Week 15

Bible 

a collection of texts sacred in Judaism and Christianity. It is an example of a collection of scriptures written at different times by different authors in different locations. Jews and Christians consider the Bible to be a product of divine inspiration or an authoritative record of the relationship between God and humans.

There is no single canonical "Bible": many Bibles have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents. The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint; the Hebrew Bible is known in Judaism as the Tanakh. The New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, consisting of narratives, letters and apocalyptic writings. Among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily in the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect.

Old Testament 

the first section of the Christian Bible, based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, a collection of religious writings by ancient Israelites. It is the counterpart to the New Testament, the second portion of the Christian Bible. The Old Testament canon varies between Christian Churches.

The Old Testament consists of many distinct books written, compiled, and edited by various authors over a period of centuries. It is not entirely clear at what point the parameters of the Hebrew Bible, the basis for the Christian Old Testament, were fixed.

The books of the Old Testament can be broadly divided into several sections: 

1) the first five books or Pentateuch (Torah) 

2) the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon

3) the poetic and "Wisdom" books dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world

4) and the books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God.

Discussion

Original sin, also called ancestral sin, is the Christian doctrine of humanity's state of sin resulting from the fall of man, namely the sin of consuming from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, stemming from Adam's rebellion in Eden. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt.

the sin of Adam and Eve

The concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in his controversy with certain dualist Gnostics. Other church fathers such as Augustine also developed the doctrine, seeing it as based on the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle(Romans 5:12–21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22) and the Old Testament verse ofPsalm 51:5. Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adam's sin, transmitted by human generation. Augustine's formulation of original sin was popular among Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, who equated original sin with concupiscence, affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom. The Jansenist movement, which the Catholic Church declared to be heretical, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will.

The Story of Abraham and Sarah: 

Once there was a man named Abram.  

One day the Lord came to talk to Abram, and Abram asked, "Who will have all my things when I die".  God promised Abram and his wife Sarai that one day they would be parents, even though they were old and had no children. God wasn't sure that Abram understood.  So that night He took him outside, and said, "Do you see all the stars that are in the sky"?  When Abram looked up, the whole night sky was full of stars,  so many in fact that he would never be able to count them.  Then God said, "That is how many children you will have". 

Quite a few years later when Abram was ninety-nine years old. the Lord decided to change Abram's name to Abraham, which means "father of many"  He also changed Sarai's name to Sarah. God told them again that they would be parents and that they would have a boy. This time Abraham laughed so hard he fell on his face! It was hard to believe that he and Sarah would have a child in their old age.

One day three visitors came to Abraham's house. He hurried to meet them. "May I get you something to eat and drink?"  Abraham asked.  "Please come in and join us, and have a rest on the couch." The visitors agreed, so Abraham brought them some fresh bread, milk, and hamburgers. While the visitors were eating, they asked Abraham, "Where is your wife Sarah?"  Abraham thought this was a little  strange, but he replied, "She's in the other room". Then one of the men spoke and said, "I will come back to see you at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son." Now Sarah was listening behind the living room door.  She started to laugh, but covered her mouth and laughed to herself because she didn't want to be heard.  Then she said to herself, "How can I have a child, I'm almost one hundred years old?" Later when the visitors had left,  Abraham and Sarah realized that the man who had told them this was indeed God. 

A year later Sarah did have a son. She and Abraham named him Isaac, which means "he laughs." They were very excited, and remembered to thank God for Isaac.

Fresco 

a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word fresco is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting.

Christmas day sharing (story & song)

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas

First edition cover

commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall on 19 December 1843. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim. A Christmas Carol tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

The book was written at a time when the British were examining and exploring Christmas traditions from the past as well as new customs such as Christmas cards and Christmas trees. Carol singing took a new lease on life during this time. Dickens' sources for the tale appear to be many and varied, but are, principally, the humiliating experiences of his childhood, his sympathy for the poor, and various Christmas stories and fairy tales.

# A Christmas Carol remains popular—having never been out of print—and has been adapted many times to film, stage, opera, and other media.

movie version

David Copperfield, which full tittle is The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account) is the eighth novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published as a serial in 1849–50, and as a book in 1850. Many elements of the novel follow events in Dickens' own life, and it is probably the most autobiographical of his novels. In the preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens wrote, "like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."

Song: Have yourself a merry little Christmas (Sam Smith)

From: "Meet me in St.Louise" (movie)

 a 1944 musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which tells the story of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in 1904.

clink to the link

No Strings Attached

a 2011 American romantic comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Natalie Portmanand Ashton Kutcher. Written by Elizabeth Meriwether, the film is about two friends who decide to make a pact to have "no strings attached" casual sex without falling in love with each other. The film was released in the United States and Canada on January 21, 2011.

Week 14

Aristotle

a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece.

His writings cover many subjects -including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, linguistics, politics and government – and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy. Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip of Macedon, tutored Alexander the Great starting from 343 BC. He believed all peoples' concepts and all of their knowledge was ultimately based on perception. Aristotle's views on natural sciences represent the groundwork underlying many of his works. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.

In metaphysics, Aristotelianism profoundly influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophical and theological thought during the Middle Ages and continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as "The First Teacher" . His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues. It is thought that only around a third of his original output has survived.

Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory.

Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" . They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes:

1. Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody.
2. Difference of goodness in the characters.
3. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out.

In examining its "first principles", Aristotle finds two: 

1) imitation 

2) genres

His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. Although Aristotle's Poetics is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions".The work was lost to the Western world for a long time. It was available in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance only through a Latin translation of an Arabic version written by Averroes.

Platonic Academy

The Academy was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Athens. Aristotle studied there for twenty years 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. 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.

Socrates

 a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, though it is unclear the degree to which Socrates himself is "hidden behind his 'best disciple', Plato".

Plato's Socrates also made important and lasting contributions to the field of epistemology, and his ideologies and approach have proven a strong foundation for much Western philosophy that has followed.

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.

In ancient Greece, mimesis was an idea that governed the creation of works of art, in particular, with correspondence to the physical world understood as a model for beauty, truth, and the good. Plato contrasted mimesis, or imitation, with diegesis, or narrative. After Plato, the meaning of mimesis eventually shifted toward a specifically literary function in ancient Greek society, and its use has changed and been reinterpreted many times since then.

One of the modern studies of mimesis, understood as a form of realism in literature, is Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, which opens with a famous comparison between the way the world is represented in Homer's Odyssey and the way it appears in the Bible. From these two seminal Western texts, Auerbach builds the foundation for a unified theory of representation that spans the entire history of Western literature, including the Modernist novels being written at the time Auerbach began his study. In art history, "mimesis", "realism" and "naturalism" are used, often interchangeably, as terms for the accurate, even "illusionistic", representation of the visual appearance of things.

others:-

Steps to take notes:

1. Don't write facts, write conclusions. 

2. Use color! Make corrections.

3. Review

How to find Main Points:

First paragraph & last paragraph

First line & last line

Columns, Connections, Punctuation () [] "" <>

Bold, Italics, Underline

Week 13

Glossary

Hubris: 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 nounhubris 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.

Aristotle mentions hamartia in Poetics. He argues that is a powerful device to have a story begin with a rich and powerful hero, neither exceptionally virtuous nor villainous, who then falls into misfortune by a mistake or error (harmartia). Discussion among scholars centers mainly on the degree to which hamartia is defined as tragic flaw or tragic error.

Critical Argument for flaw

Poetic justice describes the obligation of the dramatic poet, along with philosophers and priests, to see that their work promotes moral behavior.18th century French dramatic style honored that obligation with the use of hamartia as a vice to be punished Phèdre, Racine's adaptation of Euripides' Hippolytus, is an example of French Neoclassical use of hamartia as a means of punishing vice. Jean Racine says in his Preface to Phèdre, as translated by R.C. Knight:

″The failings of love are treated as real failings. The passions are offered to view only to show all the ravage they create. And vice is everywhere painted in such hues, that its hideous face may be recognized and loathed.″ 

The play is a tragic story about a royal family. The main characters respective vices; rage, lust and envy lead them to their tragic downfall.

Dramatic irony:This type of irony is the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. 

According to Stanton, dramatic irony has three stages—installation, exploitation, and resolution (often also called preparation, suspension, and resolution) —producing dramatic conflict in what one character relies or appears to rely upon, the contrary of which is known by observers (especially the audience; sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true. In summary, it means that the reader/watcher/listener knows something that one or more of the characters in the piece is not aware of.

For example, In Oedipus the King, the audience knows that Oedipus himself is the murderer that he is seeking; Oedipus, Creon and Jocasta do not.

Discussion of Quiz & Book

essay:

1.Discuss the role of hubris, or pride, that comes before the death of Agamemnon.

An answer to this question should focus on the speeches of the Chorus when they discuss the dangers of being too successful in life: "the gods fail not to mark / those who have killed many . . . and the vaunt of high glory / is bitterness; for God's thunderbolts / crash on the towering mountains." The scene in which Clytemnestra induces her husband to trod on the purple robes strewn in his path--the principal symbolic act of hubris, an act that foreshadows his death—is also very important. In analyzing these sections of the text, a knowledge of the Greek religious imagination is necessary. The Greek gods were all-too-human in their jealousies, and rather than reward human greatness, they tended to see mortal achievement as a threat to their own power. Therefore, when any human rose too high (like Agamemnon in this play), he risked being singled out for divine chastisement.

Lysistrata

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. It was produced in the same year as the Thesmophoriazusae, another play with a focus on gender-based issues, just two years after Athens' catastrophic defeat in the Sicilian Expedition.

Week 12

Glossary

deus ex machina ("god from Machine") is 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. A frequently cited example is Euripides' Medea, in which the deus ex machina, a dragon-drawn chariot sent by the sun god, is used to convey his granddaughter Medea, who has just committed murder and infanticide, away from her husband Jason to the safety and civilization of Athens.

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.

the Golden Fleece (ram), 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.

Argonauts were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War, around 1300 BCE, accompanied Jason to Colchis (an important land in Greco-Roman mythology, most notably as the kingdom of Medea and the Golden fleece, destination of the Argonauts) 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". They were sometimes called Minyans, after a prehistoric tribe in the area.

Medea

An ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BCE. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a barbarian and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by killing Jason's new wife as well as her own children with him, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.

Considered shocking to his contemporaries, Medea and the suite of plays that it accompanied in the City Dionysia festival came last in the festival that year. Nonetheless the play remained part of the tragedic repertoire, and experienced renewed interest with the emergence of the feminist movement, because of its nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of Medea's struggle to take charge of her own life in a male-dominated world. The play has remained the most frequently performed Greek tragedy through the 20th century.

A picture of the ancient Greek theatre of Dionysus in Athens.