Group Presentation: Greek Antiquity

My participation in my group presentation, literary criticism in Greek antiquity, was nearly all-encompassing, which was a pleasure thanks to my reliable group. I had my hand in organizing, creating, and developing our presentation.

First, I created a major concept possibility for our presentation - I proposed that we turn the classroom into Plato's "Allegory of the Cave." By bringing up current affairs that many would be familiar with, I intended to let students apply reason to a subject, question, or statement. This way students would be realizing Plato's metaphor of the cave - we can escape the illusions of reality in the cave if we use philosophical reasoning. This would demonstrate Plato's methodology for his literary theory, and could simultaneously be related to Aristotle's idea that the illusions may have importance as well as truth.

Our group favored Naki's presentation concept of demonstrating the mimetic, so my concept was never realized. However, I also contributed to Nakia's concept. I designed an alternative example to explain the mimetic: The popular vampire book-movie Twilight fashions vampires in a historically unusual way - they are beautiful, super powerful, and twinkle in the sunlight. Here is a clip I gathered to exhibit this; it is the trailer to the first Twilight movie:



The way vampires appear in Twilight contradict the characteristics that vampires were first given - often grotesque, magical, and harmed by sunlight. I intended to have students point out the discrepancies between original vampire and Twilight vampire. These characteristics that vampires were first given are looked at as the literal creation of the vampire - the 'ideal' vampire. This can be compared to Plato's distinction of the ideal and the imitation, and from there, again, may be related to Aristotle.

My contribution to Nakia's concept was scrapped for lack of time, as we had enough material. So I ultimately contributed to the presentation by incorporating a discussion topic into our demonstration of the mimetic. I discussed Horace regarding the birth videos, asking "Are the real, disgusting details of a real birth necessary to capture the essence - Longinus' 'sublime,' if you will - of 'birth?' Or can we do without the real details. Perhaps the imitation birth captures our ideas of 'birth' more clearly because it can convey subjective feelings that we have when the birth is our own."

Once receiving the answers of the students in a discussion, Horace was related to Plato and Aristotle. If the students think that the imitation does capture our ideas of birth, then it seems they side with Aristotle - that we can learn something from the imitation. However, if the students think that the imitation does not capture our ideas of birth, and we need the real thing, then they side with Plato - that the imitation is not "heavenly," and so it is practically useless.