TIL that shorthand was invented circa 65 BCE, by Marcus Tullius Tiro, a slave owned by Cicero. His shorthand system was used extensively for the next 600 years, and some parts of it are still used today - ampersand (&), etc, et al, eg and ie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Tullius_Tiro
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14tpt5a/til_that_shorthand_was_invented_circa_65_bce_by/
Green Knight spoilers
So what G is, in terms of desire, is he's this mediator who will play underdog in all of the games of Christendom because he's so desperate to avoid the equitable fate of the Green Knight.
Everything that comes after the Castle in the third act is the story of what G wants to do with this garland. It represents, again, this third way out of sustaining life by will. Specifically, the will involved here is the will to be objectified and treated as mediator to others' desire
Green Knight spoilers
Anyway, the Girardian read would highlight the importance of the Castle with the Lord & the Lady near the Green Chapel. The Lord & Lady invite G as someone to mediate their romance, & they each mediate their relationship to G through different methods: the Lord captures & releases the Fox, and the Lady releases the garter. Through this you can see that their methods for their affections depend on withholding, explaining how the couple is in an affective deadlock without G.
Green Knight spoilers
Another word on the setting: you've got death as a phase of geronition (greenness) contrasted against the Christmas story, which is the commemoration of the paradoxical birth of the paschal sacrifice who will transcend death through death, the Christ.
The witchcraft of the green garter suggests a third way out: life sustained by human will until it becomes unbearable (such as through watching the deaths of others), until life must be renounced.
Green Knight spoilers
The examples of greenness given in the monologue are birth, infection, and corruption: birth following from desire; infection and corruption indicating the death of desire.
The thing is, though, I think it's better to understand Green in terms of the woolly pagan perennialism that was being driven out of Britain by Christendom: the Priest could tell you about the Trinitarian mediation of desire; the druids could tell you about the smooth cycles of geronition & death.
Green Knight spoilers
So the Green Knight appears in the context of this as this figure of reciprocation and equivalence. Knick for knick, blow for blow, year after year, and so on.
Later on "The Lady" will pose an interpretation of greenness that is given without any irony from the film, so I think it's basically an endorsement of the filmmakers' perspective no the greenness of the knight.
Green, in the film, is associated with perspectives that are distanced from the mediation of desire. ...
Green Knight spoilers
I'm finally getting around to watching Green Knight. The movie's about the triangulation of desire. Very straightforward Girard stuff.
The King recognizes his lack of peers (either among his Saxon rivals or his court) & desires the company of his sister as a neer-peer: he triangulates this through Gawain. G "externally" mediates the King's desire. G himself wants to be one of the knights, to have his desire "internally" mediated through them.
...
The Internet has passed directly from world-ending Ice-9 to world-renewing ekpyrosis without pausing at any intermission on a temperate world-to-be ended.
2013 vibes: The Internet is Forever; anything you say to anyone you say to everyone; and the captains of industry are one masterstroke away from locking you into hyperreality forever.
2023 vibes: The captains of industry cannot stave off ketamine psychosis forever; Web2.0 collapse is so immense that Google may exhaust its strength saving web infrastructure; all these poasts lost like tears in rain.
@alec @futurebird I read it first in high school too, & could have benefited from having you in my class. Pulling up my ebook I see the ants & geese are in The Sword in the Stone (vol 1) as well as the Book of Merlyn (vol 5, less often assigned) just in slightly abbreviated form.
Since I pulled up both books on my Kindle app, I can't resist including a screenshot here that gives the feeling of ant society. Worth keeping in mind that this was originally published in 1938 or thereabouts...
When I talk to Friend A, I can hear about her feelings. When I talk to Friend B, I am reduced to audience for her handful of new and exciting self-diagnoses and am supposed to be a clapping seal for her every self-destructive decision.
I don't talk to Friend B anymore.
Humanist interested in the consequences of the machine on intellectual history.