Subject: Re: "Da Vinci" Debunking - msg#01036

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Re: TAN: Photos of objects in museums. WAS heracles alienomachy?

On what grounds? If YOU took the photos, and the object you photographed was not a work of art still under copyright (which classical works could not be), then the photos are your copyright and yours to do with as you please. Unless you signed a release before you took the pictures. (I am not a lawyer, so take this not as legal advice but as a suggestion that you might want clarification from the museums involved, or from an attorney). Of course, that leads me to ask how you got the MFA to let you take pictures in the first place .... On Apr 26, 2004, at 10:10 PM, Ling Ouyang wrote: How did you get permission to display the photos on-line? MFA in Boston, the Met, the Capitoline Museums, Louvre etc all said I could not put my photos I took on-line. Something about displaying on-line is a form of distribution... At 08:58 PM 4/26/2004 -0500, Janice Siegel wrote: In the process of culling materials for a lecture on Heracles, I found this image in my digital collection (I am also preparing to put on-line the array of galleries of images I have snapped of classical objects in museums from around the world). This object is either in Berlin's Altes or Pergamon museum (I haven't dug out my notes yet). It looks like Heracles Fighting a Winged Alien, your basic alienomachy. Can anyone help identify the subject of this red-figured vase painting for real?   http://lilt.ilstu.edu/drjclassics/mythology/chapter_22/altes%20024.jpg   Thanks. Janice   Janice Siegel Assistant Professor of Classics Illinois State University Dept of Foreign Languages Mail Code 4300 Normal, Illinois 61790 309-438-3583   http://lilt.ilstu.edu/drjclassics http://lilt.ilstu.edu/drjclassics2 Ling Ouyang http://janusquirinus.org/

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Re: "Da Vinci" Debunking

JMM asked, plaintively, Isn't the DVC fiction? Are we supposed to come away with honest to goodness truth and/or fact from the fictional experience, so to speak? Or maybe just the semblance of same for the sake of a good tale? Yes, it's fiction. But unfortunately it comes with an opening page headed, bluntly, FACT. As the NYTimes article today said: "The novel, in which even chapters only two pages long end with a cliffhanger, might seem like little more than a potboiler. But it opens with a page titled "Fact." That page concludes: 'All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.'" (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/books/27CODE.html?pagewanted=2) Unfortunately, the students I've talked to who read it (and the people I overheard discussing it in a restaurant recently) are VEHEMENTLY certain that Brown wouldn't have said these things were FACT if they weren't; that, therefore, while the characters may be fictional the overall premise--that Constantine overthrew an idyllic matriarchal paganism worshipping "The Goddess"--is true. In other words, they're not taking it as an amusingly alternate-but-known-to-be-fantastic reality along the lines of, say, Harry Potter. They think it reflects genuine history. And then, to my taste, it *isn't* a "good tale." It's badly written, annoyingly clunky, and way too predictable. If it HAD been a good tale, perhaps I would have been more willing to overlook the goddess-schlock. EV Elizabeth Vandiver Distinguished Visiting Lecturer Department of Greek and Roman Studies Rhodes College Memphis, Tennessee 38112 _________________________________________________________________ Test your ?Travel Quotient? and get the chance to win your dream trip! http://travel.msn.com

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Re: "Da Vinci" Debunking

>How is this substanitally differnt from the view of antiquity presented by >Robert >Graves, Maria Gimbutas, Carl Jung, or Joseph Campbell? What it >seems to that all of >this stems from is a misundertanding of the Romatic >fantasy of a bucolic golden age >(in Keats, Goethe, etc. which served as >an ideological basis for the criticism of the >enlightenment) confused >with fact. Bradley Skeen The main difference from "Goddess" theory seems to be that "Goddess" theory had the original I-E invaders wiping out the matriarchy, while the DVC has Constantine doing it. (I am of course a firm defender of the view that women were relatively well off, among the Romans at least, and that Christianity represented a substantial step backwards for their material lives especially, but the Hieros Gamos stuff that's been cited here from DVC sounds utterly ludicrous.) >The book, I understand, made great use of a book called "Holy Blood, Holy >Grail," one >of a series out of which the BBC has made special programs. >I have HBHG, though I >haven't picked it up for 10+ years. It was a hoot. >Very sincere. DW And I read it one sunny summer ca 1981; a hoot for sure, but quite useful -- as DVC might be -- for introducing students to the concept of evaluating evidence and weighing probabilities. As the Roman governor with the speech defect once asked, "What is proof?" Whatever it is, it ain't what's in that book, though the idea of Jean Cocteau as a descendant of Jesus and Mary Maudlin is kind of cute. Michael Baigent, I think, is one of the authors; I believe that he also has "found" the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia. >Yes, it's fiction. But unfortunately it comes with an opening page headed, >bluntly, FACT. As the NYTimes article today said: >Unfortunately, the students I've talked to who read it (and the people I >overheard discussing it in a restaurant recently) are VEHEMENTLY certain >that Brown wouldn't have said these things were FACT if they weren't; that, >therefore, while the characters may be fictional the overall premise--that >Constantine overthrew an idyllic matriarchal paganism worshipping "The >Goddess"--is true. In other words, they're not taking it as an amusingly >alternate-but-known-to-be-fantastic reality along the lines of, say, Harry >Potter. They think it reflects genuine history. EV The presentation of "fiction" as "fact," or at least as apparent fact, has a long classical history; DVC is just following in the tradition of Dictys the Cretan (obviously I believe that the same is true of the Passio Perpetuae, whose author writes of carrying out a clause in Perpetua's will). And this brings us back to the "claps of civilization" thread, since educational systems don't seem to be preparing students to deal with distinguishing fact from conjecture -- a situation whose dangers in politics especially are all too evident. James L. P. Butrica St. John's NL A1C 5S7 (709) 753-5799 (home) (709) 737-7914 (office)

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Re: "Da Vinci" Debunking

The story the New York Times missed is the one about the massive invasion of pod people who have come to earth over the last year bearing copies of this book, which they read and proclaim to be wonderful. It has no redeeming merits whatsoever, which is unusual even among bestsellers. I read with sober mien the words of a 22-year old "Jesuit-educated" gentleman who averred of the book that it "made him think". Jim O'Donnell On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, David Lupher wrote: > Today's NYT has a front-page article entitled "Defenders of > Christianity Rush to Debunk 'The Da Vinci Code'." Now, I have > not read this novel that has sold over 6 million copies and > has perched on the NYT hardcover bestseller list for over a year, > but I know enough of its drift to understand why "defenders > of Christianity" would "rush to debunk" it. But what I have > heard from a list-member who, at a student's insistence, has > read this book leads me to suspect that it might not only be > devout Christians who could have a problem with it. I gather > it also presents a very skewed picture of Greco-Roman paganism, > offering it as a kind of Never-Never-Land of woman-friendly, > tree-hugging values overthrown by the evil Constantine and his > goons. Have others noted this sort of thing in the book? I > don't seem to recall that this book has been discussed on this > list yet, though surely at least *some* of you must have been > induced by students, friends, or mere curiosity to peer into it. > > I'd try to elicit a posting from the list-member to whom I have > alluded above, but as she explained in a long and elegant posting > today she is *much* too busy to post anything to the Classics List > right now! > > P.S.: The NYT is chock-full of Da Vinci news today. Another > article informs us that the "Mona Lisa" is fading at an alarmingly > rapid rate. Sigh. > > David Lupher > Classics Dept. > Univ. of Puget Sound > > -- >