Mythology-Folklore Topics: Brainstorming

Topic: Cat tales

Comments: I love cats.  They are the most loving and majestic animals on the planet.  Cats are also very independent when they want to be left alone.  I think that there might be several stories throughout history about these wonderful creatures.
Possible Stories: I know there is at least one famous story about a cat named Puss-N-Boots but I'm not sure what other kinds of stories I will find.  I searched the link of past storybooks and found a few stories there.  One story in particular called "The Cat and the Birds" stood out to me for its moral lessen at the end.

Sample Story Comments: The story of "The Cat and the Birds" represents someone who learns a harsh lessen after having their hopes set high on a different outcome.
Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: The Cat and the Birds

Book Title: "The Cat and the Birds," from Aesop's Fables

Book Author: Translated by Laura Gibbs
Year: 2002

Topic: Evil Cat Tales

Comments: I love cats.  They are the most loving and majestic animals on the planet.  Cats can also be very independent when they want to be left alone.  Since some cats tend to be more unsociable, like feral cats, I'm sure that there would be some stories about cats getting revenge on their owners or people in general.
Possible Stories:  I searched the link of past storybooks and found a few stories there.  One story in particular called "The Bakeneko" stood out to me for its ability to possess magical powers and its revenge quality.  

Sample Story Comments: The story of "The Bakeneko" represents a cat who possesses magical powers and is known for killing humans while they sleep and taking over their bodies.
Bibliography Information:

Sample Story: The Cat Came Back

Book Title: Bakeneko

Book Author: Wikipedia contributors
Year: Last modified December 2014

Sekien Nkeomata by Toriyama Sekien (2006) Image Source: Wikipedia

Topic: Panther stories

Comments: I liked this story because it was so similar to "Little Red Riding Hood".  Instead of using the wolf character, the story uses a panther (which is a type of cat) as the character who teases and torments the children.
Possible Stories:  I searched the link of past storybooks and found a few stories there.  One story in particular called "The Panther" stood out to me. It was basically a retelling of the classic story "Little Red Riding Hood".

Sample Story Comments: The story of "The Panther" represents a cat who eats some children and their sister and brother want to take revenge on the panther for killing their family members. 

Bibliography Information:

Story title: The Panther

Book title: The Chinese Fairy Tale Book

Book author: R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens

Year: 1921

Topic: Mermaid Roles

Comments: To me, mermaids have always been fascinating creatures ever since I was a little girl.  Most of the stories I've read or movies I've watched about mermaids, they have always saved humans from some sort of peril in the sea.  "The Little Mermaid" is a prime example of this storyline.
Possible Stories:  I searched the link of Sacred Texts and found a story there.  One story in particular called "The Mermaid Wife" stood out to me because she did not chose to live as a human, but was made to be a human.  She longed to go back to the sea and be with her family.  That is the complete opposite ending of "The Little Mermaid".

Sample Story Comments: The story of "The Mermaid Wife" represents a mermaid who is made to become a human and misses being a part of the sea and being with her family there.
Bibliography Information:

Story Title: The Mermaid Wife

Book Title: The Fairy Mythology

Book Author: Thomas Keightley

Year Published: 1870

Web Source: Sacred-Texts (The Mermaid Wife)

Mermaid in the Sea

Web Source: Flickr

Famous Last Words: Week 2 struggling with writer's block

This week has been challenging for me.  It's hard to fight off the feeling that you are falling behind in your classwork, even when you logically know you're not.  My personal life (mainly my children) has really made it difficult to get things done on time & get to my classes on time as well.  I suppose I need to start organizing and prioritizing my schedule a little better, so that I don't feel so overwhelmed and overloaded on the weekend.

With that being said, I feel that my best writing assignment this week was when I rewrote the story of Saint Christine.  I felt like I conveyed the story in a successful way by adding new details and changing the storyline just a bit.  I thought the story was interesting and that is why I chose to retell it.  I really went out of my comfort zone with deciding to read the Women Saints unit.  I really don't read anything religious in nature at all and that was my main motivation for trying to read this unit.  I wanted to try to read something I'd never read before and see if it interested me at all.  I found the Women Saints unit to be completely different from reading religious scripture, so that really helped me stay more involved in reading the stories.

I still haven't really gotten into the writer's groove yet.  In my opinion, there is much improvement needed in my writing to make it more evocative and eloquent.  This class is making me wish that I had a more creative talent for writing stories like some of the other students taking this class.  With the help of reading other people's stories, plus talking to a friend of mine who is a creative writer, I hope to learn some better techniques in my writing style and word usage.  At least, I have an idea now of what I want to write about for this class, so that is definitely one step in the right direction.

Writer's Block

Week 2 Storytelling: Christine the Faithful

Saint Christine was born into a royal family.  The King and Queen had a total of three children, but she was the only girl child born to them.  Of all the girls in the kingdom, her beauty surpassed them all.  Her father knew that princes from all around the world would want to marry his daughter when she became of age.  He decided to keep her hidden away in her room so that no man would ever desire her because of her beauty.  Their castle was the largest in the land and Christine's room was on the highest level of the castle.  She hardly ever got to venture out of her own room much less out of the castle.  Her brothers were able to come and go as they pleased and that irritated her beyond belief.  One of her greatest desires was to be independent and not be dictated to by her father.

Christine's family also believed in pagan gods.  As she grew up, her family forced her to kneel down and worship these pagan gods too.  But her feelings started to drastically change as she grew closer to adulthood. When she became a teenager, she rebelled against her father's beliefs.  Christine was forming her own opinions and beliefs while she was growing up, but she kept them a secret from her parents.  While wandering through the vast castle one day, she happened upon a room she had never ventured into before.  The room was a library full of books.  Hidden behind a stack of novels, she found a book about a christian God and was intrigued by its title.  She read this book incessantly for days and days.  Christine became obsessed with reading about this wonderful, forgiving God.  

A few days later, her father told her to come downstairs from her room so they could pray and give offerings of gold and silver to the pagan gods.  She refused to leave her room.  Her father became angry and yelled at her.  Christine finally worked up the nerve to tell her father that she no longer believed in his gods and that she had converted to Christianity.  Her father became enraged and ordered his daughter to be tortured for her newfound beliefs.  In her father's eyes, Christine became a traitor to the pagan gods and his family.

She endured many forms of torture, but never relented in her Christian beliefs.  Christine was tortured for many weeks.  The mighty Christine suffered through the burning of her flesh and extended periods of imprisonment.  Her torturer also ripped the flesh off of her body thinking that Christine would recant her beliefs.  She became numb to the pain and claimed it was because God was giving her the strength to survive.  Christine’s mother visited her while she was imprisoned in the dungeon, but Christine sent her away when she realized that her mother was not there to save her.  Her mother's ulterior motive was to get her to renounce her faith in Christianity.  Her mother never returned to the prison to see her again.

She finally succumbed to her death when her torturer shot her with an arrow through the heart. Christine became a martyr for her Christian beliefs. Her father buried her lifeless body behind the castle where she lived her whole life. After burying her body, her father never spoke of his daughter ever again.

painting by Francesco Cairo

Author's note: This story is part of the Women Saints unit. Story source: The Golden Legend edited by F. S. Ellis (1900). This is a story about a woman named Christine who became overcome by the Holy Spirit and decided to believe in Christianity instead of the pagan gods that her family believed in. Her father disowned her and had her tortured until she died from her numerous injuries. She became a martyr for her faith in Christianity.

I did not make any major changes to the storyline, but I did make some minor changes.  In addition, I did pull some ideas from the Disney movie "Tangled." In the original story, Christine's father kept her in a tower in Italy.  I changed the setting a little bit by putting Christine in a castle in the highest room. The setting is one of the parts of the story that resembles the "Tangled" movie storyline.  The other part of the story that somewhat resembles the movie is that the King and Queen had a beautiful daughter together.  Also in the original story, there was no mention of how many children were born to the King and Queen.  Therefore, I added that detail into my version of the story.

In the original scene between Christine and her mother, the story really didn't expound very much about her mother's intentions when she came to visit her in the prison.  Therefore, I decided to change the storyline a bit, so that there was more interaction between them.  Her mother must have been very sad to see her daughter imprisoned and hoped that she would come home with her.  

I chose this picture of Saint Christine because it shows her natural beauty and innocence. The other reason I chose this picture is because it was included in the original story from the unit I read.  I chose to read and write about this story because I have an affinity toward princess and heroine story lines. Women who are powerful are an inspiration to me. Saint Christine is a perfect example of a woman who is powerful by standing by her beliefs.  She also survived numerous forms of torture and in my opinion, you have to be a tough, strong and determined woman to survive all of that.  In addition, it didn't matter to her what the cost was for believing in a Christian God instead of the pagan gods.

Extra Reading Diary: Women Saints

In the second part of the Women Saints readings, I found that a lot of the reading were quite interesting reads.  I found one story in particular to be the most intriguing.  It was the story of Saint Martha.

In this story, she is an unmarried, virgin who believed in God and devoted herself to converting people to Christianity.  Saint Martha comes upon a beast, a dragon, who has killed everyone before who had dared crossed the river where this dragon resided.  It was interesting to me that all she had to do to stop the beast was to speak some words and make the mark of the cross.  Once she caused the dragon to be still, she defeated the dragon by tying it up with her girdle.  After the dragon was tied up, the townspeople played the dragon with swords.

Later, in the story, a man was so enticed by hearing her speak that he attempted to cross the river, but never made it across because he drowned.  Once Saint Martha found out about the man's death, she prayed over the body and was able to raise him back to life with the Lord's help.

This story is quite different from all of the other stories in this section.  No other story that I can recall ended with the woman saint remaining alive at the end of the story.  I believe this is why I find this story so intriguing.  The characters actually sought her out to hear her words of the gospel instead of martyring her for her beliefs.

15th-century painting of Saint Martha

Reading Diary A: Women Saints

The Women Saints unit was filled with an abundance of stories about virginal women who sacrificed themselves for their beliefs.  Some died in monasteries, while others were beheaded for their beliefs.  Here are a couple of my favorite stories from this unit:

Saint Pelagien:  The attribute that I admire most about her is that she stood up for what she wanted and believed in, which was not getting married and taking care of herself.  She was so devote in convictions that she cut off her hair to disguise herself as a male so she could live in a monastery. While living in the monastery, she was accused of getting a woman pregnant and was treated terribly because of the accusations.  Saint Pelagien denied the accusations against her in her story.   I'm most intrigued by this story because no one ever figured out she was a male until she had written a letter exposing her true identity upon her death.   When her true identity was discovered to be of a virginal woman, her body was then exhumed and buried where she truly belonged...with the nuns.  A truly fascinating story to read.

Saint Marine:  This story is very similar to Saint Pelagien's story, but the details are quite different.  She did not move into the monastery to escape marriage, but was taken into the monastery by her father who disguised her as a boy.  Saint Marine also lived out her life there and while living in the monastery was also accused of fathering a child.  Saint Marine chose not to deny the accusations that she fathered a child while living in the monastery.  She chose to keep her gender a secret and took in the child as her own and raised him.  Even though she never admitted that she was indeed a woman, she was found out to be a woman upon her death.  She was then blessed and buried as the virginal woman too.  It truly amazes me that no one in either monastery ever found out the women's true genders until their deaths.

Saint Marina by joeatta78