Earnest humor vs. my humor

Most of the humor from the play The Importance of Being Earnest comes from Oscar Wilde's ironic and outlandish situations.  Throughout the play, I found myself growing fonder and fonder of Wilde's writing style and interpretation of people in high society; he constantly had them discussing life matters so ironically and so ridiculously that I couldn't help but laugh out loud.  For example, when Lady Bracknell first arrives at Algernon's house, her simple greeting is so stiff and almost condescending that it's a bit insensitive, but still humorous to the audience:
"Lady Bracknell:  Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.
Algernon:  I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.
Lady Bracknell:  That’s not quite the same thing.  In fact the two things rarely go together."
The whole play continues like this, especially for Lady Bracknell.  Her character is probably my favorite just because she's so hilariously absurd!  In the first act, she sits down to have a chat with Jack in regards to his wanting to marry Gwendolen.  She interviews him for every little aspect about his life to make sure that he's a good fit for Gwendolen.  I mean, this lady actually interviews the dude to see if he's respectable!  How is that not hilarious?!  Anyway, one of my favorite parts from that scene is when Lady Bracknell tells Jack that she can hardly imagine her only daughter to "form an alliance with a parcel."  I laughed for about 80 years after reading that.  Oh oh oh, and another part of this scene that I love is when my Number One Lady says to Jack, "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." Who does that?!  That's just hilariously bitter and blatant!  Seriously, people, I'm currently still laughing over that line as I type this.

So, my type of humor varies quite a bit.  I can go from laughing at horrible puns to a well-written play (like this one!) in a split second.  Mostly, I just love British humor.  It's so much better, and at times it's more elegant, than American humor.  Americans tend to like butt/farting jokes and "your mom" jokes and things like that, which are honestly the dumbest, most childish things I've ever heard.  You know those Adam Sandler/Melissa McCarthy types of movies?  (The recent ones, anyway?)  I hate those.  They're just absolutely not funny at all to me.  Every now and then, I'll be okay with one, but in general, I just avoid those.  Just not my style.  I prefer witty humor, like the humor used in the (British) TV show Doctor Who, or written in the Percy Jackson book series.  Anything that makes me have to really think about why something's funny is what I find amusing.  I know not everyone rolls that way, but that's definitely what I enjoy!

Jacob and Esau (and some tiny Anna)

Abraham has a son named Isaac, who marries a woman named Rebekah.  The two of them are super desperate for some children, so Isaac asks the Lord, "Hey, bro, I really wanna have some babies, so will ya do me a favor and let my wife be preggers? Thanks, dude!"  The Lord is all down with that, so he answers Isaac's prayer.  However, he sorta overestimated what Rebekah would be able to handle, because he grants her with the absolute joy of being able to have twins.  She basically is like, "Lord!  Why'd ya HAVE to make me preggo with TWINS, man?!  One child at a time, please."  But the Lord sends her a message saying, "You're gonna give birth to two different nations!  One of the people will be stronger!  AND AND AAAAAND the older dude will serve the younger! LOL GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! BYEEE!"  What a pleasure.  Anyway, Rebekah gives birth to Esau first, who was red and hairy.  Then Jacob came out, grasping his older brother Esau's heel.  Esau grew to be a hunter, loved by his father.  Jacob grew to be a quiet, peaceful dude, whom his mother loved.  One night, Esau came home from a hunt, and he was like, "Yo, bro, hook me up with some of your stew, man."  But Jacob was all, "Gimme your birthright first, and then you can have some of my FABULOUS stew!"  Esau complained for a second before giving in because this dude was crazy hungry.

I guess I really don't have any birthright specifically, like possessions or property.  I'm an only child, so it's not like I've got the sibling competition factor.  I guess I can talk about what I've inherited personality-wise from my parents?
I was always destined to love theatre and music.  My dad grew up in New Jersey, really close to Manhattan, so my nana would take him to see shows all the time growing up.  My mom's mom is a piano teacher, and all of her siblings have been involved in music from childhood.  She herself learned how to play the piano at three-four years old, and she graduated from Duke with a music major (not sure which major specifically, but you catch my drift).  These two theatre/arts/music-loving people got together and raised me on the arts.  My first two movies that I ever watched were The Sound of Music and Cats (I would repeatedly ask to watch Cats and by the time I was three or four I could belt out "Rum Tum Tugger" like nobody's business).  When I was a baby, my mom would play all of her classical music CDs (or tapes?) for me.  By the time I was seven, West Side Story was my absolute favorite movie ever.  I remember seeing Grease for the first time at my cousin's high school, and I just wanted to be Sandy so badly.  Anyway, I'm rambling, but I'm pretty sure that that's the biggest inheritance I've gotten from my parents.
Here are some pictures of tiny Anna going to see shows at the Fox theatre (in Atlanta)!

Me with my mom at The Nutcracker (I think)

Me with the evil stepmother at Cinderella

And finally, me with the princess herself, Cinderella (from Cinderella, obviously)

Jason and the Golden Fleece (and a wee bit of Harry Potter but what else do you expect from me?)

So, it's Ancient Greece, right?  People back then believe all these crazy things (then again, I believe in a man who rose from the dead, so how much better am I?), including this magic piece of fabric.  FABRIC, I TELL YOU!  Anyway, this magical piece of fabric was called the golden fleece because, well, it was a fleece woven from gold.  As far as naming goes, they could have totally done better (i.e. the Captivating Coat, the Wonderful Wool, the Amazing Afghan---I'm thinking alliteration here, people), but I suppose that's beside the point.  So anyway, this fleece is guarded by a dragon in a land at the edge of the earth; no one had been able to reach it and return it safely back to the homeland.  One young hero, Jason, was given the task of going to retrieve the Wonderful Wool, and he was definitely up for the task (he was a bit of a hot-shot, in my opinion).  Jason gathers a bunch of other heroes to go with him in a ship called the Argo, and they were all called the Argonauts.  YAY FOR TEAM NAMES!  Together, in their ship, they faced many perilous feats but eventually reached the fleece.  When Jason got to the fleece, this super duper powerful sorceress, Medea, helped him get he Captivating Coat.  When I say that she "helped" Jason get the fleece, I mean that she did all of the work, using her flipping amazing powers to get it.  But guess who takes all the credit? THE MAN.  JASON.  THE WONDERFUL HERO.  Oh, Jason, you're too modest.  So everyone back in their hometown are like, "YAAYYY for the Argonauts!  You guys rule!  Especially you, Jason!" and Medea falls in love with the prick.  However, he later deserts Medea, leaving her heartbroken.  As revenge, she slays all of their children.  Eek.  Don't mess with that woman...

SO HERE'S THIS SUPER HEARTBREAKING STORY.  ARE YOU READY?  I DON'T THINK YOU ARE BUT HERE GOES:
So James and Lily Potter are being hunted down by good ol' Voldy, who's desperate to kill their son, Harry.  Harry's supposed to be Voldy's undoing, so Voldy's all, "I gots ta kill da boy soon."  So, Voldy uses James's and Lily's good friend, Peter to get to them.  Peter basically knows the password to find out where the Potters are hiding, and he's a coward so he tells Voldy.  Ugh, the slimeball douchenugget.  Anyway, Voldy finds the Potters, and kills them in minutes--even though they go down fighting.  Thankfully, it didn't end in vain because Harry gets to live, but still.  James and Lily die because of Peter's cowardice.  It's really depressing and disgusting.  I hope none of my current friends are that gross and backstabbing.
Here's a drawing (by burdge) of Lily defending her precious baby Harry:

Anyway, I'm not even to the revenge part yet.  So, the Potters have their best friend, Sirius Black.  He and James are like brothers and have been inseparable since they were eleven years old.  Sirius finds out the news of his best mate's (and his best mate's wife's) death, and he's completely furious.  He is one hundred percent angry and horrified and he's heartbroken because he knew that Peter was the one who had the password.  Peter was the only person who could have told Voldemort where the Potters were.  So Sirius sets off, hell-bent on revenge, wanting to avenge his friends' deaths.  He confronts Peter in front of a whole crowd of people, nearly killing him and landing himself in prison (until he escapes after twelve years, but that's not the point).  Sirius was so determined, so set on revenge in this story.  It's just really depressing and I get hit with waves of sadness when I think about this story.

Modernism and Return of the Native by Callie and Taylor

Modernism:

• experimentation and individualism became virtues, where in the past they were heartily discouraged
• the pursuit of the American dream
• America = new Eden
• optimism
• importance of individual
• construct work out of fragments, omitting the expositions, transitions, resolutions, and explanations
• stream-of-consciousness technique
• westernization
• class wars
• democracy
• mass literacy and education
• public institutions
• questioning of of a god
• emancipation of women
• want to change the way readers see the world and to change their understanding of what language is and does
• attempts to find depth and interior meaning beneath the surface of objects and events
• attempts to reveal profound truths of experience and life
• places faith in ideas, values, beliefs, cultures, norms of west
• use myths as organizing structure
• superiority of art to nature
• emphasis on alienated individuals

Connections to The Return of the Native:

• Eustacia Vye and Clym Yeobright are very individualistic; they do not try to conform
• Wildeve views America as his saving grace, his garden of Eden
• Diggory Venn stays optimistic in his attempts to bring Thomasin a happy life
• Eustacia is free from most typical responsibilities of a woman
• "class war" between Eustacia and the heath; she is too good for anyone there
• Eustacia believes in fate, not necessarily God
• Clym wants to encourage education and such
• Clym and Eustacia are both alienated individuals
• Hardy used many illusions to myths and legends
• Hardy originally omitted happy resolutions in his plot

Thomas Hardy-the Poet by Claire and Briana

Thomas Hardy, a Victorian realist born in 1840, considered himself a poet all of his life even though his first collection wasn't published until 1898. In the meantime he gained famed as a novelist, one of his famous novels being Return of the Native. Hardy claimed poetry as his "first love", and when his novel Jude the Obscure was harshly criticized, he decided to give up on novels completely and focus on poetry. Turning his full attention to poetry, the rural county of Dorset was influential on him in that he was able to fully immerse himself in the culture there and in turn, embellished his writing. Most of his poems consisted of the themes of "disappointment in love and life, and mankind's long struggle against indifference to human suffering," which is especially seen in his poem Neutral Tones.  However, other themes ranged from discussion of war, to animal cruelty hatred, (and even) to writing poetry. Even though at first his poems weren't as accepted as his novels, people soon came around to Hardy's poems and he is now regarded as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.




Source:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy

Gothic Fiction and Return of the Native -- Anna and Josh

                                                     Common Elements of Gothic Fiction

• Virginal maiden- Thomasin fits this role rather well. She is not the center of the story but she does embody such traits as innocence and virtue. 
• Older foolish woman- Mrs.Yeobright, while at times cunning, often lacked good judgement. For example, she chose to go walking in the heat of the day and ended up dead. 
• Stupid servant- One of the elements of gothic literature is to have a "stupid servant" character. Christian Cantle fills this role in the story, causing much havoc because of his ignorance and gullible nature. He creates the subplot of the issues with Mrs. Yeobright inheritance money, squandering it away in a gamble. 
• Clergy- The clergy characters tend to be weak and possibly evil. While Clym is not evil, he does  
• Setting- in gothic fiction, most works use the setting as a character itself, describing it in detail and basing the story around it. This trait is used in Return of the Native __, Hardy devotes large sections of the book to describe the setting thoroughly.

Conrad and Literary Contributions/ Periods by Paula and Olivia :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Conrad was basically Marlow and Kurtz combined. Let's just start there.
In context of Heart of Darkness, he first went to the Congo, then he tried to commit suicide, then married a woman who really wasn't the one who stole his heart, he had disappointing children with her (in his eyes anyway), and then he wrote a book about all his feels. So there's that.
He also lost both of his parents to TB, and therefore had to live with his uncle. Hey, that's funny, there was this uncle in Heart of Darkness whose nephew lived with him. How 'bout that?
He became acclimated to his style of writing and sense of literacy at a young age through sailing and through his father, whose love of sailing and poetry rubbed off on Conrad like green that rubs off on your skin from a two dollar ring.
Conrad's career can be divided into three major periods.
1) He was getting accustomed to the weird English literary culture, which, at first, made no sense to him. With this, he wrote his first novel The N****r of the Narcissus. It's about his "in between" period as a writer. It's his tween stage of his writing life (which, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is like the awkward transition between childhood and adolescence.) His thing was that he was trying to put Frenchy techniques into a novel meant for the English. It was... somewhat successful. Sort of.
2) Conrad had a baby. More specifically, he had a son. It is "arguably the most prolific period time" of his writing career. It was during this time that he wrote Youth, Lord Jim, and Heart of Darkness. In each novel, Marlow stars as the main character, as he tries to identify with the English audience. Does he succeed? I DON'T KNOW!
3) His third stage starts in 1904, with the publication of Nostromo. This novel was mostly based on his journey to the Caribbean and Venezuela in his teenage years. Similar to Heart of Darkness, this novel comments on imperialism and the vulnerability of man. Even though he'd written multiple books by this time, it wasn't until Change was published that he was financially sound. It wasn't much later that he died as a result of a heart attack.

Oscar Wilde

Urvi and Alyssa's Post

Oscar Wilde has become a household name for most all readers of Western Literature. Though his name will be forever cast in infamy, the name Oscar Wilde did not always have this same charm, in fact his first play Vera did not even hit the stage as its performance was cancelled. Eventually, Wilde’s writing got more famous and garnered more positive attention. After visiting the United States on tour and getting married, it seemed as if his life was going to pick up speed. Little did the public know the future that he had in store. In 1884, the year of his son’s birth, he supposedly took his first lover, Robert Ross. During this time, Wilde’s style in terms of fashion and writing took notice as being radical and caused much controversy and popularity. Later on, Wilde became closer to Lord Alfred Douglass, his next partner. In this same string, The Importance of Being Earnest seemed to compensate for any social drama. But this mega success was not enough for Lord Alfred Douglass’s father, who would end up prosecuting against both his son and Wilde and lead them to jail. In this time, Wilde stayed with Douglass in jail while his plays both became more controversial and successful. 

On May 29, 1884, Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd were married and at first the marriage was documented as being quite successful, with both professing their love for each other in their letter exchanges. Wilde even had encouraged his own male friends to get married because of his own happy marriage. However, after their second child was born, their relationship slowly deteriorated by welcoming Robbie Ross into their home. Ross and Wilde engaged in a more than friendly relationship, with Lloyd supposedly ignorant to the occurrences. Later, Wilde’s relationship with Albert “Boise” Douglas began with Constance’s absence from the home, wishing to be more independent. As Wilde and Douglas’s relationship continued, Wilde was later thrown out of the house, but welcomed later welcomed back. Wilde and Lloyd’s relationship continued after his return, with her visiting him in prison as well as using her allowance to pay for the expenses he had incurred. His own views marriage, such as “A man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing” and “Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence”, can be seen in his play The Importance of Being Earnest” , with Algernon and Jack wooing their fiancées under the guise of being a different man.

http://www.egs.edu/library/oscar-wilde/biography/

http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/wilde.html

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/24/constance-mrs-wilde-franny-moyle-review

Realism and Return of the Native- JZhu and EMinor

Realist writers were concerned with producing accurate portrayals of ordinary life. They rejected Romantic emotionalism as an ineffective tool for reforming and describing industrial society. By examining the details of daily life, realist writers explain why ordinary people and characters behave the way they do. In Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy develops the backgrounds of his main characters to allow his audience to understand the perspectives of each character. Eustacia, who was brought up in the city, dreams of the thrill and splendor of Paris. In contrast, the heath seems dreadfully dull to her. In contrast, Clym was brought up on the heath and feels at peace with that environment. Hardy’s descriptions of Eustacia’s and Clym’s background helps his audience to understand their reactions to the heath. 

Hardy also emphasizes the role guilt plays a lot of the events of the characters’ lives. He recognizes the motivation of guilt and put’s a focus on this- rather than romance or idealism. Through his writing, the audience studies the causes and effects of the characters’ actions and how them results of those actions manifest themselves in the characters’ lives forever. For example, Eustacia was immensely guilty over accidentally killing Ms. Yeobright, but instead of giving a lengthy speech about how terrible she felt (as many novelists write), Eustacia acted on her emotions in a more realistic way- suicide. Additionally, we can observe how the guilt among characters causes them to marry men/women that do not make them happy, and then how those feelings cause them to misbehave in their marriages and pursue people outside of those marriages. Diggory Venn, on the other hand, is acting on his true feelings for Thomasin and never pursues less genuine outlets, so he (as reality could predict) feels no guilt.

Naturalism in the return of the native

Naturalism is the depiction of characters or the environment in their natural state in literature. The Return of the Native uses Naturalism very effectively when presenting new characters or environments for the reader. Each change presents a new view of Egdon Heath or a character such as Clem Yeobright or Diggory Venn. Egdon heath is described once as "a place whose dark soil was strong and crude and organic as the body of a beast." a very description that sends shivers bone deep. The characters separately are very delecately picked apart and analyzed down to the very existance of their being.
A naturalistic analysis of The Return of the Native provides for a very deep understanding of the setting and each character and how they interact.

phil

Utilitarianism, though formalized earlier in the end of 18^th century, continued as an influential philosophy with John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism published in the mid-19^th century. Utilitarianism is a philosophy that seeks to maximizes utility or pleasure (often, with questionable accuracy, retold as the most good for the most people). A revival of interest in Kant occurred: his philosophy was a deontological (philosophies emphasizing the intentions with which an action is carried out, not its effects) categorical imperative; it’s the idea that some actions are categorically morally impermissible regardless of circumstance. A similar revival occurred regarding Hegel’s existentialist ideas. Comte’s positivism, a philosophy of science and rationality, grew to prominence during this period.

                The 1800s also saw the high mark of the Industrial Revolution, and many of these philosophies grew out of that. Most notably, Marx was heavily influenced by the Industrial Revolution, and while he produced an incredible quantity of philosophical thought, his eponymous political philosophy gained the most attention—the idea that societies pass through a number of stages of economic distribution, where the ideal end and equilibrium is a stateless, equal community (socialism). In contrast, transcendentalism lashed back against this sort of economic and factual determinism, arguing instead that higher levels of human understanding could be occurred by transcending the limits of reason and logic.

Oscar Wilde and Aestheticism (Bay P. and Connor L.) (you know there's gonna be a gay joke in here)

Let's begin with a definition of Aestheticism (capital A) and the Aesthetic Movement. The Aesthetic Movement was an art movement which emphasizes just what you think it would emphasis: aesthetics. This was in contrast to other movements, which had more of a focus on socio-political themes. The main pillar of this movement was for art to exist for its own sake, not to bring a message or even pleasure to its audience. Oscar Wilde was a leading member of this movement. He advocated for freedom from the restraints of both morality and society, which was in stark rebellion to Victorian convention of the time. What a Wilde rebel. This can be seen clearly in The Importance of Being Earnest, which is essentially all about mocking the upper class. Wilde in general was all about being controversial and sticking it to the man, namely in the fact that he rather publically stuck it to men. (Ba dum tsh. There’s your daily tasteless joke about gay sex, courtesy of none other than your friendly neighborhood Bay Phillips.) He was a dandy, a man who pays excessive amounts of attention to his appearance, and this self-effacing character trope shows up in many of his works. This plays in perfectly with his role in the Aesthetic Movement, since, well, the movement was all about aesthetics, and so was Wilde.

Thomas Hardy—biography (most relevant to understanding the novel) by Trevor Kennedy and Zack Hamblen

1. Thomas Hardy was born in the county town of Dorset in 1840. He lived his entire live there except for five years. Possible parallel to the life of those on the heath in addition to Clym Yeobright's short stint in Paris.
2. According to victorianweb.org, "Hardy's mother, Jemima, was a former maidservant and cook. She came from a poor family, but she had acquired from her mother a love of reading, and her literary tastes included Latin poets and French romances in English translation. She provided for her son's education. First she taught little Thomas how to read and write before he was four, and then she instilled in him a growing interest in literature." This could have served as Clym's inspiration to move back to the heath and become a schoolteacher.
3. The same desire of Clym to help educate those on the heath may be linked Hardy's educational experiences as a child. "Hardy recieved his early schooling at the local National School in Lower Bockhampton, which opened in 1848. The school was run by the 'National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church'".
4. Hardy's move to London in 1862 to work with the architect Arthur Blomfield most likely served as an inspiration for Clym's visit to Paris from Return of the Native, suggesting that Clym is at least somewhat based off on Hardy himself. It was in London where he was exposed to the exploding literary culture of the city, and he wrote his first pieces of prose and poetry. His first short story was called "How I Built Myself a House" in 1865.
5. After several years in the city, and with his writing career on it's feet, he moved back to Bockhampton in 1870, where he met his future wife Emma Lavinia Gifford, whom he married four years later. This newfound love of the returning native Hardy to his hometown, makes stark connections to Clym who comes back and stirs up trouble when he marries Eustachia Vye, setting in motion a chain of unfortunate events.
6. However, Hardy was more lucky and his marriage with Gifford proved successful. After he had several successes with his earlier works, he designed and built his cottage: "Max Gate" in Dorchester, where he wrote his most well-known novels from, including Return of the Native.
7. He went on to recieve many major awards in his later life, especially after the turn of the 20th century. His wife passed away in 1912, he decided to move on and remarry Florence Dugdale in 1914, but was continually plagued with sadness over his first wife's death, which inspired many of his later poems. Hardy died in 1928 due to complications from pleurisy. His heart was the only part of him spared from cremation, which is now buried at St. Michael's Church, where the remains of his two wives lie as well.

Thomas Hardy - the Novelist; Courtney Burke and Lauren Stigers

Thomas Hardy regarded himself as primarily a poet, though he initially gained fame as a novelist. His first novel was never published as it was thought to be too controversial, and as a result, he destroyed all the manuscripts of it. His next two novels were published anonymously and he believed they would be more commercially appealing. His 1873 novel A Pair of Blue Eyes was the first to be published under his name, and it is believed that the term "cliffhanger" originated from this novel, as one of its protagonists is left literally hanging off of a cliff. His work displayed elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. His book Tess of the d'Urbervilles garnered criticism for it sympathetically portraying a "fallen woman" and it was initially denied publication. Said novel had a subtitle of A Pure Woman: Faithfully Presented which was intended to shock the Victorian middle class. Hardy published a book called Jude the Obscure which attracted even more criticism for its explicit treatment of sex and was colloquially called "Jude the Obscene." Despite his success, he felt disgusted at how his two greatest works were received publicly and eventually gave up writing fiction.

Victorian Literature

Literature from the Victorian Age (1837-1901) has four basic characteristics:

1. It is practical to every day life and contains ideas for human progress.

2. Most of it has a moral purpose instead of being purely for "Art's sake"

3. It is impacted by the Science of the time so there is a lot of idealism regarding man's relation to the world.

4. A lot of emphasis on the great ideals: truth, justice, love, etc.

At the beginning of the age the stories ended with hardwork, love and luck winning, the bad characters being punished. However, as the century progressed, the stories became more complex. Some of the most famous Victorian writers are William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy.

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva90.html
http://olenglish.pbworks.com/f/Victorian+Lit.+Char.pdf
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~khickok/victoriannovel.html

Cupid and Psyche

A king and queen had three daughters, all beautiful and elegant in their manners. But one was more the most beautiful person someone has ever seen, and her name was Psyche. Men came from all across the land to see her just so they can view and adore her beauty. This began to lose control, and the men started to idolize her and pray to her as if she were a goddess, and Aphrodite became forgotten. Obviously shes not going to like this at all, so she orders her son Cupid to punish her by making her fall in love with someone who is horrendously ugly. When he sneaks into her bedroom, he is also distracted by her beauty, and accidentally pricks himself with one of his own arrows, causing him to fall madly in love with her and leaves without punishing her. Her life continues as normal, people come and go as they just admire her, but she is unable to fall in love because of Aphrodite's hate and vengeance. As time goes on, her two sisters get married but she remains alone. Her parents consult the oracle of Apollo, afraid they/she has displeased the gods. They were given a prophecy that she was going to fall in love with a monster that neither gods nor humans can resist. They are told to leave her on the side of a mountain for her lover to come find her, which they did. The wind spirit Zephyr approaches her and picks her up, carrying her down into the valley below to a large castle, which now belongs to her, along with everything in it. That night, her future husband comes in, but she cant see him, and he tells her that she should never try to see him. She's okay with this at first, but then grows lonely since he only comes at night. She convinces him to allow her sisters to come and visit, and he has Zephyr take them from the mountain and carry them down to the castle. They become jealous and ask who her husband is, and she lies saying he is a young, handsome man who spends all day hunting, but they dont buy it and she tells them how shes never seen him except for at night. They remind her of the prophecy, that he could be a monster, and they tell her to go tonight and see who he is. She does this, and finds Cupid in his bed. Entranced by his beauty, she drops the lantern on him, burning him. He wakes, furious, and flies out the window telling her she will never see him again. The palace then disappears and she is left alone, and goes back to her sisters, who take this as an opportunity to take her ex-husband as their own. So they go to the top of the mountain and jump off, expecting Zephyr to carry them down, but they actually fall to their deaths. Psyche searches all over for Cupid, with no luck, and eventually ends up in Demeters temple, which was a total wreck, so she cleaned it up a little bit, and Demeter thanked her by suggesting she beg for forgiveness to Aphrodite so she can finally fall in love and stay in love with Cupid. Aphrodite is mad and lashes her tongue, and tells her the only way she can marry cupid is if she completes certain tasks. The first was to organize a whole barn full of hay and stray and wheat, which she does by the help of ants. But Aphrodite claims she didnt do it on her own, so she is given another test, to collect the golden fleece from the backs of the herd of sheep in the field, which she does by the help of the river god that they will kill her unless she waits till noon when they are in the shade and they wont do anything. Aphrodite says the same thing about her doing it on her own, and gives her a final task: to go to the underworld and ask Persephone to put a bit of beauty in a box for her to bring back, which she does with the help of cupid telling her theres a cave to the Underworld instead of killing herself. She opens the box and falls into a deep sleep. Cupid wakes her up and tells her to take the box to Aphrodite and he will handle the rest. He goes to Zeus and tells him to calm down Aphrodite and he does. The Gods bring Psyche up to Olympus and turn her immortal so she and Cupid can live together forever. They have a daughter named Hedone, also known as Pleasure. I don't believe in love. It is an artificial emotion that people use as a scapegoat when things aren't going as planned, or they use it as a crutch to walk on through their whole life. Those who love are weak and don't have the moral capability of taking responsibility for their own actions. They just need someone else to help share the pain with. Not really, I just don't know any love stories other than beauty and the Beast, Alladin, and other Disney movies.

Love stories can be awesome

First, I am really mad. My draft was beautiful, and then it was just gone.  Poof.  It had disappeared.

So Aphrodite was really jealous of how pretty Psyche was, so she sent Cupid to make her fall in love with some guy with a butt face.  Psyche's dad was upset that she was still single, so he went to an oracle, who told him to dress her is mourning clothes.  Then she was swept up by the wind and taken to a green meadow.  There cupid waited and wooed her.  she just want allowed to look at him.  She got homesick, so she went to visit her sisters, who were also really jealous and of how happy she was; they convinced her that her husband was a monster and she had to kill him.  When she went back to cupid, she snuck up on him while he was sleeping.  He woke up and flew away because he saw the knife.  Psyche cried out to Aphrodite, who made her do this horrible tasks.  her last task was to go receive the charms of of beauty from Hades.  All she had to do was not open the box. So of course she does.  the box was full of a black vapor which out her to sleep.  Cupid woke her up and took her up to mount Olympus and convinced Zeus to make her a goddess.  The end!

My take on the greatest love story ever would be my love for baked goods.  I love them so very much.  Chocolate chip cookies, brownies, strudels, pies, cakes, biscuits, the whole bunch.  But the nuts!  Nuts in baked goods are like Boyles on a pretty girl's face.  It just ruins the whole thing.  I enjoy baking my loves, eating them, decorating them, the whole shabang.  But I hate cleaning up.  That's like the walk out after a one night stand-simply embarrassing. You see the mess they left, how they dirty everything they touched.  It ruins the magic.

Is Love an Object?

Soooooo Cupid and Psyche sittin in a tree (well a tower) k-i-s-s-i-n-g.... I'll tell you the story how they met. Psyche was the youngest daughter of three and was the most beautiful that words were inadequate for description. Men started devoting their time to Psyche instead of Venus. She was pissed when men stopped going to her alter and went to follow Psyche. Venus then sent her mischievous son Cupid to tradgify (is that a word?) her love life. Cupid gathered his materials and went to the chambers of beautiful Psyche with the bitter love on his lips to be able to "cast a spell" on her. Cupid touched her with his arrow and she awoke, but it startled Cupid, so he injured himself with the arrow too. Psyche went on without finding a suitor because of the wrath of Venus. Her parents went to the oracle and it was told that her lover wasn't mortal. She then willingly said let me go there, so that I may not cause sadness (to her parents). The mountain top was reached and she was carried away by winds. She wound up on Cupid's island and wandered around amazed by its beauty. Then life continued on!

The perfect love story? There is none. As depressing as that sounds, I really think that long marriages and friendships are the perfect? love story. My grandparents were married for over 50 years and when my grandmother was in a nursing home, my grandfather walked over until he couldn't walk there anymore (he lived in the assisted living around the corner). Devotion like that is amazing and probably as close as a human perfect love story will come to existing.

Cupid and Psyche

In this riveting mythological story, we start off with a beautiful girl named Psyche, who was so beautiful that it made others forget about Venus! Venus isn't about to condone that so she enlists her son Cupid to shoot an arrow at Psyche in order to make her fall in love with the most hideous man ever (interesting revenge plan), but Cupid instead shoots the arrow at himself as he is enchanted by her. Psyche and her family want her to have a husband but unfortunately she can't find a faithful man so she is instructed to marry a serpent by Apollo, to which she for some reason obliges, desperation I guess. She goes up this hill, falls asleep, wakes up and finds a mansion, lives in the mansion and marries a man who she never sees. When her sisters convince her to sneak a look, she does, and Cupid (surprise!) finds out and leaves her, causing Venus to want to engage in another act of revenge. Psyche comes crying to Venus trying to find Cupid, and Venus puts her through a series of "impossible" tasks in order to get rid of her, like retrieving golden fleece (I think I've heard that somewhere before..), but Psyche miraculously completes all of them with the help of some animal friends. In her last task, Psyche gets curious and opens a box that she was supposed to bring to Venus and instantly falls asleep (that's what she gets). Cupid finds her, takes her to Zeus, asks for to be immortal, and Psyche becomes an immortal goddess and marries Cupid. Venus now likes Psyche because she'll stop distracting the other men on earth...

Olivia and Fitz

I have no idea of what the perfect love story is. I'm just gonna go back to one of my favorite sows, Scandal. The relationship between Olivia Pope and President Grant is so perfectly imperfect it could make anyone's heart melt. They can't be together since he is married and it could ruin both their high-profile jobs, yet their hearts yearn for each other and it's great. I apologize, that was cheesy. I don't normally condone home-wrecker tendencies, but Olivia isn't like that at all. It's like Fitz and her are made for each other.

Cupid and Psyche

Three daughters. The baby sister just happened to be most gorgeous one of all. Everyone paid attention to her and was well aware of her beauty but no one wanted to marry her. Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, was not pleased because now not as many people were paying attention to her. So she sent her son, Cupid, to shoot her with one of his arrows so that she’d fall in love with a monster. Being struck in awe by her beauty, he dropped his arrows and accidently shot himself and fell in love with Psyche. (Way to go, Cupid!) But still no one married her?? SO her parents went to an oracle and they were told that she was to marry a monster and so they left her on a mountain. There, she had a husband who would only visit her at night (which is already really creepy but she stayed.) Eventually she got homesick and asked her husband to let sisters come over which was all fine and good except for the fact that her sisters convinced her to try to see her husband. She saw how handsome he was and yay they lived happily ever after.

Now for the most heartbreaking love story ever: Rose Tyler and Ten.

Look at these cuties.

He didn't even get to say I love you.

But he loves her so much. 

You feel?

Love stories

Psyche was a beautiful girl sooo beautiful that people stopped worshipping Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. Venus became jealous and sent her son, Cupid, to make Psyche fall in love with an ugly, horrible monster. Cupid, however, saw how beautiful she was and dropped the arrow. This caused Cupid to fall in love with Psyche. No one wanted to marry this beautiful lady for some reason. An oracle told her parents that she was destined to marry a horrid monster. Poor beautiful Psyche was sent to the top of a mountain. (I guess good fortune does not always come with good looks.) The West wind took her too a palace where she was waited on by invisible servants. Her husband would visit her in the night. He told her that he would visit her every night but she must not ever try to see her. One day, after consultation with her sisters, Psyche decided to try to kill her husband. Psyche took a knife and lamp to kill her husband. However, she woke him up by pouring wax on his shoulder on accident. Cupid, her beautiful husband woke up, and poof left in a dust of smoke. Psyche went to venus and she had psyche perform many challenging tasks. Cupid learned of this, went to Jupiter and had Jupiter make venus stop. Psyche and cupid were married and lived happily ever after. The end.

The bestest love story ever, is Disneys telling of Beauty and the Beast. Belle has the chanced to marry the stud every girl dreams of, GASTON!!! But when her father vanishes and she finds the dark house in the woods, She trades spots with her father and is basically taken prisoner by a big ugly beast. Belle finally works to where she has befriended the beast (it takes time though for both of them to open up.) Gaston and his men make an attempt to rescue Belle. However, after a fight that almost kills the beast and does kill Gaston, Belle realizes her love for the beast. The love between the two of them causes the beast and all of his living house servant items to turn into humans. The beast is now a handsome man. The two live happily ever after. THE END

Cupid and Psyche

Psyche is GORGEOUS. Men come from all around to gawk at her. And her parents allow this. What? Anyway, Venus is jealous and sends her son to screw with Psyche. Accidentally, Cupid pricks himself with his own arrow (because he was distracted by her beauty -_- ) and falls in love with Psyche. Venus will not allow anybody to fall in love with the fair beauty and after her two sisters get married, Psyche begins to get nervous. Her parents go to an oracle to find out if they pissed off the wrong gods. The oracle says that Psyche will marry a monster and should be taken to a hill and left there. Really? Come on now. You're going to leave her there? Your choice. So Psyche is abandoned on a mountain, but she discovers a mansion filled with riches beyond her dreams. At night a man comes to her room, she has no idea who he is and can't see who he is, but she sleeps with him. American Horror Story, anyone? I digress, her snotty sisters convince her to find out who he is, she does, burns him with oil, and runs back to mamma. The mansion disappears, and she wanders. Eventually she goes to see Venus, begs for mercy, is given three tasks to complete, completes them, and marries Cupid. How darling. 

What the hell is true love? Romeo and Juliet doesn't count. Juliet was 13 and Romeo was beyond unstable. Is true love a fabrication, made for the masses to quench a long forsaken desire to fall madly in love, a love never waning in its adoration? Disney is shit.  And I am not entirely sure that true love exists. Love exists. We have the chemical equations to prove it. Lust exists. Caring exists. But what is true love? How do we quantify it? Sorry, I am cynic. But at the same time I think about Mrs. Jaquith's parents. Her father literally fell in love at first sight. Is that true love? 

Connor Langley. I hate you. You just smashed my heart. The Doctor and Rose. They are true love. 

I'm done. 

   An actually picture of my heart. 

Cupid and Psyche

Yet another story from Ovid's Metamorhoses that sounds like the inspiration for a Twilight film. Seriously, I am very surprised this hasn't been made into a major motion picture. Anyway, a king and queen have three daughers, all of which are gorgeous, but Psyche, I mean dang, she is smoking compared to the other two. In fact, she was so smexy that people came from all around just to check her out, treating her like a goddess equal to that of Venus/Aphrodite. WELL THIS JUST CANNOT STAND. Venusdite gets super jealous that people think Psyche is more attractive, and so she sends out Cupid to shoot her with his famous arrows, so she will fall in love with someone who is not really gifted in the looks department. (lucky guy). So Cupid creeps up in her room at night to shoot her, but she is just so dang hot that Cupid accidentally hits himself with his own arrow, and falls head over heels in love with Psyche. So everyone continues to check out Psyche as usual, but since Aphrenus had it in for her, nobody ever actual falls in love with Psyche, so she remains alone at home while her two less attractive sisters have found husbands.

At this point her parents step in and are like: "Whoa, whoa, what's going on honey, you are smoking hot and haven't found a man yet. To the oracle!" So they go consult the oracle for Apollo who says that she is destined to fall in love with a hideous monster. And as a result, they leave her on a mountain alone to wait for her husband to show up. (very effective solution). But then, out of nowhere Zephyr, the wind, blows her away from the mountaintop and into a field of beautiful flowers where there is this huge castle. Inside, she finds a fancy castle full of all the treasures and artifacts someone could want, and she is told they are hers.  At night, her "husband" shows up and tells her that they are together, but she isn't allowed to see his face, which she is surprisingly cool with. Her sisters aren't however when they find out about this, so they convince her to take a sneak peak when her man is asleep. When she holds the oil lamp near him, he discovers it is indeed Cupid and she is blown away by his attractiveness, so blown away she drips oil on his face causing him to run away saying he will never return. Bummer. This is just the beginning of a very long story of trials and tribulations, but eventually, the two end up together and have a beautiful wedding and such. Yay!

I really, really don't care for love stories. I mean, I'm a guy what do you want me to do? Watch The Notebook. Ha! Ha! Ha! No. But love subplots are in every form of media so I've had my fair share of romance stories. The best love story that I'm familiar with in popular culture comes from Forrest Gump, the inarguably greatest film ever made. Forrest and Jenny are just destined to be together, and the events that seperate them and bring them back together again bear resemblance to classical mythology. You find yourself cheering for them to be together, and wish at some points Forrest new better (rescuing her multiple times), and at other points Jenny would stop being a hussy and doing coke and heroin. The ending is bittersweet though. I didn't even realize this until I rewatched the movie but the last third of the film is really kind of a downer compared to the beginning. His mother dies, he becomes more isolated, Jenny marries him but dies a few years later. But, sending his son off to school at the end of the movie reminds us to have hope for the future and reflect upon the past.



"I'm not a smart man...but I know what love is." -Forrest Gump

Cupid and Psyche

Psyche was so beautiful that people everywhere looked upon her with amazement. When men turned their devotion away from Venus and towards Psyche, Venus found her altars deserted and was greatly offended. Venus decided to send her son, Cupid, to punish Psyche by making her fall in love with a low, mean, and unworthy monster. However, in his pity and confusion, Cupid wounded himself with his own arrow and fell in love with Psyche.  Meanwhile, Psyche’s parents consulted the oracle of Apollo about Psyche’s solitude and learned that her future husband would be a monster that was awaiting her on top of the mountains. Psyche proceeded up the mountain to discover the monster. Instead she found a beautiful palace that served and entertained her. Her husband, Cupid, spoke to her as a voice but refused to be seen by her. However, Psyche’s curiosity got the better of her, and she decided to visit Cupid while he was sleeping and see what he looks like. Cupid woke up and was infuriated. He fled and she tried to follow him in vain. Then, to win back Cupid, Psyche visited Venus who demanded her to complete a series of tasks. Cupid felt pity for Psyche and helped her out. Jupiter convinced Venus to approve of the pair. Psyche becomes immortal and all is well.

Scheherazade is a pretty legendary love story. Scheherazade was brave enough to spend a night with the king, witty enough to devise a plan, and knowledgeable enough to tell 1,000 tales. She won the kings love and earned her life. (Not to mention, Rimsky-Korsakov did a marvelous job bringing the story to life!) 

Cupid and Psyche

There was a king who had three beautiful daughters. The most beautiful of these daughters was the youngest named Psyche. She was so frickin beautiful that people stopped worshipping Venus. Venus, being Venus, got really jealous and had her son Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with a monster. When Cupid went to fulfill this task, he saw how beautiful Psyche was and shot the arrow into himself, making him fall in love with her. Despite how beautiful Psyche was, no one wanted to marry her, so her parents took her up to a mountain to leave her there. She then gets whisked off to a palace by the wind where Cupid is waiting for her. He doesn't allow Psyche to see him, so she gets doted and waited on by invisible people. One day her sisters visit her and make her feel insecure about her husband, so Psyche sneaks a peek at Cupid. Cupid flips and bails. Psyche is then forced to go through crazy tasks assigned to her by Venus in order to get Cupid back. Cupid and Psyche eventually end up together and all is well. (I had the weirdest verb tense change in this and I'm too tired to try to fix it SRY)

Harris got angry at me and made me take it down so love doesn't exist sorry folks that's all
jk don't tell him I'm adding this back

Psyche and Cupid

A pretty girl, Psyche, is born and she has two sisters. Psyche is so pretty everyone forgets about Venus and Venus gets mad. Venus hires Cupid to shoot an arrow and make Psyche fall in love with the most villainous man alive but instead Cupid decides to shoot himself.
Psyche and her family are worried because men always seem content to marry others even though Pscyhe is so pretty so her father asks Apollo for help. Apollo tells Psyche to go to this place on a mountain and marry a serpent and she goes into a daze when she gets there. She wakes up in this mansion place and she meets her husband in the dark.
Long story short......turns out her sisters become jealous, advise her to figure out the mystery man, she does, its Cupid, she realizes that she doesn't trust him and he goes crying to his mother Venus.
Venus now wants revenge so she asks Psyche to do a bunch of crazy things, and with the assistance of some others, Psyche manages to complete every task.
blah blah blah......Cupid convinces Zeus to make her a goddess. he does. the end.

There are a bunch of good Disney love stories and such but in real life they aren't as common. However, I would say Kate Middleton and Prince William's relationship is as Disney as it gets. I mean they started off as friends and then they like each other. Their families are good about (atleast seem to be) and they both seem to have kept fairly good reputations by sticking with eeachother and such. So that would be the best real life love story I can think of at the moment.

928 × 1388 - huffingtonpost.com

Blog Number Fourteen - Cupid and Psyche

Psyche was the youngest of three daughters. She was the most beautiful one of all and because of this Venus ordered Cupid to make her fall in love with a hideous monster. Cupid accidently pricked himself with the arrow intended for her and fell in love. But even though Psyche was beautiful nobody wanted to marry her because she was destined to marry a monster. So her parents placed her in a palace where she had invisible servants and a husband who only visited her at night. Her husband told her never to try to look at him, but her sisters persuaded her to carry a lamp and a knife with her. That night she looked upon the face of Cupid and accidently woke him by dripping hot wax on him. Cupid and the palace immediately vanished. Psyche did everything to try and find him but could not. Eventually she went to Venus who was still angry with her. Venus made her go through all these tasks for her. Psyche completed all her tasks and married her beloved Cupid.

Love stories... where to start? I absolutely have no idea. I would say the Princess Bride because it's so corny it's lovable. Or Ella Enchanted because it's just as corny. I'm not much of a Romeo and Juliet fan. OOOhhhhhhh.... Sherlock and Irene. Definite yes. Because he does and does not love her. Is he capable of love? Who knows? But yes, I think this is my final answer.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=dcg3OBRvGgZNmM&tbnid=mFxDvI1lHpBJFM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deviantart.com%2Fmorelikethis%2Fartists%2F353559107%3Fview_mode%3D2&ei=5jaqUvHKC6HT2wW8yYCYDQ&bvm=bv.57967247,d.b2I&psig=AFQjCNGxOw597zrgk5ncEgjCpNt0353IAw&ust=1386973247249355

Psyche and Cupid

The story of Psyche and Cupid is an interesting one because I am sure it had inadvertently had an effect on so many different romantic stories over the years is it is one of the oldest myths or stories told about the issues that can come about in the name of beauty and love. Psyche was one of three daughters to a king and queen, she even out of her beautiful sisters, was incredibly pretty. For this reason, many people began to think she was the second embodiment of Venus and began to worship her rather than the famous almighty Venus. Out of jealously and rage, Venus sends Cupid on a mission to spite Psyche but upon seeing Psyche, Cupid falls in love with her. Cupid does not curse her, but she still does not marry anyone even after her sisters had. Her parents consult an oracle to see what the problem was, he prophesized that she was going to end up marrying some sort of not-man monster. Eventually, Cupid makes his presence known to Psyche and they fall in love. Though the sisters do not believe it at first, the truth of the forbidden love comes out in the end and Psyche and Cupid end up together. 

There are so many true love stories written today, it’s hard to point just one out. I guess what always first comes to mind when someone mentions “true love” is the timeless, more than just famous, play Romeo and Juliet. In Shakespeare’s, arguably, most famous work, we are shown two young birds falling in love in just a short period of time, but the love being worth dying for. Now, there are many spin-offs of love stories, but I think many follow the premise of these very famous stories. Romeo and Juliet has to be one of the greatest influences on these new stories.

Look how many times Romeo and Juliet has been interpreted!