Feedback Strategies

For this week's feedback assignment, I read two articles: "Be a Mirror" by Gravity Goldberg and "How to Provide Great Feedback When You're Not in Charge" from Farnam Street.

In Goldberg's article, she talks about the importance of "being a mirror," which means that our feedback should offer a reflection of someone's work in a nonjudgmental way. She references Carol Dweck quite a bit, and talks about how this can go hand in hand with the "growth mindset" idea of Dweck's. This article seems to be directly mainly at teachers who are helping their students with reading, but the feedback ideas are applicable beyond that: be specific, focus on what the person is doing (rather than what they're not doing), focus on the process, make sure it can transfer (make sure your feedback will make sense to them in a broader sense for improving future work as well, rather than only a particular detail of this assignment), and keep yourself out of the feedback. The last point on that list was the most interesting to me. She says instead of saying "I like how you..." or "I think you..." etc., teachers should say something that doesn't involve themselves. Her idea is that this will avoid reinforcing the idea for students that they should be seeking to please adults, rather than the idea that they should be seeking to better themselves/learn.

In the article on Farnam Street, it talks about the types of feedback. It lists three: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. Appreciation, according to the article, is essentially expressing our approval for whatever work we are giving feedback on. Coaching, on the other hand, is offering specific advice about how to improve something about the work, and evaluation is ranking the work against similar works by others or against a set of standards. Each of the types is important, but we must be strategic about when and where we use each type. Appreciation is perhaps the easiest to give, and the article recommends using it as a motivational tool. Everyone likes to hear what they're doing well, because it makes them feel good about themselves. Coaching should be used to help someone improve specific points of their work - it is important to let them know what they did well and what needs work, and to be very specific about it. According to the article, evaluation should be used infrequently and is often not productive, but is sometimes necessary. This, I don't totally agree with. I have often found that a healthy competitive spirit can be highly effective in motivating people to improve themselves, and that can't be done without a method by which to compare themselves. For example, let's say I enter a writing contest and place poorly. For me, this gives me a sense of where I am compared to others who are at a similar level as I am, and not only motivates me to improve, but also gives me examples of people whom I can look up to as I work to better myself. Finally, the article recommends putting yourself up to receive feedback first if you're in a leadership position to set a good example.

"Feedback Group Communication" by Tumisu at Pixabay

Topic Research: Marie de France

For this segment of my research, I actually decided to include five stories, because I couldn't quite pick between them. I did decide (tentatively) that I think I want to go with the lais of Marie de France, since, as a French major, her work is duly interesting to me. All of them are available at this link (much thanks to Professor Gibbs, who helped me find several English translations!) I haven't decided if this is the version I'll end up going with in the end, but it's currently the version I have saved that included all the texts in one place, so for convenience I've included it here. So without further ado:

1. Guigemar - The story of Guigemar is very much akin to a classic fairy tale. It includes true love, a beautiful young woman locked away in a tower, and a fair bit of magic. Unlike many fairy tales, however, it also includes (and glorifies) adultery. For so many reasons, I dislike this aspect, so I think it would be interesting to do a take that either cuts the adultery out, or in which the adultery results in negative consequences of some sort, rather than positive reinforcements.
   
2. Lanval (or Launfal, depending on the translation) - This lai is especially interesting because it is set in the courts of King Arthur, but told by Marie de France, a French woman living in England. In this story, a noble knight of King Arthur named Lanval falls in love with a beautiful and magical lady, but she tells him that if he ever speaks of her, he will never get to see her again. This is fine until Queen Guinevere tries to seduce him, and to defend his pride and honor he tells her that he already has a lover far more beautiful than her. Guinevere is angry and chaos ensues. This story is just such an interesting take on the court of King Arthur that I think it'd be fun to retell and play that different perspective up even more.
   
3. Les Deux Amants (The Two Lovers) - This is one of (I think) the only two lais out of the twelve which Marie de France wrote that does not include adultery. It does, however, have a tragic ending for two young lovers, and again includes many aspects of classical fairy tales - magic, princess locked away in a castle, etc.
   
4. Bisclavret - "Bisclavret" roughly translates to "werewolf" in Old French, and that is the topic of the story. Bisclavret, our main character, has a wife, who wants to know why he disappears so frequently for extended amounts of time, thinking perhaps he has a mistress. She gets him to divulge that he is a werewolf, and she gets him to tell her his secret weakness: if he cannot find the clothes he was wearing when he turned into a werewolf, he cannot change back. She betrays him, and he ends up stuck as a werewolf for a few years. In the end, all is well and the treacherous (and adulterous) wife is duly punished.
   
5. Le Fresne (The Ash Tree) - This is the only one of these five that I had not previously read, but I ended up being really interested by it. It involves a secret royal twin, true love, and all the makings of a fairy tale.

Photo of an Ash Tree from Wikimedia Commons, taken by Frank Chandler

Week Three Story: A Beloved Sister's Betrayal

Amara was born as the middle sister of three princesses, and the saying "each more beautiful than the last" was literal in their case. When the eldest of the three sisters was born, she was named Antheia, and the king and queen said, "She shall be as a flower, sweet and delicate, desired by all." And as she grew it was determined to be true: she was as lovely and adored as the first blooms of spring.

After several years, the queen bore her second daughter, and she was named Amara. The king and queen said, "She shall be eternally beautiful for all her days, and time will not mar the grace of her body or her countenance." And as she grew it was determined to be true: with each year of her life she grew more beautiful still.

Finally, the third princess was born, and she was named Psyche. The king and queen said, "She shall be the true form of Beauty, as a cooling breath of air upon the mind and soul." And as she grew it was determined to be true: her beauty far outshone that of her sisters, and she was looked upon as Beauty incarnate, daring even to be compared to Venus herself.

Now it came to pass that the three sisters grew older and came of marrying age. The lovely Antheia was given to a lord who was as wealthy in years as in gold, and the gray of his hair withered his wife. Like a flower, her beauty faded quickly and left her, but she was happy in her foreign home with her old but doting husband and her shining castle.

Amara, too, was given into a royal marriage by her parents, but her husband - a king, no less! - cared only for her outward beauty, and married her because he knew she would be beautiful forever, and she became like a decorative doll upon her queenly throne. Her face showed nary a mark of the passage of time, but her heart grew sad and weary.

At last, Psyche was given up into marriage - but rather than a marriage, it was a funeral. A mysterious prophecy was delivered on a scroll to the king and queen, which decreed that she must be offered up to a marriage that would be her death, or the fate of the world should suffer. So, tearfully, Amara and Antheia clung to her until they were drug from her side atop the mountaintop where the ritual was to take place, and they went down and saw her no more.

Antheia went back, saddened to her loving husband, whose kindness saw her through the darkness of her loss.

But Amara's husband was furious, raging about the way her tears left her eyes puffy and red, and how the wrenching of her face as she cried detracted from beauty. Why else was she here, he wanted to know, if not to content him with the pleasure of enjoying her lovely face? So, he announced, he would spend the evening instead with his mistress, who was far more cheerful and not as given to fits of unseemly emotion. And so Amara stole away in the night to let flow her tears at the site of her sister's sacrifice.

But Psyche had deceived them. She was not dead, but had contrived the prophecy herself to rid herself of the family whose lesser beauty was below her. She had allowed them to grieve her loss, but all the while she had married herself to a god - and Cupid, the god of love himself, no less! - and was living quite happily in a golden castle with invisible servants to tend her every whim. Yet, she lied to her sweet husband, that adorable winged god, and betrayed his trust time and again.

When Amara came to the mountaintop, she was met by Zephyr, Cupids faithful servant who takes the form of the wind. Zephyr explained to her in deep concern the sad state of affairs which his master unknowingly suffered - a shallow but beautiful wife who stirred up trouble between he and his mother and denied his few requests.

Amara was deeply injured, and wept anew, but this time out of rage. So Psyche did live up to her name, after all: she was a cooling breath of air, which put out the loving flames in the hearts of her family and doused the trust in her husband's mind. Furious and heartbroken at her sister's treachery, desperate not to return to the prison of her husband's home, Amara threw herself off the mountaintop, hoping to end her life.

But, gently, Zephyr caught her in his winds and delivered her to the gate of Cupid's palace.

"Do not toss aside your life so easily, beautiful princess. You may yet know happiness," he told her. "Even now, I have sent one of my breezes to tell Juno of your husband's infidelity. As the goddess of marriage, she surely shall not let him see another day. And as of your sister, Psyche, let us together tell Cupid of her deceit, and she shall receive the reward which she deserves."

So Zephyr and Amara flew together to Cupid's palace, and told him of his wife's deceit. Saddened, he told them he would love Psyche no matter her flaws, as she had pricked him in his sleep with his own arrow. Still, he felt gratitude to them for hoping to guard his heart, and so he granted between Zephyr and Amara a deep love.

And so Amara and Zephyr were married, and he carries her eternal beauty across the skies in his strong winds, and at last they both knew happiness.

Author's Note:
This story is a retelling of the story of Cupid and Psyche. I have changed much of the original, in which Psyche is the heroine and Cupid the hero. In the original version, Venus is jealous of Psyche's beauty and tells Cupid to make a terrible man fall in love with her so she will be miserable. Psyche is sacrificed, as in this, but at the decree of an oracle. Rather than dying, however, Cupid whisks her away and makes her his wife, but she is not allowed to see his face or know his identity. Against his urging, she reveals herself as alive to her two sisters, but they are treacherous and convince her to betray Cupid's trust in her. When all is revealed, Venus puts Psyche through a series of tests, and she is eventually made into a deity. Psyche also tricks the two elder sisters into killing themselves. So, as you can see, this story is much different. I thought it would be interesting to see it through the eyes of one of the sisters, who are (in the original) both married to very old, rich men and are very unhappy, and who are made to believe their sister is dead for a time. I got the ideas for/the meanings of the names of the three sisters here and here.

Bibliography. "Cupid and Psyche" from Apuleius's The Golden Ass, translated by Tony Kline. Web Source.

"Psyche Showing her Sisters her Gifts from Cupid" by Jean Honore Fragonard

Week Three Reading Notes Part B - Cupid and Psyche

Source story: "Cupid and Psyche" from Apuleis's book The Golden Ass (translated by Tony Kline)

• "Venus and the Goddesses"
• A seagull tells Venus of what Cupid has done, threading the story with gossip and lies to make his actions out to be worse than what they were. Venus is deeply angered, and goes home to chastise Cupid. She tells him she will either bare another son to replace him or adopt one of her slave boys for the purpose, and that she will have the goddess Moderation clip his wings and shave his hair and ruin all his godly gear. Juno and Ceres show up as she leaves and try to make her see reason, but she is just more angered that they don't support her.
• "Psyche's Prayer"
• Psyche is searching for her husband and stumbles upon two temples. At the first, the temple of Ceres, she tends to the temple and Ceres shows up. She begs Ceres to help her and protect her from Venus, but Ceres sadly states that she is unable to do so for fear of offending Venus. She then finds the temple of Juno, whom she begs for the same and from whom she is met with the same result.
• "Venus and Mercury"
• Psyche resolves to surrender to Venus and hope for mercy. Meanwhile, Venus has been unable to locate Psyche on earth, so she enlists Mercury to spread the word that Venus will reward whatever person can bring Pysche to her with seven kisses and "a caress of her tongue." Psyche goes to the appointed place to turn herself in.
• "Venus and Psyche"
• Venus has servants torture Psyche, then takes a turn beating her as well. Once Psyche is truly destitute, Venus also threatens that she may decide to kill the baby in Psyche's womb as well. She decides to test Psyche by bringing in a huge pile of different sorts of grains and telling her to sort them into piles by type by evening. After Venus leaves her to her impossible task, an ant notices Psyche's plight and takes pity, and so brings an army of ants who do the task for her and then depart.
• "Psyche's Next Task"
• Next Venus tells Psyche she must gather the golden fleece of a nearby flock of deadly sheep. Psyche goes and plans simply to kill herself by throwing herself into a river, but a reed prophesies to her and tells her not to commit suicide but instead to hide in wait until the sheep are in the mid-afternoon shade (they soak up the sun and become angry, attacking and killing people who get close), then to go into the woods where the sheep had been and simply collect the fleece that came off on the trees. Venus is still angry, though, and assigns her another task: to collect a phial of the freezing water from the black spring that feeds the rivers Styx and Cocytus.
• "The Third Task"
• Psyche sees the impossibility of the task: she cannot hope to reach the source of the water, and snakes guard it on all sides, and the water itself is alive and threatening. Luckily, Jupiter's eagle has helped Cupid before, and offers to gather the water for her. He takes her phial and flies past the snakes, tricking the water into not attacking him by claiming he is gathering it on Venus's behalf.
• "The Jar of Beauty"
• Once again Psyche seeks to kill herself after Venus tells her of her next task: going to the underworld and trading the phial of Stygian water for a jar of Persephone's beauty. But the cliff she intends to throw herself off of speaks and tells her not to kill herself, but to follow his advice on how to navigate the underworld without falling into any of Venus's traps. She follows his advice and receives the jar of beauty, but fails to follow his last piece of advice: not to open the jar of beauty or look inside it at any cost. She thinks instead that taking a drop for herself would be wise and would help her to please Cupid.
• "The Sleep of the Dead"
• The jar, instead of beauty, contains Stygian sleep, which immediately causes Psyche to collapse. But Cupid, who is now healed from his burn, breaks out of his mother's house and flies to Psyche, wiping the sleep off of her and putting it back in the jar for her to take to Venus. Meanwhile, he goes to Jupiter to beg his favor and support. Despite his better judgment, Jupiter agrees to offer his support on the condition that "you beware of making me your rival by giving me, in payment for this favour, some other girl of outstanding beauty."
• "The Wedding Feast"
• Jupiter arranges a wedding for Psyche and Cupid and makes Psyche into a goddess. Venus is placated by Jupiter, and Psyche bears a daughter named Pleasure. We then return to the story of Lucius the man/donkey. He relates that the robbers have returned with a lot of loot, and run him to exhaustion carrying it. They discuss the idea of killing him, as they think he is the cause of their bad luck and he is going lame besides, and then they go to bed.
• "The Escape"
• Lucius resolves to escape rather than be killed, and so he breaks his bonds. But the old woman grabs his rope as he flies past her, and holds on tightly. The captive girl wrestles the rope away from the older woman, mounts Lucius's back, and they ride toward what they hope will be freedom, praying to the gods all the way.

Woman and Donkey by a Roadside Shrine (John Gadsby Chapman)