fandomhigh | Foreign Lit/Classics, 3/02, Period 2

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Foreign Lit/Classics, 3/02, Period 2

"Hello.

As we discussed Monday, you should turn in the written portions of your midterms today. They are to be critical reactions to the appropriate readings, 100 words for Classics students, 200 words for Foreign Literature.

Miss Santos, Mr. Dane, and Miss Bristow, you have been granted extensions to the end of break to complete these. Email them to me by March 10.

After you have turned in your papers, you may watch a film.

I will see you on the 13th, when Classics students will begin studying Latin and literature students will commence reading Asian literature."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...

Nadia signed in for Foreign Lit. She's actually moderately surprised that she made it to class today.

Anders signs in for Classics.

Janet signed in for Classics.

*Hamlet signs in, glad to have an extension on the midterm work.*

Elizabeth signed in, yawning slightly. Glowing in the dark wasn't exactly conductive to sleeping well.

John signed in.

He looked like hell.

And his ears were funny-lookin'.

Gimme.

(This is 25 percent of your grade, and I need SOMETHING by the end of break. Handwave it if you have to, though Wiki'd reports are fine.)

The Odyssey was written by Homer. While today's Odyssey is usually a printed text, the original poem was an oral composition sung by a trained bard, in an amalgamated Ancient Greek dialect, using a regular metrical pattern called dactylic hexameter. Each line of the original Greek was composed of six feet; each foot a dactyl or a spondee. Among the most impressive elements of the text are its strikingly modern non-linear plot, and its elevation of the status of women and the lower classes. In the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage.

((OOC: C&P from Wiki.))

If the Theogony is about anything, it is about birth, the "birth of the gods" which is what the title means. In this early creation-time, the gods are synonymous with the universe (cosmos) and the order of the universe (cosmos). Yet throughout the Theogony, the gods behave in a most disorderly fashion. Why is this? There are many interesting answers to this question, but here's a start. The poem presents the creation of the gods and the universe and the consolidation of the gods' power as a struggle between fathers and sons and between male force and female birth.

[[Source: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Hesiod2.htm]]

John writes about how ingrained the Latin and Greek tongues were intertwined and embedded in the modern English language. Handwavey ho!

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was one of the greatest of Russian writers, whose works have had a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century fiction. Often featuring characters with disparate and extreme states of the mind, his works exhibit both an uncanny grasp of human psychology as well as penetrating analyses in the politics, social and spiritual state of Russia of his time. Many of his best-known works are prophetic as precursors of modern-day thought and preoccupations. He is sometimes said to be a founder of existentialism, most notably in Notes from Underground, which has been described by Walter Kaufmann as "the best overture for existentialism ever written".

Dostoevsky's novels are compressed in time (many cover only a few days) and this enables the author to get rid of one of the dominant traits of realist prose, the corrosion of human life in the process of the time flux — his characters primarily embody spiritual values, and these are, by definition, timeless. Other obsessive themes include suicide, wounded pride, collapsed family values, spiritual regeneration through suffering (the most important motif), rejection of the West and affirmation of Russian Orthodoxy and Tsarism. Literary scholars such as Bakhtin have characterized his work as 'polyphonic': unlike other novelists, Dostoevsky does not appear to aim for a 'single vision', and beyond simply describing situations from various angles, Dostoevsky engendered fully dramatic novels of ideas where conflicting views and characters are left to develop unevenly into unbearable crescendo.

By common critical consensus one among the handful of universal world authors, Dostoevsky has decisively influenced twentieth century literature, existentialism and expressionism in particular.

[[ooc: Yay Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky)]]

Watch the film, or chat.

Watching a movie is exactly what the doctor ordered. Even if it does require a bit more concentration to read the English subtitles than she necessarily wanted it to.

Alas, she does fall asleep about twenty minutes in.

(deleted comment)

"Mrpphrggle." Nadia mutters, then cracks open an eye. "Hm?"

(deleted comment)

Sign in, Classics/Foreign Lit, 3/2

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Midterms, Classics/Foreign Lit

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Movie time, 3/2

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After class, Foreign Lit/Classics, 3/02