Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Chapter 9: Greek Myths

Lit/Prof

"Landscape With the Fall of Icarus"

Foster starts out this chapter by stating that myth is a word that is commonly misinterpreted. Whenever we think of myths we think of Greece and Rome and gods and goddesses. But instead he establishes that recent subjects of discussion such as Shakespeare, the Bible, and fairy tales are all considered myths. But back to Greek mythology he talks about how that is the most universal description of a myth and evidence is everywhere, from the names of schools to the names of cities we will always have a little bit of Greek mythology in the United States.

This poem is about the Greek myth of Icarus who is a young boy who is defiant towards his father which results in his death at sea. Both this poem and Musee des Beaux Arts is an interpretation of a picture that was created about this myth.

William’s approach of the poem is much like the approach of the artist who captured the portrait. The artist’s main intention was not to have all eyes on Icarus plunging into the water, instead he wants to capture the landscape and in turn have the main event be seen in the corner of the eye. William takes a nonchalant position when writing the poem by (much like the artist) trying to point out the beautiful landscape. Maybe William believes that Icarus gets too much attention for his death scene and instead tries to capture what is going on around him. Or instead maybe he feels that by drawing the attention away from Icarus and then throwing him into the poem at the last minute will have a greater impact on the reader. Instead of the normal approach of having the main focus of a poem decided early on, he (much like the picture) has Icarus as almost an after thought, something he should mention before the poem ends.

No comments:

Post a Comment