In continuation of my last blog post, I still do not believe that Grendel's mother was totally in the wrong here. Matter of fact, I believe that her actions are totally justifiable. That being said, I do not believe that Grendel's mother is good. She came from darkness, was made with darkness, and was created as innately evil. However, her actions were not malicious in the way that could be categorized as evil. Her actions were spurred by the death of her son. she simply did what any good mother would do and avenged her son. Now, naturally, this would spur a whole debate about the capabilities of something inherently evil doing something morally good, but if we're being honest, I don't currently have the brainpower to dive into that. All I'm saying is that even though Grendel's mother is supposed to be evil, she somehow managed to do something that many would argue is good. Obviously killing someone isn't good, but her motive was pure. She was grieving her son and wanted revenge and I feel like that's something that many of us can relate to. {Besides Hamlet did the same thing with avenging his dad (his uncle was a little worse though) and we still consider him to be a good guy..}
Word painting in Weelkes’s As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending is quite interesting. And because that is a really long title, I’m calling it Vesta from now on. Word painting is basically when the melody matches up with the lyrics. So in Vesta, when it says “ascending” and “descending”, there are obviously scales going up and down. The madrigal was written for six voices to sing unaccompanied, so when they start to come together, it matches with the lyrics; so if the lyric says “two by two”, there are only two voices; “three by three” there is another voice added, and so forth. All the parts combine in exclamation before Vesta before it is left “all alone” to the highest soprano. All the way to the end of the piece, word painting continues when shouts of “Long live fair Oriana” with the bass sustaining long notes. Word painting in and of itself is a highly interesting topic because a musician takes the words of a poem or a sonnet and writes a melody line that pertains to cer...
I completely agree with you. This question this topic brings up is confusing, but nonetheless, I think it is true that Grendel's mother was evil, but also did a morally good action. I too do not have the brainpower to go into a discussion at this current moment.
ReplyDeleteIt’s kind of like a mama bear. The mother will do anything to protect their child even to the point of doing something that most people consider evil. Everything’s fine until their child gets hurt, then all heck breaks loose.
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