WEEK 11 西概筆記(Western Literature)

1. Stories

a. Semele

In one version of the myth, Semele was a priestess of Zeus, and on one occasion was observed by Zeus as she slaughtered a bull at his altar and afterwards swam in the river Asopus to cleanse herself of the blood. Flying over the scene in the guise of an eagle, Zeus fell in love with Semele and repeatedly visited her secretly.
Hera discovered his affair with Semele when she later became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her lover was actually Zeus. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semele' s mind. Curious, Semele asked Zeus to grant her a boon. Zeus, eager to please his beloved, promised on the River Styx to grant her anything she wanted. She then demanded that Zeus reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his divinity. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he was forced by his oath to comply. Zeus tried to spare her by showing her the smallest of his bolts and the sparsest thunderstorm clouds he could find. Mortals, however, cannot look upon the gods without incinerating, and she perished, consumed in lightning-ignited flame.

Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus, however, by sewing him into his thigh. A few months later, Dionysus was born. This leads to his being called "the twice-born"

b. Thespis

Thespis was the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play (instead of speaking as him or herself). In other sources, he is said to have introduced the first principal actor in addition to the chorus.
Thespis was a singer of dithyrambs (songs about stories from mythology with choric refrains). He is credited with introducing a new style in which one singer or actor performed the words of individual characters in the stories, distinguishing between the characters with the aid of different masks.

This new style was called tragedy, and Thespis was the most popular exponent of it. Eventually, in 534 BC competitions to find the best tragedy were instituted at the City Dionysia in Athens, and Thespis won the first documented competition. Capitalising on his success, Thespis also invented theatrical touring; he would tour various cities while carrying his costumes, masks and other props in a horse-drawn wagon.

c. Satyr

In Greek mythology, a satyr is one of a troop of ithyphallic male companions of Dionysus with horse-like (equine) features, including a horse-tail, horse-like ears, and sometimes a horse-like phallus because of permanent erection. Early artistic representations sometimes include horse-like legs, but in 6th-century BC black-figure pottery human legs are the most common. In Roman Mythology there is a concept similar to satyrs, with goat-like features: the faun, being half-man, half-goat. Greek-speaking Romans often used the Greek term saturos when referring to the Latin faunus, and eventually syncretized the two. The female "Satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains. In myths they are often associated with pipe-playing. 

 

2. Other stories

a. The birth of Athena 

... After a time, Zeus developed an unbearable headache, which made him scream out of pain so loudly it could be heard throughout the earth. The other gods came to see what the problem was. Hermes realized what needed to be done and directed Hephaestus to take a wedge and split open Zeus's skull. Out of the skull sprang Athena, fully grown and in a full set of armour. Due to the way of her birth, she became the goddess of intelligence and wisdom.

b. The great Gatsby 

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."
How does Gatsby be 'great' ?
→ If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.…

WEEK 10 字源筆記

1. extension of quiz for midterm exam

a. A.T.M

A.T.M means automatic teller machine.

b. mock 

Mock means laugh at or make fun of, and it doesn't need to put  a preposition behind the word.
→ mockery (n.) means something that makes a system, organization etc seem stupid or useless

c. bull's eye 正中靶心

The bull's eye, is the centre of a target, and by extension the name given to any shot that hits the bull's eye. By extension, the word bull's eye can refer to any design or pattern featuring prominent concentric circles, visually suggesting an archery target, and "hitting the bull's eye" is a term for an unexpectedly good success.

d. onomatopoeia 擬聲字
It means the use of words such as ‘buzz’ and ‘thud’ that sound like the sound which they refer to. Another examples are grotesque, yuck, gross, etc.
grotesque (adj.) means extremely ugly and strange

e. Gothic cathedral ( twisted and grotesque)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (French: Notre-Dame de Paris) is a French Romantic/Gothic novel by Victor Hugo published in 1831. The title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which the story is centered, and the true protagonist of the story Esméralda. English translator Frederic Shoberl named the novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in 1833 because at the time, Gothic novels were more popular than Romance novels in England.The story is set in Paris, France in the Late Middle Ages, during the reign of Louis XI.

 

1998 version

 2. extra information

a. John Donne

Many of John Donne's poems contain metaphysical conceits and intellectual reasoning to build a deeper understanding of the speaker's emotional state. A conceit can be defined as an extended, unconventional metaphor between objects that appear to be unrelated. Metaphysical conceit is a highly ingenious kind of conceit widely used by the metaphysical poets. It often exploits verbal logic to the point of the grotesque and sometimes creates such extravagant turns on meaning that they become absurd. 
For example, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a prose work by the English metaphysical poet.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. 

→ rebellion                 → diminish

        war                         光線暗下

b. Ulysses by Tennyson

Part of text:

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

c. plot (v.) (n.) (+ against) means a secret plan to do something bad, made by two or more people

d. distraught (adj.) extremely worried, upset, or confused

   negative

  

WEEK 10 西概筆記(Western Literature)

1. extension of quiz and orientation

a. Drama

Drama divides into two part : one is comedy, and another is tragedy.
Drama is the specific mode of narrative, typically fictional, represented in performance.

b. Confession

Confessions is the name of an autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books, by St. Augustine of Hippo, written in Latin between AD 397 and 400. Modern English translations of it are sometimes published under the title The Confessions of St. Augustine in order to distinguish the book from other books with similar titles. Its original title was Confessions in Thirteen Books, and it was composed to be read out loud with each book being a complete unit. It is generally considered one of Augustine's most important texts. 

c. Greek tragedy

Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century B.C.E, it flowered during the 5th century B.C.E (from the end of which it began to spread throughout the Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the Hellenistic period. No tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in the 5th century have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

d. Dionysus

Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, wine-making and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in Greek mythology. Alcohol, especially wine, played an important role in Greek culture with Dionysus being an important reason for this life style. He is a god of epiphany, "the god that comes", and his "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religion, and is included in some lists of the twelve Olympians. Dionysus was the last god to be accepted into Mt. Olympus. He was the youngest and the only one to have a mortal mother. His festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. Modern scholarship categorises him as a dying-and-rising god.

e. Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of music, truth and prophecy, healing, the sun and light, plague, poetry, knowledge, and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis.

2. Other stories

a. Dionysia

The Dionysia was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually consisted of two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which took place in different parts of the year. They were also an essential part of the Dionysian Mysteries. 

b. Detachment

Doublethink:
To deliberately believe in lies while knowing they are false. An example of this in your everyday life. I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable. our young men today, they are being told that women are whores, bitches. things to be screwed, beaten, shit on, ashamed. this is a marketing holocaust, 24 hours a day, for the rest of our lives. the power that be, a harder of work, dumbing us to death. so ,to defend ourselves, and fighting against the stimulating of this dumbs into our thought processes, we must learn to read, to stimulate our imagination, to cultivate, our own consciousness, our own belief systems. We all need these skills, to defend, to preserve our minds。



 



 

WEEK 09 字源筆記

Midterm exam

WEEK 09 西概筆記(Western Literature)

Midterm exam

WEEK 08 字源筆記

1. extension of quiz for Unit two

a. ostentation

Ostentation means a show of something such as money, power, or skill that is intended to impress people.

b. Chaos

Chaos means a situation in which everything is confused and in a mess

→ chaotic (adj.) means happening in a confused way and without any order or organization

 

2.  prefix, root and suffix

pathy : feeling                                eg. antipathy, apathy, empathy
antipathy (n.) means a strong feeling of not liking someone or something

 
apathy (n.) means a feeling of having no interest in or enthusiasm about anything, or of not being willing to make any effort to change things

cir : circle                                        eg. circumvent, circulation, 
circumvent (v.) to find a way of avoiding a rule or law that limits you, especially using a clever trick that does not break the law

circulation (n.) means the continuous movement of blood around your body 

 

WEEK 08 西概筆記(Western Literature)

1. extension of quiz and orientation

a. fair → beautiful
(1) Snow White

 

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? 

The mirror always replies: "My Queen, you are the fairest in the land."

(2) Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero is a novel by English author William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1847–48, satirising society in early 19th-century Britain. It follows the lives of two women, Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, amid their friends and family. The novel is now considered a classic, and has inspired several film adaptations.

b. Pygmalion

Pygmalion is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, he is most familiar from Ovid's narrative poem Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved(Galatea).

c. Dido

Dido was, according to ancient Greek and Roman sources, the founder and first queen of Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia). She is primarily known from the account given by the Roman poet Virgil in his epic, Aeneid. In some sources she is also known as Elissa .

......Dido was trapped by her words. But Dido preferred to stay faithful to her first husband and after creating a ceremonial funeral pyre and sacrificing many victims to his spirit in pretense that this was a final honoring of her first husband in preparation for marriage to Iarbas, Dido ascended the pyre, announced that she would go to her husband as they desired, and then slew herself with her sword. After this self-sacrifice Dido was deified and was worshipped as long as Carthage endured. In this account, the foundation of Carthage occurred 72 years before the foundation of Rome.

2. Other stories

a. Pygmalion effect 

For example, My Fair Lady, which is a 1964 American musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe eponymous stage musical based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original 1913 stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

Another example, Bicentennial Man, which is a 1999 American science fiction comedy-drama film. Based on the novel The Positronic Man, which is itself based on Asimov's original novella titled The Bicentennial Man, the plot explores issues of humanity, slavery, prejudice, maturity, intellectual freedom, conformity, sex, love, and mortality.

b. 富貴如浮雲 

Ecclesiastes 12:8-14  New King James Version

Part of the text :

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities,

 said the Preacher, 

vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

What profit has a man of all his labor which he takes under the sun?

One generation passes away,

 and another generation comes: 

but the earth stays for ever.

The sun also rises, 

and the sun goes down,

 and hastens to his place where he arose.

3.  prefix, root and suffix

-cide : kill                                      eg. homicide, pesticide, suicide

homicide (n.) the crime of killing someone

voc, vok : to call                            eg. invoke 

invoke (v.) to ask for help from someone who is stronger or more powerful, especially a god 

pro : in favor of                              eg. propaganda, protagonist 

propaganda (n.) information, especially false information, that a government or organization spreads in order to influence people’s opinions and beliefs 

protagonist  (n.) the main character in a play, film, book, or story