The quote that stuck with me as I was reading The Interesting Narrative by Equiano was; "I no longer looked upon them as spirits, but as men superior to us; and therefore I had the strongest desire to resemble them, to imbibe their spirit, and imitate their manners." 

This immediately reminded me of the concepts of hegemonic, subordinate, maginalized, and complicit theories of masculinty being discussed in my masculinities class. The narrator describes these feelings of insubordination occuring only after finding himself in a society, unlike the one he was born into, which prioritizes a masculinity that he himself did not possess. This new masculinity was white, was socially powerful, and was wildly successful and saught after in the world that he had been thrust into. I would argue that, while Equianomay have potentially embodied hegemonic masculinity if he hadn't been sold into slavery, the masculinity that he  embodies now is a mix of both marginalized and complicit. He himself belongs to a marginalized group as a black enslaved man, but as he comes to revere the newly accepted hegemony, he turns complicit to the societal norms that promote the white man as an ideal being and himself attempts to emulate the white man in his everyday life. 

After being rejected by her lover/former betrothed, Aza, the brief ending of Letters of a Peruvian Woman, although I believe was written with the intention of the character Zilia 'realizing' her feelings for Déterville, reads more as a resignation to the new life and role that she must play without Aza in it. I don't even know how to describe it, but I feel such a defeated sadness radiating off of this paragraph. It reminds me almost of the scene from Les Misérables when Fantine beckons the sailors into the brothel so that she can earn enough money to send to her daughter. It's an empty proposal, neither women really want to have to appeal to these men (the sailor of Les Misérables and the captain Déterville, respectively) but its almost necessary for their survival/best interests. 

For Zilia, she's appealing to what Déterville might have wanted from her this entire time---companionship, understanding, 'innocent and lasting pleasures.' Zilia is smart, I think (duh) that she knows that he wants these things. Without an Aza to return to, what other option does she have than 'take advantage' of the affections of this one guy who we already know likes her. 

Also, I realized after mentioning Les Misérables that the book takes place in the near-post-Rococo/French Revolution era. Just a coincidence? Probably.

One aspect of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp that I found distinctly interesting was the choice to describe the jinni as to the princess and the vizier's son as well as making the jinni unable to be heard by either of these characters. The quote from my common place journal on the left describes that "...a glimpse of its hideous form might have killed them," but (unless I'm mistaken and I probably am) isn't Aladdin looking at the jinni every single time it brings the princess and the vizier's son to his house for the night? And talking directly to it? Wht form is Aladdin percieving and why can't the other two see it through this lens?

What the text accomplishes, either directyly or indirectly or, by making the character of the jinni inaccessible to the majority of the cast, is put more power into the hands of Aladdin and, from the perspective of the princess/her husband, makes the entire affair all the more terrifying/mysterious. From their perspective, Aladdin is some all-powerful guy with the ability and desire to summon them at will. That's scary. S-C-A-R-Y. I wondered while reading that if they could hear and see exactly what Aladdin could, would they have been more or less scared? 

Furthermore, the shared trauma of this event MUST be bringing the princess and the vizier's son closer together in some capacity. They're the only ones beside Aladdin to bear witness to these supernatural accurances and its not like Aladdin is doing much else at this point to establish himself as a love interest (IMO) beside physically getting between them. 

The lack of pronouns assigned to the jinni also establishes its role as an object in the hands of Aladdin rather than a lovable blue cartoon shapeshifter voiced by Robin Williams (God rest his soul). I also wondered whether or not the jinni's supernatural/otherwordly identity contributed to its lack of human/gendered pronouns because in the artwork of the original tale (pg 455, 475, 478) all depict the jinni as masculine-presenting. 

The choice of language in this narrative is something that I touched on in my padlet video earlier this week when discussing The Doe in The Woods and is also something that I noticed repeated here in this text. The language used to portray emotion being expressed between these two characters as well as the words used to describe their surroundings, while not entirely complex, comes off as intentional and purposeful. Words and quotes like 'secret gate', 'heart of the sea', 'thick with plants and trees,' all contribute to an air of adventure and mysticality that would otherwise be lacking if the story had been told in a more streamlined fashion. All this to say that 'flowery' language is prevelant here as well as The Doe in The Woods and because it is something that we rarely came across in previously observed works, I think that its a feature of this new 17th century fairytale/fantastical fiction literature. 

This reading of The Doe in The Woods drew several connections in my mind between 17th century fairytale literature and medieval revival literature from the late 1970's (The Last Unicorn, The Lord of The Rings, etc). I especially drew a connection between the character Princess Desiree in The Doe in The Woods and the character of Lady Amalthea from The Last Unicorn. Lady Amalthea, while being hunted by a predatory masculine monster figure, is turned from an immortal unicorn to a mortal woman against her will by her male travel companion. In this new human form, Lady Amalthea struggles to adapt to the social expectations of a highborn lady and cries to return to her prior state. As a human woman, she is not allowed to return to her enchanted forest home and so she inevitably becomes a stranger to the world she was once content with not ever understanding. Mystical transformation as an allegory for female puberty/growing up in an unforgiving world are shared in The Doe in The Woods with Desiree's transformation into the white doe. Furthermore, as touched on in Libby's padlet video, beauty and youth are often signifiers of goodness/heroism in 17th century fairytales with ugliness/physical maturity being considered standards of evil in villainous characters. 

The quote from page 43 of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko details the common practice of changing the name of a person bought through the slave trade so as not to reflect their 'barbarous' heritage in their new role as a slave. Examining this practice, especially the name chosen for Oroonoko specifically, speaks volumes on behalf of European and early American culture in the context of this novel. While we have previously examined other examples of identity erasure in the case of Morocco in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, this instance is especially significant in the case of Oroonoko because he is being labeled or named after something that he is not rather than being reduced to the place that he is from. 

References to Oroonoko's 'Roman' features are frequent throughout the text and often used alongside descriptions of his beauty. What interests me is the narrator's compulsion to assert that his perceived beauty is acheieved through his percieved Roman-ness despite Oroonoko having no ties to Rome whatsoever. While this might inspire conversations about the character of Oroonoko, what this detail really informs us on is the narrator, who seems to be attempting to almost justify the world's appreciation of Oroonoko's physical traits without being able to call them 'black' traits. By referring to them as distinctly Roman and unlike any other African we see examined in the novel, the narrator puts Oroonoko apart by asserting that he is Roman without really being Roman, if that makes sense.

"God's latest image" is the language used to describe mankind in this quote. I found this especially interesting and somewhat jarring. Being told that I was made in God's image, even as someone with a distant relationship with the faith I was raised in, was a comforting thought. But Milton doesn't say 'God's image,' he intentionally says that man was made in God's 'latest image,' which above all else implies that God's image, ideal, or desired lifeform is a fleeting concept if not generally limited or temporary. Mankind, the text seems to assert, was created to fufill a temporary value or idea of greatness. 

This reminded me of a concept or idea of thinking of God that I see popularized in my lifetime that involves comparing God's relationship with humanity to my relationship to the families and communities that I build in the video game The Sims 4. "Playing god" is a description often associated with the game and, like Milton's description detailed above, my image (as the god of my sims families) often dramatically changes. Like God (this feels wrong to write), I put my sims in dangerous situations for entertainment or make them look, act, and think in ways that benefit my current tastes in entertainment. 

Anyway, the point is, Milton's choice in language feels strikingly deliberate in the subtle ways that it makes the audience squirm without really realizing what about the quote is so squirmy. 

In this quote chosen from Keith Hamilton Cobb's American Moor, the author describes a black actor being questioned about his role in Shakespeare's Othello, which famously focuses on the story of a black lead character. This especially highlights to me the claim that white scholars seem to hold over Shakespearean literature despite the historical contexts of his plays drawing significant influence from other cultures not belonging to Shakespeare himself. Can white directors claim to know more about black characters if they were written by white men? Very most likely not. 

As I read Grace Leber's slides (hi Grace!), something that I found crazily coincidental in her statement was not just the similar spelling of the words 'marital' and 'martial' but the similarities in how both the military and the married household function as units of expected "loyalty, obedience, subordination," and "order."

Grace establishes the main points of her section all the while asserting that the relationship between soldiers/men and the military holds precedence over men's outside relationship with pursuits of alcohol or lust. Coincidentally, being in a marital relationship would also deter men from seeking outside relationships with alcohol or women (one would hope). The military enforces a hierarchy that demands submission from lower-ranking soldiers, which we can see reflected in how husbands at this time (and at many times honestly) demand total submission from their wives. Tying this back to my section of focus, Marriage & Household, combatting and controlling women's sexuality was seen as a prominent duty for the 'man of the house' or husband, which in itself applies a military-adjacent aspect to the household. 

Please enjoy this manatee dressed in Renaissance military garb because I didn't have a physical journal entry for this section. 

This quote, from Act 4 of Shakespeare's Othello, cements in readers' minds what we already suspected or knew of Shakespeare's treatment of women in his plays/writings. The women of Shakespeare's world of characters cannot exist without functioning under the label of wife, daughter, nurse, or cousin of a powerful male character. She exists only in relation to the men of the story and only to motivate the men (Romeo, Othello, Ferdinand, Hamlet, etc.) to themselves carry the plot. 

While society might not have considered Emilia a whore in the context of the play, Shakespeare did. By extension, Othello did as well. Just like he wrote Antigone to suffer unfairly and Juliet to die without justice, Emilia needed to suffer her reputation based on her sex. Othello even himself admits that Emelia is openly pious and devoted to her church and community through frequent public prayer and that his suspicions of her 'whoring' is based simply on male suspicion--the only legitimate suspicion in Shakespeare's opinion. 

Montaigne's description of the land and the indigenous peoples in this chapter is reminiscent of More's Utopia in both manner and content. He writes on page 110; "They live in a land with a very pleasant and temperate climate, and consequentlty, as my witnesses inform me, a sick person is a rare sight" (Montaigne). This was also the case for the spirituality of the native Brazillians, as they are described as having a solitary priest figure who lives alone in the mountains of the region.

In this community, I would argue that cannibalism exists as a friendship/bonding ritual moreso than an act of violence and as far as I'm concerned, Montaigne agrees with me. Montaigne describes the act of treating a battle prisoner with much respect and attention right up until the moment they are killed. To this, he attributes the following description; "He then ties a rope to one of the prisoners arms, holding him by the other end, at some yards distance for fear of being hit, and gives his best friend the other man's arm." For the eating of the man specifically, he adds; "they roast him, eat him all together, and send portions to their absent friends." 

Discussion Question 1: Is there a capacity for tenderness in the act of cannibalism?

Montaigne does everything (literally everything) in his power to defend these people. "I am not so anxious that we should note the horrible savagery of these acts as concerned that, whilst judging their faults so correctly, we should be so blind to our own." Montaigne goes on to defend cannibalism by comparing it to the cadavers of European medicine. The cadaver and the war prisoner are both dead when they are being 'used' by the living. Is one inherently more wrong than the other?

He finalizes his argument by comparing the native Brazilian cannibalism to the Portuguese practice of burying their POWs to their waist and using them as live target practice--something considered horrible both by the native Brazilians and the French. Overall, he seems to reject the general ethnocentrism mindset/worldview adopted by colonists of the time. (See also the updated gallery page). 

Discussion Questions 2 & 3:

How can we interpret Montaigne's defense of the act of cannibalism?

Who would we eat first in this room if necessary?

A quote that stood out to me the most from Book Two of More's Utopia was "The Utopians won't allow their own citizens to become inured to the butchering of animals: it's their view that such practices gradually deaden the sense of compassion, the most essential of all human feelings" (More 69). What concerned me especially about this quote was how they later describe this 'butchering' being passed off to the slaves of Utopia (a concept that baffled me, honestly). Do the Utopians not consider slaves humans? Does commiting a crime that results in enslavement revoke one of humanity? So many questions. 

Also, unrelated to the quote, I was totally baffled to learn that the Utopians (on top of keeping slaves) feel entitled to any land outside of Utopia that they felt wasn't being used to the full potential by their standards. I found that it reflected the colonial mindset of European nations at the time. 

The quote that I chose to include in my common place book this week comes from page 27 of Book One of Thomas More's Utopia. What stood out to me in this quote, and in the reading altogether, was conversation between these two characters and how it reminded me of the fast-paced back and forth that I observed taking place between the philosophers in Plato's Symposium. It reads as fast-paced and witty, much like the long philosophical speeches given bysuch  classic minds as Aristophanes, Alcibiades, or Socrates and the short conversations that take places in between. 

More's characterization of Raphael shares many similarities with Plato's characterization of Socrates in the sense that they have the 'high ground' in conversation, or have a quality of speaking (knowledge, worldliness, etc), that inspires everyone around them to sit and listen attentively like Peter and Thomas are described. 

The quote from the reading, 'A Briefe and True Report of The New Found Land of Virgina' that stood out to me can be read on the left and describes a European's firsthand account/observations of Native American ways of life. What stood out to me in particular was the author's attitude toward the native communities, which didn't automatically read as hateful or ignorant as it did curious and observational. However, at the same time, the author's tone (as well as historical context) indicates that the author's attitude might closer resemble belittlement and that the text may have existed in it's time as both an educational source for untravelled Europeans and a piece of entertainment/amusement. 

Personally, I found that the language in this reading mimicked imagery from Island of The Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. The descriptions of the structures and the location of the local Native communities are distinctly similar. This I found interesting due to the fact that both Scott O'Dell and the author of this firsthand text were men either white and European or white and of European descent.