Western Literature Week Fourteen

How to Take Great notes

First: write down your conclusion [don’t write facts]

Second: use color pens

Third: review

How to find main points

First paragraph and last paragraph

First line and last line

Columns, Connections, Punctuation

Test Correction

Lysistrata: It is a story that woman went on sex strike to starve the men for stopping the Peloponnesian War.

masturbation kit: it is the self—stimulation of the genitals to achieve sexual arouse and pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm[sexual climax]. It is commonly done by touching, stroking, or massaging the penis or clitoris until an orgasm is achieved.         

Who is Lysistrata’s next-door neighbor? A. Klenoike

Poetics

Which of the following is the most important? Plot

Lysistrata

It is a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens, 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 expose 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.

Poetics

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

He 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.

First is Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody. Second is Difference of goddess in the characters. Third is Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story of acting it. In examining its first principles, he finds

two: imitation, genres. His analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion.  

Asclepius

He was a god of medicine in ancient Greek religion. The rob of Asclepius, a snake-entwined staff, remains a symbol of medicine today.

Aristotle

He was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in Macedonian city of Stagira, Chalkidice. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. Even after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western thinking. His name means the best purpose.

He was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals ad revered as The First Teacher.

Socrates

He is 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. He also made important and lasting contributions to the field of epistemology. 

Term explanation

Tragic Hero: A hero of a tragedy must evoke in the audience a sense of pity or fear. In other words, the focus of the tragic hero should not be in the loss of his prosperity.

Catharsis: It is the purification 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 Phonetics to describe the effects of tragedy on the spectator.

Hubris: It means extreme pride or self- confidence. It 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.

Mimesis: It was an idea that governed the creation of works of art, in particular, with correspondence to the physical world understood as a model or beauty, and the god. Both Plato and Aristotle saw in mimesis the representation of nature.

Chorus: it is a homogeneous, non-individualized 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.                 

Classical Unities

The classical unities, Aristotelian unities, or three unities are rules for drama derived a passage in Aristotle’s Poetics. In their neoclassicalform they are follows, they are as follows.

The unity of action: a play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few subplots.

The unity of place: a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.

The unity of time: the action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours.

Comedy vs. Farce

Comedy is a work of art which is amusing and intended to be humorous. Farce is a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable.

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 revived Academy was established as a center for Neoplatonism, persisting until 529AD when it was finally closed by Justinian I.  It has been cited by historians as the first higher learning institution in the Western World.          

Vocabulary

abs: prohibit

abstinence: the practice of not doing or having something that is wanted or enjoyable

omn: all

omniscient: it has complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding