Today an interesting impromptu poll was conducted, about who knew who. Only a few low single digits recognized the names of Manon, Violetta and Odette, while every single person in the room recognized the name Anna Nicole Smith. What does this signify(apart from the warped values of the national media)? Perhaps that Ms. Smith, conciously or not, was acting out the role of the courtesan, tragic and often stricken with consumption?(examples are multidinous: Dumas fils Camille, Zola's Nana, La Traviatta--which is basically an opera remake of Camille--. One if my very favorite films, Baz Lurhmann's Moulin Rouge takes inspiration from these) And if so, that the status of the courtesan is fallen in modern times? I'd personally submit that the reason for the latter is because, in the ancient world, the courtesans were typically the only females with some semblance of education and liberty. (eg. the heterae(sp?) in Classical Greece) Moving on...
It was brought up in class that George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss is modeled on Antigone. Yet another book I haven't read and need to.
Elizabeth's blog play The Pinchy-Scorner was hysterically funny, and disturbingly accurate.
In today's etiology: Genius is derived from a Greek phrase meaning a tutelorary spirit that everybody everywhere has(similar to another Greek word daemon). So everyone's a genuis!
I'm going now. The knot is intrinsicate and probably always will be.