent Artificers of this Nation"[1] was formed by 1704, when the engraver George Vertue was admitted;[2] while it lasted, the club was among the more important of clubs for artists and connoisseurs.[3] The club was initially "a bawdy assembly of younger artists and cognoscenti, which met weekly"[4] and apparently held its meetings at the Rose and Crown public house.[5] in addition to Vertue, members included Bernard Lens III, Christian Friedrich Zincke, William Hogarth,[6] Peter Tillemans,[7] Marcellus Laroon the Younger and Michael Dahl.


A_Conversation_of_Virtuosis...at_the_Kings_Arms_by _Gawen_Hamilton

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fetter’d, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain’d,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;
Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain’d
By ear industrious, and attention meet:
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.

If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain’d
by "John Keats",

Pieter Paul Rubens 1577-1640: Andromeda 1638.

In Greek mythology, Andromeda is the daughter of the Aethiopian king Cepheus and his wife Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia's hubris leads her to boast that Andromeda is more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon, influenced by Hades, sends a sea monster, Cetus, to ravage Aethiopia as divine punishment.[1] Andromeda is stripped and chained naked to a rock as a sacrifice to sate the monster, but is saved from death by Perseus.

Her name is the Latinized form of the Greek Ἀνδρομέδα (Androméda) or Ἀνδρομέδη (Andromédē): "ruler of men",[2] from ἀνήρ, ἀνδρός (anēr, andrós) "man", and medon, "ruler".

As a subject, Andromeda has been popular in art since classical times; it is one of several Greek myths of a Greek hero's rescue of the intended victim of an archaic hieros gamos (sacred marriage), giving rise to the "princess and dragon" motif. From the Renaissance, interest revived in the original story, typically as derived from Ovid's account.

Aeolus, son of Hippotas, had confined the winds in their prison under Mount Etna, and Lucifer, who exhorts us to work, shone brightest of all in the depths of the eastern sky. Perseus strapped the winged sandals he had put to one side to his feet, armed himself with his curved sword, and cut through the clear air on beating pinions. Leaving innumerable nations behind, below and around him, he came in sight of the Ethiopian peoples, and the fields of Cepheus. There Jupiter Ammon had unjustly ordered the innocent Andromeda to pay the penalty for her mother Cassiopeia’s words.

As soon as Perseus, great-grandson of Abas, saw her fastened by her arms to the hard rock, he would have thought she was a marble statue, except that a light breeze stirred her hair, and warm tears ran from her eyes. He took fire without knowing it and was stunned, and seized by the vision of the form he saw, he almost forgot to flicker his wings in the air. As soon as he had touched down, he said ‘O, you do not deserve these chains, but those that link ardent lovers together. Tell me your name, I wish to know it, and the name of your country, and why you are wearing these fetters. At first she was silent: a virgin, she did not dare to address a man, and she would have hidden her face modestly with her hands, if they had not been fastened behind her. She used her eyes instead, and they filled with welling tears. At his repeated insistence, so as not to seem to be acknowledging a fault of her own, she told him her name and the name of her country, and what faith her mother had had in her own beauty.

Before she had finished speaking, all the waves resounded, and a monster menaced them, rising from the deep sea, and covered the wide waters with its breadth. The girl cried out: her grieving father and mother were together nearby, both wretched, but the mother more justifiably so. They bring no help with them, only weeping and lamentations to suit the moment, and cling to her fettered body. Then the stranger speaks ‘There will be plenty of time left for tears, but only a brief hour is given us to work. If I asked for this girl as Perseus, son of Jupiter and that Danaë, imprisoned in the brazen tower, whom Jupiter filled with his rich golden shower; Perseus conqueror of the Gorgon with snakes for hair, he who dared to fly, driven through the air, on soaring wings, then surely I should be preferred to all other suitors as a son-in-law. If the gods favour me, I will try to add further merit to these great gifts. I will make a bargain. Rescued by my courage, she must be mine.’ Her parents accept the contract (who would hesitate?) and, entreating him, promise a kingdom, as well, for a dowry.

American struggle over slavery

Did you ever see a whale? Did you ever see a mighty whale
struggling…in the terrible current on the boundless ocean, that was
hurrying everything above and beneath it…to some final but awful
catastrophe? ... Such a scene…resembles, to some degree, the present
condition of this mighty republic …This fair republic has been launched
on a current, which is now rolling us on, with its dark and hideous waves,
to some frightful destiny…the ultimate dissolution and destruction of this
great Nation.

New York Herald: 12 May 1851


Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville considered an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance. A sailor called Ishmael narrates the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, a white whale which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab's ship and severed his leg at the knee. Although the novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, its reputation as a Great American Novel grew during the 20th century. William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written it himself,[1] and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world", and "the greatest book of the sea ever written".[2] "Call me Ishmael" is one of world literature's most famous opening sentences.


―Who aint a slave? Tell me that.‖ He continues, ―however the old
sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have
the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other
served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view‖

Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar" (excerpts)



I

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

II

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

III

Ah, but to play man number one,
To drive the dagger in his heart,

To lay his brain upon the board
And pick the acrid colors out,

To nail his thought across the door,
Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,

To strike his living hi and ho,
To tick it, tock it, turn it true,

To bang from it a savage blue,
Jangling the metal of the strings�

IV

So that's life, then: things as they are?
It picks its way on the blue guitar.

A million people on one string?
And all their manner in the thing,

And all their manner, right and wrong,
And all their manner, weak and strong?

The feelings crazily, craftily call,
Like a buzzing of flies in autumn air,

And that's life, then: things as they are,
This buzzing of the blue guitar.

V

Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,
Of the torches wisping in the underground,

Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.
There are no shadows in our sun,

Day is desire and night is sleep.
There are no shadows anywhere.

The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry

Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns,

Ourselves in poetry must take their place,
Even in the chattering of your guitar.

VI

A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;

Ourselves in the tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place

Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them, on the blue guitar,

Placed, so, beyond the compass of change,
Perceived in a final atmosphere;

For a moment final, in the way
The thinking of art seems final when

The thinking of god is smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar

Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar.

VII

It is the sun that shares our works.
The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.

When shall I come to say of the sun,
It is a sea; it shares nothing;

The sun no longer shares our works
And the earth is alive with creeping men,

Mechanical beetles never quite warm?
And shall I then stand in the sun, as now

I stand in the moon, and call it good,
The immaculate, the merciful good,

Detached from us, from things as they are?
Not to be part of the sun? To stand

Remote and call it merciful?
The strings are cold on the blue guitar.

VIII

The vivid, florid, turgid sky,
The drenching thunder rolling by,

The morning deluged still by night,
The clouds tumultuously bright

And the feeling heavy in cold chords
Struggling toward impassioned choirs,

Crying among the clouds, enraged
By gold antagonists in air--

I know my lazy, leaden twang
Is like the reason in a storm;

And yet it brings the storm to bear.
I twang it out and leave it there.

IX

And the color, the overcast blue
Of the air, in which the blue guitar

Is a form, described but difficult,
And I am merely a shadow hunched

Above the arrowy, still strings,
The maker of a thing yet to be made;

The color like a thought that grows
Out of a mood, the tragic robe

Of the actor, half his gesture, half
His speech, the dress of his meaning, silk

Sodden with his melancholy words,
The weather of his stage, himself.

X

Raise reddest columns. Toll a bell
And clap the hollows full of tin.

Throw papers in the streets, the wills
Of the dead, majestic in their seals.

And the beautiful trombones-behold
The approach of him whom none believes,

Whom all believe that all believe,
A pagan in a varnished care.

Roll a drum upon the blue guitar.
Lean from the steeple. Cry aloud,

"Here am I, my adversary, that
Confront you, hoo-ing the slick trombones,

Yet with a petty misery
At heart, a petty misery,

Ever the prelude to your end,
The touch that topples men and rock."

�

XV

Is this picture of Picasso's, this "hoard
Of destructions", a picture of ourselves,

Now, an image of our society?
Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg,

Catching at Good-bye, harvest moon,
Without seeing the harvest or the moon?

Things as they are have been destroyed.
Have I? Am I a man that is dead

At a table on which the food is cold?
Is my thought a memory, not alive?

Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood
And whichever it may be, is it mine?



XXIII

A few final solutions, like a duet
With the undertaker: a voice in the clouds,

Another on earth, the one a voice
Of ether, the other smelling of drink,

The voice of ether prevailing, the swell
Of the undertaker's song in the snow

Apostrophizing wreaths, the voice
In the clouds serene and final, next

The grunted breath scene and final,
The imagined and the real, thought

And the truth, Dichtung und Wahrheit, all
Confusion solved, as in a refrain

One keeps on playing year by year,
Concerning the nature of things as they are.



XXX

From this I shall evolve a man.
This is his essence: the old fantoche

Hanging his shawl upon the wind,
Like something on the stage, puffed out,

His strutting studied through centuries.
At last, in spite of his manner, his eye

A-cock at the cross-piece on a pole
Supporting heavy cables, slung

Through Oxidia, banal suburb,
One-half of all its installments paid.

Dew-dapper clapper-traps, blazing
From crusty stacks above machines.

Ecce, Oxidia is the seed
Dropped out of this amber-ember pod,

Oxidia is the soot of fire,
Oxidia is Olympia.

XXXI

How long and late the pheasant sleeps�
The employer and employee contend,

Combat, compose their droll affair.
The bubbling sun will bubble up,

Spring sparkle and the cock-bird shriek.
The employer and employee will hear

And continue their affair. The shriek
Will rack the thickets. There is no place,

Here, for the lark fixed in the mind,
In the museum of the sky. The cock

Will claw sleep. Morning is not sun,
It is this posture of the nerves,

As if a blunted player clutched
The nuances of the blue guitar.

It must be this rhapsody or none,
The rhapsody of things as they are.


XXXII

Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.

How should you walk in that space and know
Nothing of the madness of space,

Nothing of its jocular procreations?
Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand

Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.

You as you are? You are yourself.
The blue guitar surprises you.


XXXIII

That generation's dream, aviled
In the mud, in Monday's dirty light,

That's it, the only dream they knew,
Time in its final block, not time

To come, a wrangling of two dreams.
Here is the bread of time to come,

Here is its actual stone. The bread
Will be our bread, the stone will be

Our bed and we shall sleep by night.
We shall forget by day, except

The moments when we choose to play
The imagined pine, the imagined jay.




The Old Guitarist is an oil painting by Pablo Picasso created late 1903–early 1904. It depicts an old, blind, haggard man with threadbare clothing weakly hunched over his guitar, playing in the streets of Barcelona, Spain. It is currently on display in the Art Institute of Chicago.[1]

At the time of The Old Guitarist’s creation, Modernism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Symbolism had merged and created an overall movement called Expressionism which greatly influenced Picasso’s style. Furthermore, El Greco, Picasso’s poor standard of living, and the suicide of a dear friend influenced Picasso’s style at the time which came to be known as his Blue Period.[1] Several x-rays, infrared images and examinations by curators revealed three different figures hidden behind the old guitarist.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (/əˈɡrɪpə/; 14 September 1486 – 18 February 1535) was a German Polymath, physician, legal scholar, soldier, theologian and an occult writer.

Agrippa is perhaps best known for his books. An incomplete list:
De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio invectiva (Declamation Attacking the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and the Arts, 1526; printed in Cologne 1527), a skeptical satire of the sad state of science. This book, a significant production of the revival of Pyrrhonic skepticism in its fideist mode, was to have a significant impact on such thinkers and writers as Montaigne, René Descartes, and Goethe.[citation needed]
Declamatio de nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus (Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, 1529[8]), a book pronouncing the theological and moral superiority of women. Edition with English translation, London 1670[9]
De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books Concerning Occult Philosophy, Book 1 printed Paris 1531; Books 1-3 in Cologne 1533). This summa of occult and magical thought, Agrippa's most important work in a number of respects, sought a solution to the skepticism proposed in De vanitate. In short, Agrippa argued for a synthetic vision of magic whereby the natural world combined with the celestial and the divine through Neoplatonic participation, such that ordinarily licit natural magic was in fact validated by a kind of demonic magic sourced ultimately from God. By this means Agrippa proposed a magic that could resolve all epistemological problems raised by skepticism in a total validation of Christian faith.
One example of the text, not especially indicative of its broader contents, is Agrippa's analysis of herbal treatments for malaria in numeric terms:

Rabanus also, a famous Doctor, composed an excellent book of the vertues of numbers: But now how great vertues numbers have in nature, is manifest in the hearb which is called Cinquefoil, i.e. five leaved Grass; for this resists poysons by vertue of the number of five; also drives away divells, conduceth to expiation; and one leafe of it taken twice in a day in wine, cures the Feaver of one day: three the tertian Feaver: foure the quartane. In like manner four grains of the seed of Turnisole being drunk, cures the quartane, but three the tertian. In like manner Vervin is said to cure Feavers, being drunk in wine, if in tertians it be cut from the third joynt, in quartans from the fourth.[citation needed]

The book was a major influence on such later magical thinkers as Giordano Bruno and John Dee[citation needed], but was ill-understood[citation needed] after the decline of the Occult Renaissance concomitant with the scientific revolution. The book (whose early draft, quite different from the final form, circulated in manuscript long before it was published) is often cited in discussions of Albrecht Dürer's famous engraving Melencolia I (1514). (Note that Philosophy of Natural Magic: Complete Work on Natural Magic, White & Black Magic, 1569, ISBN 1-56459-160-3, is simply book 1 of De occulta philosophia libri tres.)

A spurious Fourth book of occult philosophy, sometimes called Of Magical Ceremonies, has also been attributed to him; this book first appeared in Marburg in 1559 and is not believed to have been written by Agrippa.[10]

(A semi-complete collection of his writings were also printed in Lyon in 1550; arguably more complete editions followed, but none is without serious textual problems.)

RIP David Bowie

"In the Penal Colony" ("In der Strafkolonie") (also translated as "In the Penal Settlement") is a short story by Franz Kafka written in German in October 1914, revised in November 1918, and first published in October 1919.

The story is set in an unnamed penal colony. Internal clues and the setting on an island suggest Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden as an influence.[1] As in some of Kafka's other writings, the narrator in this story seems detached from, or perhaps numbed by, events that one would normally expect to be registered with horror. "In the Penal Colony" describes the last use of an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin before letting him die, all in the course of twelve hours. As the plot unfolds, the reader learns more and more about the machine, including its origin and original justification.


Franz Kafka[a] (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-language writer of novels and short stories who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic,[3] typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers,[4] and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity.[5] His best known works include "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing.[6]

Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education he obtained employment with an insurance company while writing in his spare time; for the rest of his life he was to complain about how little time he had to devote to his passion due to the demands of his Brotberuf ("day job", literally "bread job"). Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.

Courtney Melba Barnett[1] (born 3 November 1987)[2] is an Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist from Melbourne. Known for her witty, rambling lyrics and deadpan singing style,[3] she attracted attention with the release of her debut EP, I've Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris. International interest from the UK and North American music press came with the release of The Double EP: A Sea Split Peas in October 2013.[4] At her well-received performances at the CMJ Music Marathon, Barnett was mentioned by both Rolling Stone[5] and The New York Times[6] as a standout performer.

Barnett’s debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, was released on 23 March 2015 to widespread critical acclaim. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2015 she won four awards from eight nominations. She was nominated for Best New Artist at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards and for International Female Solo Artist at the 2016 Brit Awards.

And even to this day, if any man let new light in upon the human understanding, and conquer prejudice, without raising contests, animosities, opposition, or disturbance, he must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method of allegory, metaphor, and allusion.

Francis Bacon

RIP Prince

Game of Thrones: Theory.

Game of thrones (cont'd)

Game of Thrones: The use of parallels.
How this you can help you understand the construction of morality, ethics within a narrative. As well as, how it can help you anticipate what will come within a story.


Let us just confine our analysis to Game of Thrones and, more specifically, the TV show.

Parallels.

So within many genres of narrative, the use of parallels helps authors define the moral framework of their narratives. Within simple narratives, the use of parallels might be unnecessary or due to a construct of the genre an unnecessary construct e.g. a cop detective show does not need parallels to define the ethical stakes because the cops are usually good and the perps usually bad and their is enough dramatic tension by playing with audiences expectations by painting good cops as baddies, victims as deserving or perps being unfairly framed to add complexity to the moral framework.

In more complex plot structures that have multiple storylines running concurrently, sometimes authors find it too hard to show how each storyline intersects by other means and, as a consequence, can use parallels to help hold the parts together in relation to a deeper plot arc. Now, not all parallels are singular binaries of good or evil nor of 1 to 1, they can be multiple parallels and sometimes the relationship between the two can invert or their difference disappear or the parallel can exhaust. Further to this point, authors may want to draw attention to the parallel to make a thematic or a discursive point about the world. Conversely, they might want to hide the parallels for dramatic reasons as knowing or appreciating a parallel can help a reader anticipate a plot development and hence make the work appear less impressive. Taken as a whole, you can see the possibilities for the use of parallels and the way they can be used to fulfil your expectation of the plot as well as how an author can use your understanding of parallels (whether implicit or explicit) to surprise you.

So I will discuss some parallels in GoT TV series to illustrate this point:
So spoiler alert blah blah: This discussion involves season 6 ep 9 i.e. current plot and speculation:

Parallels Part 2.

So obviously parallels are easy to spot when the similarities are similar based upon character make up.
These might be based on family, social status e.g. Kingship, war leader, priests, Or gender say.
We also see parallels on a conceptual level - between different types of religions portrayed, between different notions of justice or sexual behaviour.
We also see and make parallels between response to actions - so how a character responds to threats e.g. do they see the threat or do they merely react to the threat. Do they overcome the threat or does the threat overcome them in some ways? Or the consequences of an act: be it emotionally, physically or merely there ability to have agency within the plot.

How we understand the parallels is informed by our expectations about the type of story we believe we are being told.

For example: in the other early posts I made about what to expect in the finale of the whole series - so of those judgements - they are made with implicit assumptions I have about what genre the TV show Game of Thrones is and what I think the authors attitude to the genre will be.
You do that, I do that, we all do that and our experience and judgement of the narrative is precisely related to how and in what ways we feel our expectations have been satisfied or overturned pleasantly or disappointed (either too easily fulfilled or just outright dismissed).
Parallels are a key way authors use to signal the scope of what is at stake and a key signal to viewers about the genre they are watching.

Usually where the parallels are most concentrated tells you where the moral centre of the concerns of the plot are, but not necessarily what is central to the plot's function in the narrative.

What do I mean by that?
I mean that a lot of the moral energy may not go into the driving forces of the plot.
So you might get a lot of moral dilemmas and parallels in a character who is not key to understanding where the plot is going to go.

Think of it as a difference between causation and morality.
Game of Thrones: Spoiler

Battle of the Bastards

Hi all.

So as followers of this thread know all too well, I am doing an English Literature based Master of research degree. This post is a short update.

So my thesis is on Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and his intellectual inheritance in the Restoration Era two generations later in the works of Cowley, Bishop Sprat and Samuel Butler.
My thesis is in 3 chapters: one on Bacon, One on Cowley and Sprat, one on Butler.

Currently - I have just received back feedback on my first Chapter. I need to rewrite it as the argumentation, whilst having some very strong analysis within, suffers from a lack of structural clarity.

So I am currently re-arguing Chapter 1 whilst, at the same time, researching and note-taking on Chapter 2.

Due date for final submission is October 10.
So, I have been kind of flat out, which is why I have neglected this blog abit lately.

Well we all have to learn to fly, sooner or later.


Well I started out down a dirty road
Started out all alone
And the sun went down as I crossed the hill
And the town lit up, the world got still

I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing

Well, the good ol' days may not return
And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn

I'm learning to fly (learning to fly) but I ain't got wings (learning to fly)
Coming down (learning to fly) is the hardest thing (learning to fly)

Well, some say life will beat you down
Break your heart, steal your crown
So I've started out for God-knows-where
I guess I'll know when I get there

I'm learning to fly, around the clouds
But what goes up (learning to fly) must come down

I'm learning to fly (learning to fly), but I ain't got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing

I'm learning to fly (learning to fly), around the clouds
But what goes up (learning to fly) must come down

I'm learning to fly (learning to fly)
(Learning to fly) learning to fly
(learning to fly)
(learning to fly)
(learning to fly)
(learning to fly)


Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are an American rock band from Gainesville, Florida. In 1976, the band's original lineup was Tom Petty as the lead singer and guitar player, Mike Campbell as the lead guitarist, Ron Blair on bass, Stan Lynch on drums, and Benmont Tench on keyboards. The band has largely maintained this lineup, with a few exceptions. In 1981, Blair, who was tired of the touring lifestyle, left the band. Blair's replacement, Howie Epstein, was with the band for the next twenty years. Blair returned to the Heartbreakers in 2002, the year before Epstein's death. In 1994, Steve Ferrone replaced Lynch.


Speak to you again soon.

Menippus by Velazquez

Menippus of Gadara (/məˈnɪpəs/; Greek: Μένιππος ὁ Γαδαρεύς; fl. 3rd century BC) was a Cynic satirist. His works, which are all lost, were an important influence on Varro and Lucian. The Menippean satire genre is named after him.

The genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, which has a length and structure similar to a novel and is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities.[1] Other features found in Menippean satire are different forms of parody and mythological burlesque,[2] a critique of the myths inherited from traditional culture,[2] a rhapsodic nature, a fragmented narrative, the combination of many different targets, and the rapid moving between styles and points of view.[citation needed]
The term is used by classical grammarians and by philologists mostly to refer to satires in prose (cf. the verse Satires of Juvenal and his imitators). Typical mental attitudes attacked and ridiculed by Menippean satires are "pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and incompetent professional men of all kinds," which are treated as diseases of the intellect.[1][3] The term Menippean satire distinguishes it from the earlier satire pioneered by Aristophanes, which was based on personal attacks.[4]

Then there uprose upon the sight,
uncovered Down to the chin, a shadow at his side;
I think that he had risen on his knees.
Round me he gazed, as if solicitude
He had to see if some one else were with me,
But after his suspicion was all spent,
Weeping, he said to me: “If through this blind
Prison thou goest by loftiness of genius,
Where is my son? and why is he not with thee?”
And I to him: “I come not of myself;
He who is waiting yonder leads me here,
Whom in disdain perhaps your Guido had.”
His language and the mode of punishment
Already unto me had read his name;
On that account my answer was so full.
Up starting suddenly, he cried out:
“How Saidst thou, – he had? Is he not still alive?
Does not the sweet light strike upon his eyes?”
When he became aware of some delay,
Which I before my answer made, supine
He fell again, and forth appeared no more.


Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti (flourished c. 1250; died c. 1280) was a Florentine Epicurean philosopher and father of Guido Cavalcanti, a close friend of Dante Alighieri.
Cavalcanti was a wealthy member of the Guelph faction of Florentine aristocrats. He was a merchant banker who, with others, lent money under usurious conditions during the crusades with the consent and support of the papacy.[1] In 1257 Cavalcanti served as Podestà (chief magistrate) of the Umbrian city of Gubbio. Following the 1260 victory of the Ghibellines over the Florentine Guelphs in the Battle of Montaperti, Calvancanti went into exile in Lucca in Tuscany. He returned from exile in 1266 and married his son Guido to the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti, a prominent Ghibelline.
Despite Cavalcanti's alignment with the papacy-supporting Guelphs, he was denounced as a heretic. It is possible that he was an atheist, like his son.
In lines 52-72 of the tenth canto of Dante's Inferno, the poet converses with Cavalcanti about his son, Guido, and depicts the dead father as a doting parent. Dante represents Cavalcanti and Farinata as neighbors in the same tomb in Hell, but without any interaction between them.

Finished thesis, submission in next 48 hours.

congrats!

Thanks Bob.

Will be about 4-6 weeks until I get my mark and feedback back.

So will be in Limbo for awhile. Will have time to catch up on this thread as well as others that I have neglected!

It is an interesting concept.