Myth-Folklore 2019

For years and years I served the king loyally as his advisor, offering him my wisdom and guidance, of which our dear foolish king needed plenty. This is how I spent two decades of my life, watching over this imbecile, making sure he didn't mess anything up too horribly. I was delighted when I learned that he had been stricken with leprosy, as at this moment my own ambitions for taking over the throne blossomed. The king, never a looker and always rather immature, had never found a wife and was therefore left without an heir. Normally a king would pick out his heir in such a situation, but the king, despite his horrendous affliction, seemed to believe himself immortal and, as such, had no need to prepare for his demise. So my hopes grew as his disease weakened him and my own chance to ascend to the throne approached. Everything was going well until that physician showed up, Douban. Douban was an extremely gifted healer and word eventually reached the king, despite my best efforts,...

For this week's reading, I read the Arabian Nights tales in The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898.) In this part of the Arabian Nights, the story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp is told: Aladdin is the son of a poor tailor (living in what appears to be China, oddly enough) and is incredibly idle, so idle that his father dies from anxiety and frustration. The boy's mother laments his idleness and tries to get him to change, but to no avail. An African magician  tricks Aladdin and his mother into believing he is the dead father's long lost brother. The fake uncle then takes Aladdin and uses him in an attempt to get a magic lamp. The plan fails and the magician flees, leaving Aladdin in the cave with the magic lamp and a magic ring. Aladdin eventually uses the genie trapped in the ring to escape and return home. He and his mother clean up the lamp to sell, at which point a genie pops out, one more powerful than the genie ...

For this week's reading, I chose the Arabian Nights , as found in The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898). In Part A of these readings, the storyteller and daughter of the vizir, Scheherazade, risks her own life to save the lives of countless other women. She offers to become the lover of the murderous sultan Schariar, famous for killing every woman he takes after only a day. Each morning, he has his vizir kill the girl and then select a new one for him. Scheherazade decides to start telling stories to her sister, who the sultan allows to spend this last night with Scheherazade. Scheherazade tells her sister, Dinarzade, a story only to be cut off by the dawn of a new day. The sultan allows her to live in order to hear the rest of the story, thus beginning the main plot of the book: Scheherazade successfully lives day after day by telling interesting stories that intrigue the sultan, thus saving her own life and the lives of other...

For my extra credit reading, I finished the story of Cupid and Psyche up with Part B. This story can be found in Apuleius's Golden Ass , translated into English by Tony Kline (2013). In this second half of the story, Venus finds out about her son, Cupid's, deception and is furious. She angrily rails at him and begins her search for Psyche. Psyche flees from Venus, asking several goddesses for help, all of which refuse out of respect for Venus. Psyche eventually decides to turn herself in, at which point Venus is her mistress (possibly because she is her mother-in-law--the reasoning behind Venus "owning" Psyche was a bit odd to me). Venus punishes Psyche cruelly and makes her to supposedly impossible tasks, which the girl manages to do with the help of others who take pity on her in her distress. Almost at the end of her last task, Psyche breaks the rules and as a result falls into a deep sleep of death, from which Cupid awakes her upon finding her passed out. Cupid...