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fandomhigh2006-02-02 10:43 am
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Classics/Foreign Lit, 02/02, Period 2
"Hello, class.
Foreign Lit: We are transitioning into a unit on Russian literature. While there have been great works written in Russian since medieval times, if not before, in this class we will concentrate on the works of what are considered the Golden and Silver Ages, the 19th and 20th centuries. In class, please pick a writer from that time whose name is in your handout, and turn in 100Wiki'ed words about the author and his or her work.
Classics: We are continuing our reading in Greek mythology with Hesiod's Theogony, a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of Greek mythology.
The poem is a synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. In many cultures, narratives about the cosmos and about the gods that shaped it are a way for society to reaffirm its native cultural traditions. Specifically, theogonies tend to affirm kingship as the natural embodiment of society. What makes the Theogony of Hesiod unique is that it affirms no historical royal line. Such a gesture would have cited the Theogony in one time and one place. Rather, the Theogony affirms the kingship of the god Zeus himself over all the other gods and over the whole cosmos.
Further, Hesiod appropriates to himself the authority usually reserved to sacred kingship. The poet declares that it is he, where we might have expected some king instead, upon whom the Muses have bestowed the two gifts of a scepter and an authoritative voice (Hesiod, Theogony 30-3), which are the visible signs of kingship. It is not that this gesture is meant to make Hesiod a king. Rather, the point is that the authority of kingship now belongs to the poetic voice, the voice that is declaiming the Theogony.
After the classical period, when divinely-appointed kingship is brought into Greece once more, it will come in from outside, from Macedonia and imported from the royal traditions of Persia.
Although it is often used as a sourcebook for Greek mythology, the Theogony is both more and less than that. In formal terms it is a hymn invoking Zeus and the Muses: parallel passages between it and the much shorter Homeric Hymn to the Muses make it clear that the Theogony developed out of a tradition of hymnic preludes with which ancient Greek rhapsodes would begin their performance at poetic competitions. It is necessary, therefore, to see the Theogony not as a sort of Bible of Greek mythology, but rather as a kind of snapshot of a dynamic and often contradictory tradition as it happened to crystallize at one particular place and time - and to remember that the tradition kept evolving all the way up to the current time.
For homework, please read the text of the Theogony, which you have in English and in Greek. We will discuss it on Tuesday."
Foreign Lit: We are transitioning into a unit on Russian literature. While there have been great works written in Russian since medieval times, if not before, in this class we will concentrate on the works of what are considered the Golden and Silver Ages, the 19th and 20th centuries. In class, please pick a writer from that time whose name is in your handout, and turn in 100
Classics: We are continuing our reading in Greek mythology with Hesiod's Theogony, a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of Greek mythology.
The poem is a synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. In many cultures, narratives about the cosmos and about the gods that shaped it are a way for society to reaffirm its native cultural traditions. Specifically, theogonies tend to affirm kingship as the natural embodiment of society. What makes the Theogony of Hesiod unique is that it affirms no historical royal line. Such a gesture would have cited the Theogony in one time and one place. Rather, the Theogony affirms the kingship of the god Zeus himself over all the other gods and over the whole cosmos.
Further, Hesiod appropriates to himself the authority usually reserved to sacred kingship. The poet declares that it is he, where we might have expected some king instead, upon whom the Muses have bestowed the two gifts of a scepter and an authoritative voice (Hesiod, Theogony 30-3), which are the visible signs of kingship. It is not that this gesture is meant to make Hesiod a king. Rather, the point is that the authority of kingship now belongs to the poetic voice, the voice that is declaiming the Theogony.
After the classical period, when divinely-appointed kingship is brought into Greece once more, it will come in from outside, from Macedonia and imported from the royal traditions of Persia.
Although it is often used as a sourcebook for Greek mythology, the Theogony is both more and less than that. In formal terms it is a hymn invoking Zeus and the Muses: parallel passages between it and the much shorter Homeric Hymn to the Muses make it clear that the Theogony developed out of a tradition of hymnic preludes with which ancient Greek rhapsodes would begin their performance at poetic competitions. It is necessary, therefore, to see the Theogony not as a sort of Bible of Greek mythology, but rather as a kind of snapshot of a dynamic and often contradictory tradition as it happened to crystallize at one particular place and time - and to remember that the tradition kept evolving all the way up to the current time.
For homework, please read the text of the Theogony, which you have in English and in Greek. We will discuss it on Tuesday."
Classwork and discussion, Foreign Lit, 02/02
Re: Classwork and discussion, Foreign Lit, 02/02
Anton Chekov was a Russian short story and play writer from the late nineteenth century. He wrote a lot of short stories and plays, but only four of his plays are really thought to be that good now: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Four Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. If his titles are any indication, this is because his writing was very boring. He was trained as a physician but wrote anyway. He died of tuberculosis.
Re: Classwork and discussion, Foreign Lit, 02/02
Pushkin blended Old Slavonic with vernacular Russian into a rich, melodic language. He was the first to use everyday speech in his poetry. He mixed romance, drama and satire into a style of storytelling which has been associated with Russian literature ever since.
Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as the poem The Bronze Horseman and the drama The Stone Guest. Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel Eugene Onegin, which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus. "Onegin" is a work of such complexity that, while only about a hundred pages long, it required translator Vladimir Nabokov four full volumes of material to fully render its meaning in English. Unfortunately, in so doing Nabokov, like all translators of Pushkin into English to date, totally destroyed the fundamental readability of Pushkin in Russian which makes him so popular, and Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers.