1. What genres do the following texts belong to?

myths and epic film.. mythological poem= Voluspa - about Thor.
beowulf=epic the text speaks of heroes and there deeds.
The Lord Of Rings = epic film -speaking of human drama on a grand scale


Voluspa, Volsunga Saga, Beowulf, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Give some examples from these texts that support your identification (for example: "Voluspa is an example of the _____ genre, as the following references to gods from the poem illustrate: "Hear my words / you holy gods' (l.1) "By Odin's Will I'll speak the ancient lore" (l.3), etc).
well from the research i have done, the voluspa is an example of epic poetry genre, this genre has many characteristics so it is easily identified, first of all

• It always begins in the middle of things, "in medias res" this is to begin the story with dramatic action. for example in the volsupa song, it begins with a demand to be heard, "hear my words you holy gods" this is the kind of language that will immediately get attention, the audience will pay attention because the song is written to be heard by many people, it is a people pleasure.

• "Hear my words, you holy gods, great men and humble sons of Heimdall;" it includes everyone, the setting is vast, covering many nations. no one is left out because it is made to be heard to attract all types of audience, and people like to be included so the author of this song has done a great job addressing everyone, because orality is "empathetic and participatory rather than objectivley distanced" (Ong, 1982:43-45). 

• "close to the human life world"(Ong, 1982- 42-43) the culture of orality is very warm and close and intimate. orality began to bring people together and entertain them. orality brings people closer to each other and to nature and living things, in contrast with writing and modern day forms of story telling such as writing in a book or updating a Facebook status it is based on the person writing. It separates people, and emphasis on individuality. 

2. What are some possible features of residual (or "secondary") orality preserved in Voluspa, according to the criteria Ong (1982) advances?

• well first of all i'd like to elaborate on the meaning of secondary orality, if you separate the two words you'll have "residual" and you'll "orality". Orality is basically when people didn't know how to read and write they began to talk and then they told stories, oral literature is what we can name these stories, it also can be called folk literature, and this process had no writing involved within it. Orality was purely spoken word and at that time the people who invented it or came up with it were not exposed to any form of writing or print. secondary or residual orality is came after "orality" of course  it was after being exposed to the Bible, or other scripts, but the Bible is main book that spread across the world because Christianity is one of the oldest religions people were exposed to. 
• Residual orality refers to cultures who have been exposed to writing and print, but did  not fully "interiorized"these skills in their daily lives. 
• we see many themes of Christianity and gods and holy symbolism in Voluspa, which means that they have obviously heard or read or came across some sort of new ideas and new religious texts or thoughts. 
• First of all the poem is written in stanzas to make it easier for us! yay! the first stanza speaks to everyone(meaning the crowd that was listening) its speaks of the "ancient lore" and also it says "by Odins will"- this poem has a very religious feel from the beginning, so we can diffidently sense residual orality from the start, a God is mentioned and an "ancient lore" it wont get more obvious than this. 
• Then a story is told, about creation and giants and "nine roots from nine worlds under the earth where the ash tree rises"- clearly a story of creation before Christianity was introduced or mentioned. this part of the poem speaks of free spirit ideals before organised religion was touched upon. 
• Then we have  residual orality at its peak! "Then holy Gods met to have judgement, the holy gods took counsel together: they named night and night's children, gave names to morning and night afternoon and evening, ordered time by years." 
• "Odin gave life's breath, Hoenir gave mind, Lodur gave hair, fairness of face" as you can see we now have an idea that the people who spoke this poem had already been given ideas of religion and holy symbolism and the idea of 'a' God who gave "life's breath".
• "men were to lead", "almighty gods", "demons to their doom, men find their way to Hel, the sky splits open", "no bright star now shines from the heavens;" all are examples or evidence supporting that this poem was a result of residual orality or the person who spoke it had had some sort of exposure to the bible or religious book or culture. 

3. Identify a central incident that happens in at least four of the above texts, and discuss how it is both similar and different in each example (remember to site from the original texts).

• most of the texts that we read have a hero and a dragon to be killed, for example! The Hobbit and Beowulf have a very similar incident that occur "though with a thief's wiles he had outwitted the sleeping dragon and driven him to fury, as the people of that country would soon discover"- this is a quote from Beowulf speaking of a thief which enters the dragons habitat and "outwitted" him and made the dragon very angry, we find a very similar event occurs in The Hobbit 

4. How did Tolkien draw on the Old Norse and Old English texts in his Hobbit and Lord of the Rings fantasy novels? Provide some concrete examples.

• well i read an essay about Tolkien and how he drew on Old Norse in his stories, and the essay did say that most of the characterization  was borrowed and changed and adapted to Tolkien's story, for example the Elves. Tolkien had made a language and he needed people who could speak it and that was one of the reasons to why he wrote the mythology, the elves suited this language perfectly according to the essay. Tolkien used the name of these people and their properties and then built his own story upon that foundation.

5. Discuss how Tolkien's use of "tradition" (e.g. older literary sources) differs from the techniques and agendas of modernism (see Week 7 in your Reader).

6. What place do the old myths have in the modern world?

7. How does the film Beowulf and Grendel "problematise" the hero-myth of Beowulf ?

8. Discuss what you think any of these texts desire (in the sense of their intention, how they wish to be received, what pleasures they offer).

i will finish answering these questions.. tonight.