WEEK 02 文導筆記

1. Introduction

a. Ode on Grecian Urn

part of the text :

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

         When old age shall this generation waste,

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

b.  fables v.s. parable

→ Aesop's fables

Aesop's Fables is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 B.C.E.. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with Aesop's name have descended to modern times through a number of sources. They continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.

→ parable

A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas parables have human characters. A parable is a type of analogy.

c. foreshadowing

Foreshadowing or guessing ahead is a literary device by which an author hints what is to come. It is used to avoid disappointment. It is also sometimes used to arouse the reader.A hint that is designed to mislead the audience is referred to as a red herring. However, foreshadowing only hints at a possible outcome within the confinement of a narrative. A flashforward is a scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television, and other media. Foreshadowing is sometimes employed through characters explicitly predicting the future.

 

2. extra information

a. Catharsis

Catharsis (from Greek 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.
 
b. The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index. From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", defined as "to give a false alarm" in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and glossed by the Oxford English Dictionary as meaning to make false claims, with the result that subsequent true claims are disbelieved.

3.  prefix, root and suffix

ver, vir : truth                                 eg. verification, verdict, verisimilitude
verdict (v.) an official judgment made in a court
→ reach a verdict 

 
verisimilitude (n.) Verisimilitude is a philosophical concept that distinguishes between the relative and apparent (or seemingly so) truth and falsity of assertions and hypotheses.The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory.

chrono : time                 eg. chronological, chronic, chronicle
chronological (adj.) arranged or described in the order in which events happened

chronicle (n.) a record of events that happened in the past, in the order in which they happened