Monthly Archives: February 2018

Malign

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Malign: (adjective) evil in nature, influence, or effect: injurious

“And then, my best idea came to me as I looked at my cup of cocoa. Like the prince trapped inside the body of a frog, that humble white cup, so maligned by the everyday, so misrepresented as a mere vessel, was a work of art waiting to occur.”

Word from Bia Lowe’s I Always Write About My Mother When I Start to Write

The use of the word was to show how neglected and mistreated the cup is. The only purpose of it being a container and nothing else, when in the narrators view it shows more potential and can be used for something else. From what I can understand, the purpose of this word is to express something or someone in a negative light.

 

 

Magnificent

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Magnificent (adjective)- marked by stately grandeur and lavishness.

Source: Merriam-Webster

I saw this word while reading the 1812 version of the Brothers Grimm story, Cinderella. Cinderella uses it in reference to the ball her stepsisters attended the night before.

The next morning the two sisters came to the kitchen. They were angry when they saw that she had sorted the lentils, for they wanted to scold her. Because they could not, they began telling her about the ball. They said, “Cinderella, it was so grand at the ball. The prince, who is the best looking man in the whole world, escorted us, and he is going to choose one of us to be his wife.”

“Yes,” said Cinderella, “I saw the glistening lights. It must have been magnificent.”

Here, Cinderella is saying the party was extravagant and high-class. Basically, she’s saying the party looked like a good time.

 

Sheen

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Sheen (noun) –  a bright or shining condition

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sheen

From ” I Always Write About My Mother When I Start to Write” by Bia Lowe

“I loved to watch her stand over the sink. The sheen of her slip in the bathroom light slid
over the curves of her body like my finger in a bowl of frosting.”

Bia Lowe uses this word to describe the brightness of her mother’s dress, which may be velvet, in the bathroom light and shows the reader that it is glowing. Sheen basically means bright or luster texture on the surface.

 

Image result for sheen meaning

Reading and responding to “Cinderella” variants

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Margaret Atwood’s “There Was Once” inspired me to think about different versions of the Cinderella story–hers, of course, barely gets started, but is interesting for challenging the expected set-up of the story by exposing the value-laden terms used to establish the characters and setting. After reading the Wikipedia entry on Cinderella and the introduction to The Cinderella Bibliography, you are hopefully interested in reading a few versions. Here are a few you might want to choose from:

“Tam and Cam” and another version, “The Story of Tam and Cam“–from Vietnam

“Yeh-Shen, A Cinderella Story“–from China

“The Little Red Fish and The Golden Clog“–from Iraq

This page has many versions. You might be interested in reading (use the links in the Table of Contents, or use CTRL-F or command-F to search, or just scroll down):

“Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper“–from France (Charles Perrault)

“Cinderella” (Aschenputtel)–from Germany (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm [Brothers Grimm]): the 1812 version and the 1857 version

[EDITED TO ADD: From the comments below, I can see that some classmates have chosen a few stories that can expand our list:

“The Hidden One”-Native American Legend by Aaron Shepard (here is one version)

“The Baba Yaga” (Russia, Aleksandr Afanasyev)

“The Wicked Stepmother” (India)

“Cinderella” (Italy)

ALSO: Chinye: A West African Cinderella

Please add more if you want others to read along with you!]

 

I’d encourage everyone to read Anne Sexton’s poem, “Cinderella,” as a modern telling and critique of these stories.

Please reply here with a comment saying which version you’re reading. That will allow us to balance our groups for our discussion. If you see that one version is neglected, please consider choosing that one! Ideally, a few students will choose the same version so you can talk together about your version before we have a larger class discussions and short presentations.

After you have read your chosen version, please write a blog post (click on the + at the top of the screen when you’re signed in, or just follow this link) in which you highlight the aspects of the story that were familiar, unfamiliar, surprising, and particularly telling of the values or customs of the culture it came from. Since we discussed blog posts being 300 words, approximately, aim to write 300 words. Your short presentation in class on Monday will come from these thoughts and from your discussion with others who read the same version when we meet in class.

If you have time, try to read more than one version, so we can have more of a comparative discussion. They’re all really interesting, and not particularly long or difficult. If there’s another version you want to share, particularly if there’s one you know from your background, please add it to the comments here so we can add it to our reading list. If you also want to mention more popular or contemporary examples, please do as well!

 

Buoyed

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Buoyed

Past tensed for buoy

Verb

This word is defined as to keep (someone or something) afloat.
“I let the water buoy up my weight”

i found this definition on https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/buoy

I came a upon this word in ” I Always Write About My Mother When I Start to Write” by Bia Lowe

The sentence that this word is in is ” I wanted to lay them, breathtaking, at her feet, and by doing so bind her heart to mine, ever after to be buoyed Up like a raft on a calmed ocean. ”

Now that I learned the real meaning of this word I truly understand the passage because in the sentence Bia talks about the raft being buoyed in a calmed ocean. Bia talks about being heart to heart to the mother so I see it as two people all alone with each other and every thing else just fades away. So Stating that she wanted to be like a raft floating in the ocean is like being deeply in love. It’s this feeling that no one else matters anymore.

Epithet

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Epithet:noun:

An Epithet is a disparaging or abusive word.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epithet

“Another thing.Good and wicked.Don’t you think that you should transcend those puritanical  judgemental moralistic epithets? I mean, so much of it is conditioning, isn’t it?”

Basically this word is a sort of chastization and or warning that writers and or society should stop putting labels on people and things.Essentially people who use this word want things and people to be studied carefully because diffent forms of being or behavior usually have multiple reasons.

Puritanical

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  • Puritanical (Adjective) – of, relating to, or characterized by a rigid morality/ extremely or excessively strict in matters of morals and religion

Taken from Margaret Atwood’s  “There Once Was”

“Another thing. Good and Wicked. Don’t you think you should transcend those puritanical judgemental moralistic epithets? I mean, so much of that is conditioning, isn’t it?“

Atwood used the word puritanical to show the speaker’s point of view at how the idea of “good and wicked” are used in stories, expressing her disapproval that such things were just based on moral principles that was reinforced by old beliefs and that it’s time to move on to that cliche expression. 

 

source:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puritanical

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/puritanical