User:Ammosnare/sandbox

Wow, this is my sandbox for my Wikipedia account. Think of fireworks and explosions as you read this short blurb that doesn't seem to be going anywhere. However, it may end up going somewhere in the end, I just have not thought up where it is going. I can figure out how to work Wikipedia without fear of being wrong or chastised because it does seem like it can be kind of daunting when beginning this journey. Hopefully this will be a good template for any work for my Lit class and beyond if i don't forget about my account after the class concludes.

Sandbox of Alan Molina

Proposed edits to Wikipedia's Chaos (mythology) article for Your Class
1. Lack of info for section 3 (I'll add more flesh out chaos and its meaning)

2. Weird wording in section 2

Reading List
A numbered list of all your readings go here. Use the following format:
 * 1) Solodow, Joseph B. The World of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The University of North Carolina Press. 1988. ISBN 0-8078-5434-4
 * 2) Tarrant, Richard. Chaos in Ovid's Metamorphoses and its Neronian Influence. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2002.
 * 3) Wheeler, Stephen. Introduction: Toward a Literary History of Ovid's Reception in Antiquity. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2002.
 * 4) Hardie, Phillip R. The Cambridge Companion to Ovid. Cambridge University Press. 2002. ISBN 0-521-77281-8

Original
The Greek word "chaos" (χάος), a neuter noun, means "yawning" or "gap", but what, if anything, was located on either side of this chasm is unclear. For Hesiod, Chaos, like Tartarus, though personified enough to have born children, was also a place, far away, underground and "gloomy", beyond which lived the Titans. And, like the earth, the ocean, and the upper air, It was also capable of being affected by Zeus' thunderbolts.

Revised
The Greek word "chaos" (χάος), a neuter noun, means "yawning" or "gap", but what, if anything, was located on either side of this chasm is unclear. Hesiod thought of Chaos like Tartarus, even though Tartarus is personified enough to have born children while Chaos is not. Chaos, similarly to Tartarus was also a far away place, described as underground and "gloomy", beyond which the Titans lived. And, like the earth, the ocean, and the upper air, it was also capable of being affected by Zeus' thunderbolts.

Original Contribution
Ovid's core thoughts on Chaos were based around it being formless and unpredictable, calling it "a rough unordered mass" Around Ovid's time, many other poets believed in the universe being balanced by opposites, a concept Ovid embraced by creating a strain between the opposites he used. This "tension of opposites" expands on the basis of Ovid's thoughts on Chaos. Ovid's depiction of chaos in "Metamorphoses" is in and of itself chaotic in its own right because it does not offer much of an explanation to the readers as to the essence or origin of the chaos. The poem lends itself to being chaotic through the various viewpoints throughout, but Ovid himself, through telling the story, is the unifying force that makes sense of all the various stories. Although Ovid unifies Metamorphoses as a whole, he does not create the universe that the stories take place in. Instead, Ovid utilizes an unnamed creator god to make sense of the initial chaos that exists and also maintain himself as a human capable if mistakes and faults. Ovid's creator god helps to order the chaos presented in the beginning of Metamorphoses into present day Earth while simultaneously depicting the world as a piece of art and the creator as it's artist. While Ovid's creator god organized the chaos, there is not a single god or entity that created the universe as a whole. The lack of an all-encompassing god that accompanies the development of the universe indicates a lack of overall order and construction of the universe as a whole, conveying a chaotic, unpredictable world that cannot be classified with any means of organization. The pacing Ovid utilizes throughout his Metamorphoses also emphasizes chaos and disorder that is already present within the story. By changing between stories sporadically without any regard to a chronology aside from the creation at the beginning, Ovid goes against the standard of the time to be orderly while telling a story.