Importance of hearing.

5 11 2010

Importance of hearing. Alfred Tomatis and Much Ado About Nothing.

            In the next lines I expose the analisys of Alfred Tomatis, an important scientific, who underlined the importance of hearing. Hearing not only gives us information coming through a determinate message but also shapes our life. This is the principle of this frech doctor, that through the ear the reality comes to us, and through the ear my soul, my psychology and therfore my life and even my body  are being transformed.

            In fact, by using psychological mind games, that is by hearing, Benedick and Beatrice are convinced that they are in love with each other. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/13284/use_of_language_in_shakespeares_much.html?cat=38 Much of the plot is moved along by characters eavesdropping on a conversation and either misunderstanding what they overhear or being deceived by gossip or by a trick. Hero, Claudio, and the rest trick Benedick and Beatrice by setting them up to overhear conversations in which their friends deliberately mislead them. Hearing plays a crucial role in Much Ado About Nothing.

 

            That is why , as a way of going deeper in this analisys of the important role of hearing , I expose here the main scientific ideas  of Alfred Tomatis. This theory  in an interdisciplinar paper can give us a clearer comprehension of the “loving by hearsay” phenomenon.

 

Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis is a French ear, nose, and throat doctor who made astonishing medical and psychological discoveries that led to audio-psycho-phonology, or the Tomatis method.  Also called “auditory training”, “auditory stimulation”, and “listening therapy”, the purpose of this treatment is to reeducate the way we listen, and it is used in over two hundred and fifty centers around the world.  (http://www.tomatis.com/overview.html)

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/psychology/health_psychology/TOMATIS.html#INTRODUCTION

Tomatis came to believe that the ear was much more than an organ of hearing. It is, he maintained in charge of functions including; energizing and regulating the brains state of alertness and attention; coordinating posture and movement; and connecting our intentions and thoughts with our physical and verbal transactions upon our environment. Tomatis’s life mission eventually became the understanding of how the ear was physiologically involved in acquiring and controlling of the voice and language. To this end he invented several technologies, which could be used to rehabilitate the ear related functions of alertness, attention, coordination and voice.

http://www.tomatis.net/

 

The ear has three basic functions. 

 

1.The first is the most obvious, the filtration and analysis of sound by a part of the ear called the cochlea.  This function consists of two parts: hearing and listening.  Hearing is a passive process and we have limited abilities to improve it.  Listening, however, is the ear’s primary function.  When the sensations are running smoothly, one can easily process and filter sound. (http://www.tomatis.com/overview.html) Events such as emotional stress, poor sensory stimulation and communication models, or unpleasant childhood experiences can encourage a more selective listening process and reduce the desire to listen at all.

 

2.The second function is the establishment of spatial dynamic, produced by the vestibular portion of the inner ear.  The inner ear, or vestibule and cochlea, is linked to each other and the brain, almost all cranial nerves are somehow connected to the acoustic nerves.  Through its strong influence on the fight against gravity and motion detection, the inner ear controls balance equilibrium, coordination, and muscle tone.
(http://www.tomatis.com/adresses.toronto.html)   

 

3.The third and most controversial function is the charging or recharging of brain. and in turn the body with electric potential.  A “vibration sensor” within the ear sends this electric message to the brain to give both it and the body energy.  When this nuerocharge is combined with the sounds filtered and produced by the cochlea, 90% of the total body’s charge can be accounted for by the inner ear. This charge is what sends messages to our joints, bones, and muscles and provides us with energy to think, create, and move It is created by high frequency sounds fond in Mozart and Gregorian chants.  Low frequency sounds that come from rock or rap music make our bodies move to exhaustion, eventually draining energy from the brain. (http://www.tomatis.com/overview.html)
   

 The inner ear, or vestibular-cochlear system, is one of the first sensory systems to develop in the fetus.  By the fifth month it is fully developed and sending message to the rest of the nervous system.  Early stimulation is vital to the portal central nervous system.  This stimulation is caused by high frequency sounds.  Low frequency sounds, such as heartbeat, breathing and visceral noises are filtered out by the amniotic fluid. (http://www.tomatis.net/Tomatis_tomatis.html) Therefore, the most dominating sound the developing fetus hears is the high frequency sound of the mother’s voice through bone conduction.  Observations concur with Dr. Tomati’s hypothesis that this voice plays an important role on the developing sensory system of a fetus.  Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound; there are fifty phonemes that create all language.  By the seventh month of development, a fetus has a specific, spontaneous muscular response to each phoneme the mother’s voice produces.  This fascinating sensory-motor response can be inhibited by lack of or abnormal stimulation, causing the central nervous system to have difficulties perceiving and processing information.

 (http://www.tomatis.net/Tomatis_tomatis.html)
   

Another possible cause of disorders, learning disabilities, and depression is left ear dominance.  Most people are surprised to learn we have a dominant ear, which controls the opposite side of the body (very similar to the brain).  People who are right ear dominant have an advantage because the right ear processes much faster.  They have more control over the parameter of their voice and speech.  A study by two psychologists concluded that those with right ear dominance related to situations faster, responded to stimuli more appropriately, and had better control over their emotions. Those who had a dominant left ear tended to be more introverted and had less control over their responses to situations.  The Tomatis method of auditory training claims to train the right ear to become dominant. (http://www.tomatis.com/overview.html)

 

 

The role of psychology in our hearing and the psychological implications of the whole hearing process have been explored in depth by the French ear doctor, Alfred Tomatis, over the past fifty years. Tomatis distinguished between hearing as a passive process and listening as a conscious, volitional act. We are capable of tuning out our listening or of focusing it on a subject that interests us. The ear is directed by the mind, and without this direction it does not function.

 

Both the physical and psychological aspects of hearing begin earlier than we may think.Hearing is our means of verbal communication and thus it is the foundation upon which human relationships are built. The first of these relationships is always the relationship with the mother, which begins in the womb. Dr Alfred Tomatis was one of the first to investigate the auditory environment of the foetus. His theory was that the auditory relationship between baby and mother lays the foundation for all our other relationships and is therefore the crucial point of intervention to bring about change in the person’s psychological response to sound and language.Dr Tomatis speaks of ‘the opening of the ear’, an occurrence which happens on the combined physical and psychological levels. It can be gradual or sudden, dramatic or almost imperceptible. It means that the ear has regained its natural, full responsiveness to sound. The degree of noticeable effect depends on the degree to which the ear was closed off to sound. It also means that the psyche has adjusted and opened its receptivity to sound and that early psycho-accoustic traumas have been released.

 

http://www.soundtherapyinternational.com/v3/the-psychology-of-hearing.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_A._Tomatis




Language in Much Ado

28 10 2010

Use of Language in Much Ado About Nothing

Language in this play has a performative role. What Beatrice and Benedict hear creates a new reality between them.Much of the plot is moved along by characters eavesdropping on a conversation and either misunderstanding what they overhear or being deceived by gossip or by a trick. Hero, Claudio, and the rest trick Benedick and Beatrice by setting them up to overhear conversations in which their friends deliberately mislead them.

William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy enriched with witty banter and entangled conversations. Throughout the play characters overhear false dialogue, battle each other with words, and jumble their vocabulary.

 Language in Much Ado About Nothing often takes the form of brutality and violence. “She speaks poniards, and every word stabs,” complains Benedick of Beatrice (II.i.216). Find examples of speech and words representing wounds and battles in the play. What do Shakespeare and his cast of characters accomplish by metaphorically turning words into weapons? What does the proliferation of all this violent language signify in the play and the world outside it?

 

 

The banter between Benedick and Beatrice is an example of language at its best. Every time the two characters see each other they have a “merry war” with words, “they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them” (1.1.50-51). The first conversation featuring Benedick and Beatrice displays the two characters skill of wit and language. Therefore, it makes sense that these two characters cannot fall in love without some use of word play. Benedick and Beatrice are against marriage. Benedick is a glorified bachelor and swears he will never marry. He tells Claudio, “And the fine is-for the which I may go the finer-I will live a bachelor” (1.1.200-201). Beatrice, much like Katherine in Taming of the Shrew, is outspoken and wild. In act 1, scene 1, Beatrice announces, “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me” (107-108). Benedick and Beatrice compete to outwit each other at every turn, flirting and fighting go hand in hand with these two. Through their incessant bickering and eavesdropping of false words, language is a powerful asset to Benedick and Beatrice rather than a hindrance. 

Not only does the “merry war” between Benedick and Beatrice show the character’s match of wit and possible foreplay, but it is also used to make these characters conform to their environment. Language reveals social conformity in Much Ado About Nothing. Society needs marriage, therefore Don Pedro schemes and makes Benedick and Beatrice fall in love. He plays psychological mind games sure to bait Benedick into marriage and therefore into a proper social convention. In act 2, scene 3, Don Pedro says, “I love Benedick well, and I could wish he would modestly examine himself to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady” (184-186). By questioning Benedick’s worthiness of such a lady, Don Pedro plants the idea of marriage in Benedick’s mind. Benedick falls for this reverse psychology and immediately decides that maybe marriage is in his future. Meanwhile, Hero, Ursula and Margaret dupe Beatrice in the same manner. In act 3, scene 1, Ursula baits Beatrice by saying

 

She cannot be so much without true judgement,
Having so swift and excellent a wit
As she is prized to have, as to refuse
A rare a gentleman as Signor Benedick. (88-91) 

 

Benedick and Beatrice overhear the words that make them fall in love with each other. This conveniently placed love allows social conformity through marriage. Although both characters are against marriage from the beginning, by overhearing their respected friends speak of the other’s love, they eventually relent and decide to requite love. Language not only changes the stubborn heart of characters, but it also reveals their true nature. 

While speaking to his friends, though, Don Pedro still holds rank in the language. Don Pedro tells Benedick to “repair to Leonato’s, commend me to him, and tell him I will not fail him at supper” (1.1.225-226). Even though Don Pedro is talking to a close friend not far below him in social status, he still has him serve as a messenger to announce his arrival at supper. Don Pedro shows his superiority by wooing Hero for Claudio through his loving words. He takes control of language by wooing Hero for Claudio rather than letting Claudio capture the heart of Hero on his own. Beatrice takes control of the language once Hero has been wooed. Hero is not even given a chance to reply before Beatrice says, “Speak, cousin. Or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak, neither” (2.1.271-272). Just as Don Pedro took control of the language in wooing Hero, Beatrice takes control of it to finalize the courting process with a kiss. 

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/13284/use_of_language_in_shakespeares_much.html?cat=38




Introduction

28 10 2010

Much Ado About Nothing

Love By hearing 

 

In the Shakespeare comedy Much Ado About Nothing, the Author points out one important feature of love. Love is not only a fact which is caused by the lover’s desition but it is a social phenomenum.

 

William Shkespeare in his play shows something quite new, not only for his time but also for ours.

Our Society, in fact, has a lot of tabues. Those tabues related to love affairs have their roots in the romantic period. A real vision of love has been changed and sublimated.

W.Sh. in Much Ado About Nothing exposes a very realistic vision of love in which human psicology plays an important role.

In this play  Beatrice and Benedick’s acidic romance is a more developed  v ersion of the hatred-turned-to-love from The Taming of the Shrew.

Much Ado about Nothing” is really much ado about something very important—marriage and female fidelity– the cornerstone of social stability.  The contrasting couples shows two competing views: one naïve and idealistic, the other experienced and realistic.  Yet the theme of deception complicates this reading too.  Beatrice and Benedick were tricked into loving—are they really so discerning?  How can one deception be good and another bad?  Is the theatre itself, a place where deception flourishes, compromised?  In the end this play raises more questions than it answers.

 

“Much Ado About Nothing” is one of Shakespeare’s most admired works, a comedy with dark overtones; a combination of two love stories, involving people ofcontrasting temperaments; and a solution by the humble of the problems of the mighty. One feature of the play worth noting is that three-quarters of it is in prose.

Much Ado About Nothing is supposedly a comedy: Beatrice and Benedick trade insults for professions of love, and Claudio and Hero fall in love, out of love, and back in love again. But the play contains many darker, more tragic elements than a typical comedy. In what ways is this play tragic?




Wedding in Much Ado

28 10 2010

 Wedding in Much Ado About Nothing

In Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick’s attitude about marriage and initial feelings about Beatrice are quite contrary to how he feels in the ending.

In the first scene, Benedick is talking to Don Pedro and Claudio when he makes an ‘anti-marriage’ comment. Hesays he will do himself the right to not trust any woman, rather than doing women wrong by not trusting anyHe goes further to say “And the fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor” (1.1.240-242). It seems obvious that Benedick is distrustful of women and would rather not be involved with a woman. A few lines later, Don Pedro hints that although Benedick is unsuited to marriage, he will eventually be ‘tamed’ and able to accept marriage: “in time the savage bull doth bear thy yoke” (1.1.256). This foreshadows the fact that Benedick will eventually let himself fall for Beatrice.

At the masked ball, Benedick uses Beatrice’s entrance as an opportunity to display his wit. He indicates to his friends that he would rather be miles away than be around Beatrice any longer. He says to the prince, “Will your grace command me any service to the world’s end?” (2.1.259-260).

Later in the play, Benedick muses to himself, critiquing Claudio. He wonders how a man can think another man is a fool, and laugh at them, for falling in love, and then fall in love himself. He says that when this happens the man becomes the object of his own scorn, “and such a man is Claudio” (2.3.12-13). The ironic part of this statement is that Benedick will become the “argument of his own scorn” later in the play. He critiques Claudio for laughing at a man for being in love, and later falling in love. Benedick eventually does the very thing he critiques.

Benedick’s feelings for Beatrice become clear when he challenges Claudio to duel to the death. Normally when a man accuses a woman of being unchaste, the man’s friends are likely to be on his side. In this case, Benedick did not side with his close friend. He had to have felt strongly about Beatrice to side with her over Claudio, let alone be willing to duel to the death with Claudio.

 

In the very last scene of the play, when Claudio and Hero and Benedick and Beatrice are coupled again, Benedick’s complete transformation regarding marriage is clear. He tells Don Pedro that since he intends to marry, he “will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it”, and to not “flout” at him for what he has said against marriage, “for man is a giddy thing” (5.4.109-112). He glorifies marriage further when he says to Don Pedro “Get thee a wife. There is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn” (5.4.126-127). The flouting comment is quite a departure from his comment about men mocking marriage and later becoming the object of their own scorn. He switched from criticizing those that mock married men and then marry to being one of the men that mocked marriage before getting married. The staff “tipped with horn” comment could be another allusion to bulls (or their horns, anyway).

Over the course of the play, Benedick has made a complete turnaround where his feelings about marriage and Beatrice are concerned. Even though this is due largely to others tricking the couple into love, the turnaround is a little ironic. His comments about Claudio in act 2 scene 3 function as a kind of self fulfilling prophecy.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/290950/marriage_in_much_ado_about_nothing.html?cat=2




Video: Love between Beatrice and Benedick

27 10 2010

Love between Beatrice and Benedick

Video of the moment in which love by hearsay appears

These two characters exemplify the expression “the course of true love never did run smooth” (which Lysander says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1.1.134). The two appear to have had an earlier relationship, but the details given by Shakespeare are few indeed*.

The displays of aggression toward one another and the obsession evident for the other in the early scenes of the play suggest that they feel more for each other than simple animosity. The process through which they are tricked to confessing their love for one another is truly delightful, as their strong wits and deep eloquence are overcome by relatively simplistic trickery that suggests that they are only too willing to believe what they hear. Nevertheless, they continue to quarrel throughout the play as they are, as Benedick says, “too wise to woo peaceably” (5.2.61).

When Benedick decides that Beatrice loves him, he decides to be “horribly in love with her” (2.3.231); he then does his best to court her according to the fashion of courtly love, though he says finally that he was not “born under a rhyming planet” (5.1.39).

http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/plays/adobb.html




Love through Hearsay in Much Ado About Nothing

27 10 2010

LOVE THROUGH HEARSAY

“Loving by hearsay” is the main topic which is expressed by René  Girard when speaking about  Much Ado About Nothing. But what does it mean? By the expression of “loving by hearing” we understand the repetition of another one’s desire of feeling. This psychological mechanism can be also called a process of mimetism.

            Mimetism consists of copying other’s behaviour, and this ins deeply written in our human instinct. We can repeat other’s feeling, for instance, we are more attracted by something or someone who is already desired by someone else. That is why when a desire is exposed to the sigh of the Other it can be repeated by means of mimetism. When I show my feelings, they can be copied and not given back.

            When we want love somebody which loves us, that is love reciprocally , we must not imitate the given love, but produce a different one. Positive reciprocity asks from the lovers an inner force which differs from the mimetic desire.

            The one who really wants to love should avoid to take profit “egoistically” from the other’s desire.

            When talking about  Much Ado About Nothing, If Benedict would have been the first to talk , there had been a danger his love to be copied by Beatrice, and also in the other way round. This mimetism in the relationship of this main characters would provide them into a power relation where one of them would have been situated  in the dominant position . And this cannot be defined as love.

            Both Beatrice and Benedict live a stressed “game relationship”, that is why the solution cannot come from anyone of them but from others. The solution comes from the community, and this is a revolutionary point of view, not only in Shakespeare’s time but also in ours.

            And which is the way them to be helped by the community?

            By hearing. Love by hearing means love through other’s voice. In fact, not only in the story of Beatrice and Benedict the ear, and the act of hearing what it is not supposed to be destinated to us, plays a very important role.

 

            Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come,
As we do trace this alley up and down,
Our talk must only be of Benedick.
When I do name him, let it be thy part
To praise him more than ever man did merit:
My talk to thee must be how Benedick
Is sick in love with Beatrice. Of this matter
Is little Cupid’s crafty arrow made,
That only wounds by hearsay.

 

(III, 1, 15-23)

 

            Language in this play has a performative role. What Beatrice and Benedict hear creates a new reality between them.Much of the plot is moved along by characters eavesdropping on a conversation and either misunderstanding what they overhear or being deceived by gossip or by a trick. Hero, Claudio, and the rest trick Benedick and Beatrice by setting them up to overhear conversations in which their friends deliberately mislead them.            

            Benedict and Beatrice are not a conventional pair. They do not suscribe to the romantic norms thet their more docile friends, Hero and Claudio, take for granted. Instead they are plain-spoken, disdainings romantic convention and responding to each other with brilliant wit, intoned with cool detachment. The one exception to this distinction is that after Beatrice “overhears” her friends spreak of Benedick’s love for her, she bursts out into poetry, decrying her own pride and vowing to tame her wild heart to Benedick’s “loving hand”.

            Thus the mistress of words finally succumbs to words herself. She dismisses the “much ado” she has created through her own “pride and scorn” and, in her wittiest manner, bidsit “adieu”. Similarlly, Benedick is caught in “Cupid’s trap” and immediately changes, declaring, “I will be horribly in love with Beatrice.” (pag 6, smart)

            In George Steiner’s words: George Steiner: “The function of contrast is beautifully shown in Much Ado About Nothing. Nearly the entire play is written in prose. The few passages of verseare only a kind of shorthand to quicken matters.

. . Beatrice and Benedick . . . are lovers in the middle range of passion, enamored

neither of the flesh nor altogether of the heart, but caught in the enchantment of

each other’s wit.”

 Is in Fact don Pedro the one who decides join  them toguether,  by using psychological mind games, he convinces Benedick and Beatrice that they are in love with each other. Benedick and Beatrice were on the outside of society because they were glorified singles, something not acceptable in Shakespeare’s time. Don Pedro’s victory over Benedick and Beatrice produces love and social conformity. Claudio and Hero reveal their true selves by speaking for themselves. Throughout most of the play, Claudio and Hero are spoken for by someone else. Therefore, whenever these two soft-spoken characters speak up, one must pay close attention to what they have to say. Dogberry and Verges display their misunderstanding of communication through their constant muddling of terms. As soon as these characters open their mouths, the audience can see they do not belong in their surroundings. Language and the misuse of language allows the audience to see the true character and social status in each of the characters in Much Ado About Nothing.

. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/13284/use_of_language_in_shakespeares_much.html?cat=38

BEATRICE

[Coming forward]
What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemn’d for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.
And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand:
If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee
To bind our loves up in a holy band;
For others say thou dost deserve, and I
Believe it better than reportingly. (I, 2)

Beatrice and Benedick learn that they have been tricked

into love, yet each has written of that love and their writing is offered as proof that

their love is real. The play ends with two happy couples and an admonition to Don

Pedro, “get thee a wife.”

 

            The role of the community is essential in Beatrice and Benedict’s love. As a matter of fact, when the love of them is being public, when it is a collective data, nobody can destroyed it, nor even the lovers.