At
the beginning of the semester, my blogs were a bit jumbled in thoughts. As I reflect
back on the semester I can see clearly now that my blogs are still just as
jumbled, go figure! For this last blog, I wanted to collect my thoughts and
discuss how I felt about the things we learned throughout the classes. I actually
really enjoyed the class, I am a history and archaeology major, and most of the
classes I take are standard lecture and note taking classes. We never read
anything like fuzzy baby Merlin. However, I did not enjoy some readings at all.
Granted,
it did take up the entire first half of the semester, but when we were done
with it, I wanted to toss Kors/Peters into the fires of Mount Doom. That darn Aquinas. With
the exception of the Malleus Malificarum, I thought the readings were painful
to read. I liked the Hammer of Witches because it was utterly ridiculous. I mean,
witches cannot cry but some can. Witches cannot lie but some can. It was very humorous
to read…. However, I do not think I will never look at birds’ nests the same
way again…
But,
I think my all time favorite readings in this class were the Grimm fairy tales.
In addition, I was very happy that one of the stories we had to read for class
happened to be my favorite Grimm tale (Godfather death). A bit of a dark story,
I know, but the guy totally had it coming.
The
last class we had Dr. Mitchell-Buck posed the question why do people still believe
in magic, and why do we continue to write about it? I think it gives us an
escape from reality. In many of these stories, it is an ordinary person who
happens to stumble upon something fantastic and gets to go on an adventure. Well,
who wouldn’t want that? In reality if we were Harry Potter, it wouldn’t be Hagrid
showing up at the door it would probably be child services. But who wouldn’t want
a letter rubber stamped with the message YOU’RE MAGICAL! Plus I’d totally be down with a pet owl. Magic
lets us tap into our imagination and see things in a different way.
Blog 5 of 5
I was excited to be done with Kors and Peters too, but weren't we lucky to do our presentation on the Malleus Malificarum? I think putting that presentation together helped me like it more and it was a lot of fun for a a presentation.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, I think we still believe in magic because we don't fully understand it. That's why magic has continued to evolve from something that was evil and would have people executed to something that we find an escape like Harry Potter, or intriguing which is why people will spend money for tickets to go see a magic show in Vegas. There was a point when types of sciences were considered also magic. We are still interested in magic because it's the unknown, and it either scares us or we want to know everything about it.