Welcome to the-ferts.blogspot.com,
the official journal of the literature class of 2008!
Do leave a tag if you happen to drop by.
Be friendly, just like us! 8)
Literature class, four times a week, is where we hang out and have fun! We're weird, or should I say, interesting in our own ways. (:
Ms Haiza the Blubbery Wrinkled Whale
Afiqah the Mummy
Bei Ling the Miss Normal
Charissa the Blind Bondi Bile
Dyan the King of Hippies
Fauzan the Beanstalk
Guinevere the Pokey
Nicholas the HornyPorny/Duke of Porn
Shan Jin the Oracle
Sharon the Snug
Wei Jie the Gramp-pp
Bottom is a metaphor literalised, a fact that he immediately, though unwittingly, identifies, ‘this is to make an ass of me’ (3.1.106). Whilst it could be argued that this transformation (or ‘translation’ as Quince terms it, 3.1.105) potentially mirrors Apuleius’ in the ascendance from bestiality to the divine, there are other factors to consider. Potential contributory inspiration for Bottom’s metamorphosis includes Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (1584),[10] Ovid’s Midas, whose mutation is clearly due to his witlessness, ‘The Delian god would not allow ears so foolish to retain their human shape’ (Metamorphoses, 11. 175-6), and the other varied transformations in the Metamorphoses. As if to recall the latter text, animal metaphors abound throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Helena tells Demetrius ‘I am your spaniel … / The more you beat me I will fawn on you’ and begs to be used as he would his dog (2.1.203-210). She then accuses him of having the heart of a wild beast (2.1.229), and invokes a reversal of an Ovidian myth ‘Apollo flies and Daphne holds the chase’, that figures herself as Daphne and mild creatures and Demetrius as Apollo and predator, ‘The dove pursues the griffin, the mild hind / Makes speed to catch the tiger’ (2.1.231-3). Helena later wails ‘I am as ugly as a bear’ (2.2.100), a conceit recalled when she describes herself as ‘baited’ by Hermia (3.2.198). Hermia meanwhile is obsessed with snakes, which are obviously phallic. Following her prophetic dream of a serpent eating her heart away (2.2.152-5), she accuses Demetrius of being ‘a worm, an adder … / thou serpent’ (3.2.71-73). Human metamorphosis is also implicated as Helena wishes to be ‘translated’ into Hermia (1.1.191), and the bantering gentility convert animal to animal in mocking the production of Pyramus and Thisbe, ‘The lion is a very fox for his valour. / True, and a goose for his discretion,’ (5.1.224-5). Puck describes his magical shape shifting in 2.1.47-53. In Bottom’s case, however, the metamorphosis is only partial. This may be due to the impossibility of seriously staging an articulate entire ass, though Bottom’s asinine head further recalls the full masks of pagan festivities in a nod to the Midsummer and May celebrations invoked by the play. This monstrous dual identity, of being in transition between two states, is manifested in the mortals’ dreamlike state and the setting itself, the removed, uninhabited wood.[11] The play takes place on the borders of consciousness, being, and civilisation, and thereby is ideal for supernatural, or divine, contact.
