western literature 14

scrooge

A miserly curmudgeon in Dickens' Christmas Carol.

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens  was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

Noah's ark

Noah's Ark  is the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative(Genesis chapters 6–9) by which God spares Noah, his family, and a remnant of all the world's animals from the flood. According to Genesis, God gave Noah instructions for building the ark. Seven days before the deluge, God told Noah to enter the ark with his household and the animals. The story goes on to describe the ark being afloat throughout the flood and subsequent receding of the waters before it came to rest on the Mountains of Ararat. The story is repeated, with variations, in the Quran, where the ark appears as Safina Nuh (Arabic: سفينة نوح‎ "Noah's boat"). The Genesis flood narrative is similar to numerous other flood myths from a variety of cultures. The earliest known written flood myth is the Sumerian flood myth found in the Epic of Ziusudra. Searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c.275–339 CE) to the present day. There is no scientific evidence for a global flood, and despite many expeditions, no evidence of the ark has been found.

Joseph

Joseph  is a figure in the Gospels, the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, and is venerated as Saint Joseph in the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, Lutheranism and Methodism. Christian tradition places Joseph as Jesus' foster father. Some historians state that Joseph was Jesus's father. Some differing views are due to theological interpretations versus historical views.

Mary

According to the New Testament, Mary, also known as St Mary the Virgin, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Mary,Mary the Mother of God, or the Virgin Mary—amongst other titles, styles and honorifics—was a Galilean Jewish woman of Nazareth and the mother ofJesus.

The gospels of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament describe Mary as a virgin  and Christians believe that she conceived her son while a virgin by the Holy Spirit. This took place when she was already betrothed to Joseph and was awaiting the concluding rite of marriage, the formal home-taking ceremony. She married Joseph and accompanied him to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. 

Original sin

Original sin, in Christian theology, is humanity's original state of sinfulness (propensity toward active sinning) resulting from the Fall of Man (the fallenness of the human 'species being').

Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel  is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope, in Vatican City. 

Abraham

Abraham, birthname Abram, is the first of the three biblical patriarchs. His story, told in chapters 11 through 25 of the Book of Genesis, plays a prominent role in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Bahá'í Faith.The Genesis narrative revolves around the themes of posterity and land rights. Abraham was called by Yahweh (the national god of the Israelites) to leave the house of his father Terah and settle in a land which was already settled by the descendants of Canaan; however, God promised it to Abraham and his progeny. Various candidates were put forward who might inherit the land after him, but all were dismissed except for Isaac, Abraham's son by his half-sister Sarah. Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs at Hebron to be Sarah's grave when she died, thus establishing his right to that land. In the second generation, Abraham's heir Isaac was married to a woman from his own relatives, thus ruling the Canaanites out of any right to his inheritance. Abraham later married Keturah and had six more sons, but on his death, when he was buried beside Sarah, it was Isaac who received "all Abraham's goods", while the other sons received only "gifts".

Isaac

Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, was the second son of Abraham, the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and the father of Jacob and Esau. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Sarah was past 90.

According to the Genesis narrative, Abraham brought Isaac to Mount Moriah, where, at God's command, Abraham built a sacrificial altar to sacrifice Isaac. This event served as a test of Abraham's faith. At the last moment an angel stopped him.

Ishmael

Ishmael  is a figure in the Tanakh and the Qur'an and was Abraham's first son according to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Ishmael was born to Abraham and Sarah's handmaiden Hagar . According to the Genesis account, he died at the age of 137.

The Book of Genesis and Islamic traditions consider Ishmael to be the ancestor of the Ishmaelites. According to Muslim tradition, Ishmael and his mother are said to be buried next to the Kaaba in Mecca.

western literature 13

The important part in a book is written in 

1,Boldface
2,Italics 
3,Underlined

How to take great notes?

1. Write down the conclusions instead of facts.
2. Use color
3. Review

Platonic academy

The Academy was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Athens. Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) studied there for twenty years (367 BC – 347 BC) before founding his own school, the Lyceum. The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC. Although philosophers continued to teach Plato's philosophy in Athens during the Roman era, it was not until AD 410 that a revived Academy was established as a center for Neoplatonism, persisting until 529 AD when it was finally closed by Justinian I.

The Platonic Academy has been cited by historians as the first higher learning institution in the Western world.

Catharsis

Catharsis (meaning "purification" or "cleansing") is the purification and purgation of emotions—especially pity and fear—through art or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration. It is a metaphor originally used by Aristotle in the Poetics, comparing the effects of tragedy on the mind of spectator to the effect of a cathartic on the body.

Mimesis

Mimesis, is a critical and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous similarity, the act of resembling, the act of expression, and the presentation of the self.

Classical unities

The classical unities, Aristotelian unities, or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle's Poetics. In their neoclassical form they are as follows:

1. unity of action: a play should have one action that it follows, with minimal subplots.
2. unity of time: the action in a play should occur over a period of no more than 24 hours.
3. unity of place: a play should exist in a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.

Hamartia

 Hamartia  means “to miss the mark” or “to err”. It is most often associated with Greek tragedy, although it is also used in Christian theology. Hamartia as it pertains to dramatic literature was first used by Aristotle in his Poetics. In tragedy, hamartia is commonly understood to refer to the protagonist’s error or flaw that leads to a chain of plot actions culminating in a reversal from their good fortune to bad. What qualifies as the error or flaw can include an error resulting from ignorance, an error of judgement, a flaw in character, or sin. The spectrum of meanings has invited debate among critics and scholars, and different interpretations among dramatists.

Words

omniscient: Having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, orunderstanding; perceiving all things.

-omni means all

-scient means knowing

western literature 12

Aristophanes 

Aristophanes was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his thirty plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are used to define the genre.

Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy, Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries.

Lysistrata 

Lysistrata is a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BCE, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. The dramatic structure represents a shift away from the conventions of Old Comedy, a trend typical of the author's career. 

Tragic irony

Tragic irony is a special category of dramatic irony. In tragic irony, the words and actions of the characters contradict the real situation, which the spectators fully realize. 

Ancient Greek drama was especially characterized by tragic irony because the audiences were so familiar with the legends that most of the plays dramatized. Sophocles' Oedipus the King provides a classic example of tragic irony at its fullest. Colebrook writes:

Tragic irony is exemplified in ancient drama ... The audience watched a drama unfold, already knowing its destined outcome. ... In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, for example, 'we' (the audience) can see what Oedipus is blind to. The man he murders is his father, but he does not know it.

Further, Oedipus vows to find the murderer and curses him for the plague that he has caused, not knowing that the murderer he has cursed and vowed to find is himself.

Hubris

Hubris  means, in a modern context, extreme pride or self-confidence; in its ancient Greek context, it typically describes violent and excessive behavior rather than an attitude. When it offends the gods of ancient Greece, it is usually punished. The adjectival form of the noun hubris is "hubristic".

Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may suffer consequences from the wrongful act. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.

Iphigenia

In Greek mythology, Iphigenia was a daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus princess of Argos. After offending Artemis, Agamemnon was commanded to kill Iphigenia as a sacrifice to allow his ships to sail to Troy. In some versions, Iphigenia is sacrificed at Aulis, but in others, she is rescued by Artemis. In the version where she is saved, she goes to the Taurians and meets her brother Orestes.

western literature 11

What is all about 

Agamemnon--man and suffering
Oedipus the king--fate and escape
Medea--inner emotion of passion, love, vengeance. clash between family and divine perspective. domestic wrangling, moral and psychological weakness.

Deus ex machina

It is a Latin calque from Greek , meaning "god from the machine".The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Depending on how it is done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or as a comedic device. Aeschylus used the device in his Eumenides, but it was with Euripides that it became an established stage machine.

Golden Fleece

In Greek mythology, the Golden Fleece is the fleece of the gold-hair winged ram, which was held in Colchis. The fleece is a symbol of authority and kingship. It figures in the tale of the hero Jason and his band of Argonauts, who set out on a quest for the fleece by order of King Pelias, in order to place Jason rightfully on the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly. Through the help of Medea, they acquire the Golden Fleece. The story is of great antiquity and was current in the time of Homer (eighth century BC). It survives in various forms, among which the details vary.

Jason 

Jason was an ancient Greek mythological hero who was famous for his role as the leader of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcos. He was married to the sorceress Medea.

Argonauts

The Argonauts  were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, Argo, named after its builder,Argus. "Argonauts" literally means "Argo sailors". 

Creon 

Creon is a figure in Greek mythology best known as the ruler of Thebes in the legend of Oedipus. 

Greek chorus

A Greek chorus is a homogeneous, non-individualised group of performers in the plays of classical Greece, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action. The chorus consisted of between 12 and 50 players, who variously danced, sang or spoke their lines in unison and sometimes wore masks.

words

infidelity-unfaithfulness; disloyalty.
-fid:trust
confidence

western literature 10

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of narrative, typically fictional, represented in performance. The term comes from the Greek word δρᾶμα, drama, meaning action, which is derived from the verb δράω, draō, meaningto do or to act. The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BC) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama. A modern example is Long Day's Journey into Night (1956) by Eugene O’Neill.

The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia and Melpomene, the Muse of comedy represented by the laughing face, and the Muse of tragedy represented by the weeping face, respectively. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BC)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.

Semele

Semele was the mortal mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.

Patronage

Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes and the wealthy have provided to artists such as musicians, painters, and sculptors. It can also refer to the right of bestowing offices or church benefices, the business given to a store by a regular customer, and the guardianship of saints. The word "patron" derives from the Latin: 'patronus' ("patron"), one who gives benefits to his clients.

Three Greek tragedian

 Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus 

Greek Comedian

Aristophanes

Inauguration

An inauguration is a formal ceremony to mark the beginning of a major public leader's term of office. The "inaugural address" is a speech given during this ceremony which informs the people of his/her intentions as a leader. A famous inauguration speech is John F. Kennedy's.

Syllabus

-Nov new

November, innovation