For my final art piece for Professor Norrie Epstein’s Literary Traditions I chose to make an edition of eight relief prints inspired by Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. I am primarily an oil painter, but I felt like oil paint wouldn’t be the right medium to use for a piece about The Metamorphosis. I liked the smaller medium of relief prints because The Metamorphosis is a shorter novella, as opposed to a long, epic novel. I also like the idea of the image repeated. I feel that repeating one image, such as street art does, has a humorous quality, and The Metamorphosis is an absurd and humorous book. I also like the simplicity of relief printing where there are only two values used. This simplicity seemed to fit well with the Metamorphosis and its somewhat simple plot.
For my image, I chose to depict Gregor’s shadow because Kafka had said that he didn’t want Gregor’s “monstrous vermin” self to be illustrated. I decided to depict Gregor’s new form as a cockroach anyways, but I only drew his silhouette as a nod to the ambiguity of Gregor’s new form. I also chose to include Gregor’s poster of the woman in furs because it’s the only thing in Gregor’s room that is specifically described and this says a lot about Gregor and his psyche. The woman in furs felt like a character in the novella; she’s Gregor’s only true ally through his transformation and brings him a sense of normalcy and stability.
It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do for my final project for Professor Norrie Epstein’s Literary Traditions. For a while, I wanted to focus on Medea because it was my favorite story of the semester. But, after I started seeing everyone else’s finals and how many were based around Medea, I admit I got a little self-conscious. I started thinking about how I could go above and beyond. Think outside of the box. Get creative.
That’s when I thought up the project that would take up the next 140 hours of my life: draw every female character in every story our class has read this semester.
The first day or so was spent sketching and doing research. All of these women existed during specific eras and places. I wanted to make sure that I could be as historically accurate as possible. Characters like Grete Smasa from The Metamorphosis and the Wife from The Wife of Bath’s Tale were easy to figure out. There’s no shortage of art from the time period as well as extant garments for me to be inspired by. But women like Shamhat from The Epic of Gilgamesh and Eve from Genesis have very little or very inaccurate references.
All of the artwork dedicated to Adam and Eve tend to depict a white couple. However, we know that the first humans lived on the African continent and the first Hebrew people lived in the Middle East. For these women, I had to rely more on my own personal interpretation. After I found photo references and came up with sketches I liked, it was just a matter of spending my every waking moment drawing, coloring, and shading.!
In all seriousness, it was a lot of hard work. But it was a lot of fun, too. I love history, so coming up with the costumes was great. And thinking about these women’s personalities and how I could convey them through their poses made the creative process more interesting. At the end of the day, I’m proud of what I turned in… And it only took me four days!
For a final Literary Traditions project, each student was asked to translate a literary work into their preferred medium. With her performance of Lady Macbeth’s harrowing speech, Moo brought the assignment to new heights. I’ve seen several great Lady Macbeths, but Moo’s interpretation truly gave me chills.
Illuminated Alphabet Book by Molly Chan
Music: YoYo Ma and Allison Krauss: The Wexford Carol
Sir Gwain and the Green Knight, Book 3, XII, trans. Jessie L. Weston
Writes Molly Chan (’22) for Professor Norrie Epstein:
I chose to do “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” as an illuminated alphabet book because I researched illuminated manuscripts for the presentation, and found it really inspiring. Being a communication design major, typography is a very large part of our curriculum, but the illuminated letters allowed me play with form and design in a way that you cannot do in typography because these letters were made before the printing press was created and all the typographic rules were made.
The major plot developments in the story all seemed to take place during the holidays, specifically Christmas and New Years, so I defaulted to red, and even more so green, because of both Christmas and the Green Knight/Green Man.
For my final project for Professor Norrie Epstein’s Literary Traditions, I chose to make a marionette puppet based on my interpretation of the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I made the skeleton and joints of the puppet out of scrap wood and then covered it with Styrofoam which I shaped using hand tools. Finally, I painted it, using epoxy putty to make its fingers, toes, nipples, and naval. I chose a dark shade of teal to suggest that his body is a conglomeration of body parts taken from corpses. I painted his eyes bright orange to create a menacing sense of unnatural life sparked from within.
My version of the monster drastically contrasts with original. I wanted him to look more monster than human. He’s not simply ugly. He is a combination of scariness, awkwardness, mythic strangeness, and amiability. Like Frankenstein, I found many different materials and limb by limb constructed my very own monster. Instead of using complicated science to resurrect the dead, I manipulated strings to bring my creation to life.
I did not want to present only the puppet as my final, so I created a video of it performing an excerpt from the Monster’s speech to Frankenstein as they sit by the fire in an ice cave. In this excerpt, the monster asks the doctor to make him a mate so he will finally have someone who would understand him. I enjoyed this section because it illustrates the great struggle of pain, loneliness, violence, sensitivity, and eloquence that the monster possesses within him.
What the Monster Says to Frankenstein:
“I expected this reception…All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends…Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded…The desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow beings.”
In his animation above (created for Professor Norrie Epstein’s Literary Traditions), Phong Tuong animates Creation as he envisions it. He explain his animation this way:
Let there be light.
As Adam, the triangle, moves in to the frame, he discover a door leading to Eden, his way out of darkness. And so he goes through the door and meets Eve, the circle, and her friend Oedipus, the square.
With light comes darkness, so a new entity follows Adam from below the darkness, its name Truth (or Knowledge).
Detail: Adam and Eve: The Fall of Man (1616). Hendrik Goltzius
All three little shapes are playing along and having an innocent and fun time together until Truth comes along and consumes its first victim, Eve, just as she was the first to consume the apple.
Both Oedipus and Adam try to run away from Truth but they can’t run from it forever. Oedipus first succumbs to it. Then Truth comes to Adam, reveals the real world, and offers him a choice — refuse or accept it.
As in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Adam emerges from the cave called Eden and comes out to the real world. Adam reunites with his friends and they run along. Truth has done its job and departs as the screen fades to black.
In a book-filled room—before a goblin’s cap and image of a cat—the Friday Reading Group had been talking Shakespeare.
Professor Josh Cohen had been speaking of Titus Andronicus with Debra San and Lin Haire-Sargeant and Carol McCarthy and Louise Myers and Athans Boulukos and Norrie Epstein and Robert Gerst, readers all, professors all…
Although I consistently see fine visual art projects from Literary Traditions students, Elizabeth’s Ogle’s Odyssey book is unusually exquisite and painstaking. Furthermore, she based her visual work on Emily Wilson’s new rendition of the Odyssey, the first version of the epic translated by a woman.
Elizabeth opens with an examination of the word in the first poem’s first line, the basis of a New York Times profile of Wilson’s translation, and then proceeds with a unique visual response.
Writes Elizabeth Ogle (’20):
I came across an article in The New York Times by Wyatt Mason about the translation process of Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English. I was inspired by Wilson’s description of the word, πολύτροπον or polytropon, as quoted in the article:
The prefix poly,” Wilson said, laughing, “means ‘many’ or ‘multiple.’ Tropos means ‘turn.’ ‘Many’ or ‘multiple’ could suggest that he’s much turned, as if he is the one who has been put in the situation of having been to Troy, and back, and all around, gods and goddesses and monsters turning him off the straight course that, ideally, he’d like to be on. Or, it could be that he’s this untrustworthy kind of guy who is always going to get out of any situation by turning it to his advantage. It could be that he’s the turner.
“Then, then in the same breath Zeus hit the craft with a lightning bolt and thunder…
Reading this caused me to re-examine Odysseus’ character and credibility. As I did so, I came to realize that Odysseus is neither exclusively the “turned” nor the “turner”—he is both. I chose to explore this visually in five ink-and-watercolor illustrations. The logic with which I approached, executed, and arranged these illustrations was to portray Odysseus as “turned” in the first illustration, and increasingly more “turning” in each subsequent illustration.
In the final illustration, the seemingly omniscient Athena looks on while Odysseus, lashed to the mast, feasts his ears on the Sirens’ song. I chose to show Odysseus reflected in the goddess’ eye because of the numerous epithetical references to her eyes: “sparkling-eyed Athena” (1:53), “Her eyes glinting” (1:206), “the clear-eyed goddess” (1:256), “bright-eyed Pallas” (2:422), “her eyes brightening now” (13:268), “gray eyes gleaming,” (13:325), “her glances flashing warmly” (13:375), “eyes afire” (13:412), “Gray eyes ablaze” (13:448), etc.
“Always the same, your wary turn of mind”
This epithetical trend characterizes her as omniscient—she is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-wise. Odysseus’ decision to listen to the Sirens’ “thrilling song” (12:199) was a completely unnecessary and selfish risk at the expense of his men, who would be disordered if not lost without their captain. I took some artistic liberty in this illustration as well: Athena is not said to be present in this scene. I included her because of the exchange between Odysseus and the goddess which takes place after Odysseus finally lands on Ithaca. She chides him, “Always the same, your wary turn of mind…” (13:374). Her words are clearly sarcastic: it is evident that the all-seeing goddess has been witness to many of Odysseus’ detours, otherwise she could not have formed any opinion of him. Having witnessed his two lengthy liaisons and especially his selfish insistence upon hearing the deadly Sirens, the goddess of wisdom could not seriously call him “wary.”
“You who turned my men to swine”
The ambiguous word πολύτροπον raises an issue of which the Greek oral tradition and Homer (if he is indeed the author of the written epic) were well aware. That is, the epic deals fundamentally with the question of fate and free will: are our choices truly our own, based only upon reasoning and desire? Do we determine our own futures? To what extent are both these things influenced by our personal and generational pasts, by our genes, by the intervention of unseen deities, each with their own agenda?
“Odysseus journeys home—the exile must return. But not in the convoy of live gods or mortal men, No, on a lashed, makeshift raft and wrung with pain.”
Gilgamesh, Tablet X: 67-80, trans. Benjamin R. Foster
Writes Professor Albert Lafarge:
Laura Brock’s Literary Traditions film is based on a segment of Gilgamesh, the life lesson, as it were. The film started with the title “Value” but somewhere along the line it lost that. Some lively, saturated moments, and a pull into a kind of calm celebratory tone, the passage of a day tracking the idea in Gilgamesh of a passage toward emotional wisdom.
Writes Laura Brock (’20):
When given life, one has to expect death and battle with the idea of mortality and meaning. In my film, I focus on the common theme of struggling with the acceptance of death and living life purposefully.
In the passage above from Gilgamesh,, the tavern keeper tells Gilgamesh that eternal life is not possible and that he should live his life as fully as he can. That passage inspired my movie. (Laura Brock statement paraphrase)
