2015.12.23 - Week 15

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) generate: to cause something to exist; birth, beginning
2) R.I.P. rest in peace
B. Song: Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Let your heart be light

From now on,

our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Make the Yule-tide gay,

From now on, 

our troubles will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days,

Happy golden days of yore.

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us once more.

Through the years 

We all will be together,

If the Fates allow

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.

And have yourself A merry little Christmas now. 

C. Movie: Mt. me in St. Louise

Meet Me in St. Louis is 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. The picture stars Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Tom Drake, Leon Ames, Marjorie Main, June Lockhart, and Joan Carroll.
The movie was adapted by Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe from a series of short stories by Sally Benson, originally published in The New Yorker magazine under the title "5135 Kensington", and later in novel form as Meet Me in St. Louis. The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli, who met Garland on the set and later married her. It was the second-highest grossing picture of the year, only behind Going My Way.
Garland debuted the standards "The Trolley Song", "The Boy Next Door", and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", all of which became hits after the film was released. Arthur Freed, the producer of the film, also wrote and performed one of the songs.


D. Jesus

Jesus , also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, is the central figure of Christianity, whom the teachings of most Christian denominations hold to be the Son of God. Christianity regards Jesus as the awaited Messiah (or Christ) of the Old Testament.
Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically, and historians consider the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) to be the best sources for investigating the historical Jesus.Most scholars agree that Jesus was a Galilean, Jewish rabbi who preached his message orally, was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. In the current mainstream view, Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher and the founder of a renewal movement within Judaism, although some prominent scholars argue that he was not apocalyptic. After Jesus' death, his followers believed he was resurrected, and the community they formed eventually became the Christian church. The widely used calendar era, abbreviated as "AD" or sometimes as "CE", is based on the birth of Jesus.
Christians believe that Jesus has a "unique significance" in the world. Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary, performed miracles, founded the Church, died by crucifixion as a sacrifice to achieve atonement, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven, whence he will return. Most Christians believe Jesus enables humans to be reconciled to God, and will judge the dead either before or after their bodily resurrection, an event tied to the Second Coming of Jesus in Christian eschatology; though some believe Jesus's role as savior has more existential or societal concerns than the afterlife, and a few notable theologians have suggested that Jesus will bring about a universal reconciliation. The great majority of Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, the second of three persons of a Divine Trinity. A few Christian groups reject Trinitarianism, wholly or partly, as non-scriptural.
In Islam, Jesus (commonly transliterated as Isa) is considered one of God's important prophets and the Messiah, second in importance only to Muhammad To Muslims, Jesus was a bringer of scripture and was born of a virgin, but was not the Son of God. According to the Quran, Jesus was not crucified but was physically raised into Heaven by God. Judaism rejects the Christian and Islamic[citation needed] belief that Jesus was the awaited Messiah, arguing that he did not fulfill the Messianic prophecies in the Tanakh.
E. Bible

The Bible is 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.
Attitudes towards the Bible also vary amongst Christian groups. Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians stress the harmony and importance of the Bible and sacred tradition, while Protestant churches focus on the idea of sola scriptura, or scripture alone. This concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today continue to support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching.
With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the best selling book of all time, has estimated annual sales of 100 million copies, and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West where the Gutenberg Bible was the first mass-printed book. It was the first book ever printed using movable type.

2015.12.16 - Week 14

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) on strike: to refuse to continue working because of an argument with an employer about working conditions, pay levels or job losses
2) abuse (verbal, physical): to use or treat someone or something wrongly or badly, especially in a way that is to your own advantage
3) abstinence: not doing something, such as drinking alcohol or having sex
4) evolution: the way in which living things change and develop over millions of years
5) POV: point of view
6) omniscient: having or seeming to have unlimited knowledge; knowing
B. Poetics (Aristotle)
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory.
In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama—comedy, tragedy, and the satyr play—as well as lyric poetry and epic poetry). They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes:
Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody.
Difference of goodness in the characters.
Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out.
In examining its "first principles", Aristotle finds two:
1) imitation and 2) genres and other concepts by which that of truth is applied/revealed in the poesis. 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.
C. Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek (Athenian) 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".
Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions is asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. 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.
D. Catharsis

Catharsis 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.













E. Mimesis
Mimesis , from μιμεῖσθαι (mīmeisthai), "to imitate," from μῖμος (mimos), "imitator, actor") 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 best-known 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.
The Frankfurt school critical theorist T. W. Adorno made use of mimesis as a central philosophical term, interpreting it as a way in which works of art embodied a form of reason that was non-repressive and non-violent.
Mimesis has been theorised by thinkers as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Philip Sidney, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Paul Ross, Theodor Adorno, Erich Auerbach, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, René Girard, Nikolas Kompridis, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Michael Taussig, Merlin Donald, and Homi Bhabha.
F. Hamartia in Aristotle's poetics

The term hamartia derives from the Greek ἁμαρτία, from ἁμαρτάνειν hamartánein, which 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

2015.12.9 - Week13

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) crimson: having a dark deep red color
2) Illium: is another name of Troy
3) promiscuous: (of a person) having a lot of different sexual partners or sexual relationships, or (of sexual habits) involving a lot of different partners
4) applaud: to show enjoyment or approval of something such as a performance or speech by clapping the hands repeatedly to make a noise
5) condemn: to criticize something or someone strongly, usually for moral reasons
6) pride: a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction that you get because you or people connected with you have done or got something good
7) applicant: a person who formally requests something, especially a job, or a place at college or university
8) blacken: to become black or to make something become black
9) sicken: to become ill
10) banish: to send someone away, especially from their country, and forbid (= refuse to allow) them to come back
10-1) exile: the condition of someone being sent or kept away from their own country, village, etc., especially for political reasons
B. Explanation
a) 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.
b) Irony
Irony (from Ancient Greek) meaning "dissimulation, feigned ignorance"), in its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears, on the surface, to be the case, differs radically from what is actually the case. Irony may be divided into categories such as verbal, dramatic, and situational.
Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes can emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth, denies the contrary of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection.
Other forms, as identified by historian Connop Thirlwall, include dialectic and practical irony
c) tragedy
Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.

2015.12.2 - Week 12

A.Vocabularies to  Know
1) assembly: a group of people, especially one that meets regularly for a particular purpose, such as government, or more generally, the process of coming together, or the state of being together
1-1) meeting: an occasion when people come together intentionally or not intentionally
2) turmoil: a state of confusion, uncertainty or disorder
3) robe:  a long, loose piece of clothing worn especially on very formal occasions
4) enchant: to attract or please someone very much
5) trust: to have belief or confidence in the honesty, goodness, skill or safety of a person, organization or thing
6) confidential: secret, often in a formal, business, or military situation
7) fidelity: honest or lasting support, or loyalty, especially to a sexual partner
B. Main characters of Medea
a) Medea

In Greek mythology, Medea is a sorceress who was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of Corinth, offers him his daughter, Glauce. The play tells of Medea avenging her husband's betrayal by killing their children.
The myths involving Jason have been interpreted as part of a class of myths that tell how the Hellenes of the distant heroic age, before the Trojan War, faced the challenges of the pre-Greek "Pelasgian" cultures of mainland Greece, the Aegean and Anatolia. Jason, Perseus, Theseus, and above all Heracles, are all "liminal" figures, poised on the threshold between the old world of shamans, chthonic earth deities, and the new Bronze Age Greek ways.
Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, a myth known best from a late literary version worked up by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BC and called the Argonautica. However, for all its self-consciousness and researched archaic vocabulary, the late epic was based on very old, scattered materials. Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and is often depicted as being a priestess of the goddess Hecate or a witch. The myth of Jason and Medea is very old, originally written around the time Hesiod wrote the Theogony. It was known to the composer of the Little Iliad, part of the Epic Cycle.
c) 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. Because he belongs to mythology, he may have existed before the Greek Dark Ages (1100–800 BC.) The people who wrote about Jason lived around 300 BC.
Jason appeared in various literary works in the classical world of Greece and Rome, including the epic poem Argonautica and the tragedy Medea. In the modern world, Jason has emerged as a character in various adaptations of his myths, such as the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts and the 2000 TV miniseries of the same name. Jason is also the main character in the British TV series Atlantis.
Jason has connections outside the classical world, being the mythical founder of the city of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
d) Aeson

In Greek mythology, Aeson was the son of Cretheus and Tyro. He had two other brothers Pheres and Amythaon. Aeson was the father of Jason and Promachus with Polymele, the daughter of Autolycus. Other sources say the mother of his children was Alcimede or Amphinome. Aeson's mother Tyro had two other sons, Neleus and Pelias, with the sea god Poseidon.

Pelias was power-hungry and he wished to gain dominion over all of Thessaly. To this end, he banished Neleus and Pheres and locked Aeson in the dungeons in Iolcus. Aeson sent Jason to Chiron to be educated while Pelias, afraid that he would be overthrown, was warned by an oracle to beware of a man wearing one sandal.
Many years later, Pelias was holding the Olympics in honor of Poseidon when Jason, rushing to Iolcus, lost one of his sandals in a river while helping Hera (Juno), in the form of an old woman, cross. When Jason entered Iolcus, he was announced as a man wearing one sandal. Suspicious, Pelias asked him what he (Jason) would do if confronted with the man who would be his downfall. Jason responded that he would send that man after the Golden Fleece. Pelias took that advice and sent Jason to retrieve the Golden Fleece.
During Jason's absence, Pelias intended to kill Aeson. However, Aeson committed suicide by drinking bull's blood. His wife killed herself as well, and Pelias murdered their infant son Promachus.
Alternatively, he survived until Jason and his new wife, Medea, came back to Iolcus. She slit Aeson's throat, then put his corpse in a pot and Aeson came to life as a young man. She then told Pelias' daughters she would do the same for their father. They slit his throat and Medea refused to raise him, so Pelias stayed dead.
* Golden Fleeze

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.

C. 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.

2015.11.25 - Week 11

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) dithyramb: A frenzied, impassioned choric hymn and dance of ancient Greece in honor of Dionysus. An irregular poetic expression suggestive of the ancient Greek dithyramb. A wildly enthusiastic speech or piece of writing.
2) inauguration: to put someone into an official position with a ceremony; to put something into use or action officially; to mark the beginning of a new period, style or activity
3) dramatist: a person who writes plays
4) snobbishly: like a snob
B. Tragedy 
Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.
From its origins in the theatre of ancient Greece 2500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Jean Racine, and Friedrich Schiller to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of August Strindberg; Samuel Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering; Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon; and Joshua Oppenheimer's incorporation of tragic pathos in his nonfiction film, The Act of Killing (2012), tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change.  A long line of philosophers—which includes Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin,[8] Camus, Lacan, and Deleuze—have analysed, speculated upon, and criticized the genre.
In the wake of Aristotle's Poetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general (where the tragic divides against epic and lyric) or at the scale of the drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy). In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre. Drama, in the narrow sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialization from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects (non-Aristotelian drama and Theatre of the Oppressed, respectively) against models of tragedy. Taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation.

C. Athena's birth

Although Athena appears before Zeus at Knossos — in Linear B, as “Mistress Athena” — in the Classical Olympian pantheon, Athena was remade as the favorite daughter of Zeus, born fully armed from his forehead. The story of her birth comes in several versions. In the one most commonly cited, Zeus lay with Metis, the goddess of crafty thought and wisdom, but he immediately feared the consequences. It had been prophesied that Metis would bear children more powerful than the sire, even Zeus himself. In order to prevent this, Zeus swallowed Metis. He was too late: Metis had already conceived.

Eventually Zeus experienced an enormous headache; Prometheus, Hephaestus, Hermes, Ares, or Palaemon cleaved Zeus’ head with the double-headed Minoan axe, the labrys. Athena leaped from Zeus’ head, fully grown and armed, with a shout — “and pealed to the broad sky her clarion cry of war. And Ouranos trembled to hear, and Mother Gaia…”. Plato, in the Laws, attributes the cult of Athena to the culture of Crete, introduced, he thought, from Libya during the dawn of Greek culture. Classical myths thereafter note that Hera was so annoyed at Zeus for having produced a child that she conceived and bore Hephaestus by herself, but in Philostratus the Elder, Imagines 2. 27 Hera "rejoices" at Athena's birth "as though Athena were her daughter also." In accordance with this mythological tradition, Plato, in Cratylus gave the etymology of her name as signifying “the mind of god”, theou noesis. The Christian apologist of the 2nd century Justin Martyr takes issue with those pagans who erect at springs images of Kore, whom he interprets as Athena:

“They said that Athena was the daughter of Zeus not from intercourse, but when the god had in mind the making of a world through a word= his first thought was Athena.”

C. Movie - The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.
D. Dionysus's story

Dionysus was the god of fertility and wine, later considered a patron of the arts. He created wine and spread the art of viticulture. He had a dual nature; on one hand, he brought joy and divine ecstasy; or he would bring brutal and blinding rage, thus reflecting the dual nature of wine. Dionysus and his followers could not be bound by fetters.
Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, and he was the only god with a mortal parent. Zeus went to Semele in the night, unseen by human eyes, but could be felt as a divine presence. Semele was pleased to be the lover of a god, even though she did not know which one. Word soon got around and Hera quickly assumed who was responsible. She went to Semele in disguise and convinced her she should see her lover as he really was. When Zeus visited her again, she made him promise to grant her one wish. She went so far as to make him swear on the River Styx that he would grant her request. Zeus was madly in love and agreed. She then asked him to show her his true form. Zeus was unhappy knowing what was about to happen, but bound by his oath, he had no choice. He appeared in his true form and Semele was instantly burnt to a crisp by the sight of his glory. Zeus managed to rescue the fetal Dionysus and stitched him into his thigh until he would be ready to be born. His birth from Zeus conferred immortality upon him.
Hera, still jealous of Zeus' infidelity and the fact that Dionysus was alive, arranged for the Titans to kill him. The Titans ripped him to pieces; however, Rhea brought him back to life. After this, Zeus arranged for his protection and gave him to the mountain nymphs to be raised.
Dionysus wandered the world actively spreading his cult. He was accompanied by the Maenads, wild women, flush with wine, shoulders draped with a fawn skin, carrying rods tipped with pine cones. While other gods had temples to be worshipped at, the followers of Dionysus worshipped him in the woods. There, they might go into a state of ecstasy and madness, ripping apart and eating raw any animal they might come upon.
Dionysus was also one of the very few characters able to bring a dead person back from the underworld. Even though he had never seen Semele, he was concerned for her. Eventually, he journeyed into the underworld to find her. He faced down Thanatos and brought her back to Mount Olympus.
Dionysus became one of the most important gods in everyday life and was associated with several key concepts. One was rebirth after death; his dismemberment by the Titans and his return to life was symbolically echoed in viticulture, where the vines must be pruned back sharply, and then become dormant in winter for them to bear fruit. Another concept was that under the influence of wine, one could feel possessed by a greater power. Unlike other gods, Dionysus was not merely a god to be worshipped, but he was also present within his followers; at those times, a man would possess supernatural powers and was able for things he would not be able to do otherwise.
The festival for Dionysus was held in the spring when vines would start bearing leaves. It became one of the most important events of the year and its primary focal point was the theater. Most of the great Greek plays were initially written to be performed at the feast of Dionysus. All participants, writers, actors, spectators, were regarded as sacred servants of Dionysus during the festival.
More: The Wanderings of Dionysus, Semele, Theogony, Zeus
Dionysus Is also called Bacchus, Dionysos.

2015.11.18 - Week 10

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) It's Greek to me = it's difficult to me
2) Three tragedy poetry: Sophocles. Euripides. Aeschylus
3) confession: when you admit that you have done something wrong or illegal;  when a Christian tells God or, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, tells a priest formally and privately, what they have done wrong so that they can be forgiven
3-1) conversion: when someone or something is converted from one thing to another; a place for living in that has been changed from its previous use
B. Apollo and Daphne

Apollo, one of the most powerful gods and a great warrior, mocked the god of love Eros for his use of bow and arrow, saying, "What have you to do with warlike weapons? Leave them for hands worthy of them. Behold the conquest I have won by means of them over the vast serpent that stretched his poisonous body over acres of the plain! Be content with your light, child, and kindle up your flames, as you call them, where you will, but presume not to meddle with my weapons."

The insulted Eros then prepared two arrows, one of gold and one of lead. With the leaden shaft, to incite hatred, he shot the nymph Daphne and with the golden one, to incite love, he shot Apollo; both of them through the heart. Apollo was seized with love for the maiden Daphne and she, in turn, abhorred him. In fact, she spurned her many potential lovers, preferring instead woodland sports and exploring the forest. Her father, the river god Peneus, demanded that she get married and give him grandchildren. She, however, begged her father to let her remain unmarried.

Apollo continually followed her, begging her to stay, but the nymph continued her flight. They were evenly matched in the race until Eros intervened, helping Apollo gain upon Daphne. Seeing that Apollo was bound to catch her, she called upon her father, "Help me, Peneus! Open the earth to enclose me, or change my form, which has brought me into this danger! Let me be free of this man from this moment forward!"

Peneus frightfully answered her plea, casting upon her an enchantment of great power. Daphne's arms transformed into branches as her hair became leaves; her skin then turning to bark. She stopped running as her feet became rooted to the ground and Apollo overcame her, embracing her branches. Yet, even the branches shrank away from him. Since Apollo could no longer take her as his wife, he vowed to tend her as his tree; to raid away all tempted beasts and creatures of the earth that intended to do her harm. He promised that her leaves would crown the heads of leaders and champions, decorate the weaponry of warriors, and never be claimed as another's for as long as her branches flourished. Apollo also used his powers of eternal youth and immortality to render her ever green. For this reason, the leaves of the Bay laurel tree have never known decay.
C. Youth is a state of mind not a time of life

Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind.

It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees.
It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions;
it is a freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity,
of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease.
This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty.
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years;
people grow old by deserting their ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—
these are the long, long years that bow the head
and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart a love of wonder;
the sweet amazement at the stars and starlike things and thoughts;
the undaunted challenge of events,
the unfailing childlike appetite for what comes next,
and the joy in the game of life.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt;
as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear,
as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

In the central place of your heart there is a wireless station.
So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage,
and power from the earth, from men and from the Infinite—so long are you young.
When the wires are all down and the central places of your heart are covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism,
then are you grown old, indeed!
D. Movie - Lost Civilization (1995)

 The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization is a book first published in 1995 by Graham Hancock, in which he echoes 19th century writer Ignatius Donnelly, author of Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), in contending that some previously enigmatic ancient but highly advanced civilization had existed in prehistory, one which served as the common progenitor civilization to all subsequent known ancient historical ones. The author proposes that sometime around the end of the last Ice Age this civilization ended in cataclysm, but passed on to its inheritors profound knowledge of such things as astronomy, architecture, and mathematics. His theory is based on the idea that mainstream interpretations of archaeological evidence are flawed or incomplete.

2015.11.4 - Week 8

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) vanity: when you are too interested in your appearance or achievements
2) invoke: to request or use a power outside yourself, especially a law or a god, to help you when you want to improve a situation
3) egos: your idea or opinion of yourself, or a great feeling of your own importance and ability
4) dictation: when someone dictates something for someone else to write down
5) troop: soldiers on duty in a large group
6) cunning: describes people who are clever at planning something so that they get what they want, especially by tricking other people, or things that are cleverly made for a particular purpose
7) duty: something that you have to do because it is part of your job, or something that you feel is the right thing to do
7-1) responsible: to have control and authority over something or someone and the duty of taking care of it or them
7-2) obligation: when you are obliged to do something
8) patron: a person or group that supports an activity or organization, especially by giving money
B. Pygmalion
a.  Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved

In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. According to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides he was "not interested in women",but his statue was so fair and realistic that he fell in love with it.
In time, Aphrodite's festival day came, and Pygmalion made offerings at the altar of Aphrodite. There—too scared to admit his desire—he quietly wished for a bride who would be "the living likeness of my ivory girl". When he returned home, he kissed his ivory statue, and found that its lips felt warm. He kissed it again, and found that the ivory had lost its hardness. Aphrodite had granted Pygmalion's wish.
Pygmalion married the ivory sculpture changed to a woman under Aphrodite's blessing. In Ovid's narrative, they had a son, Paphos, from whom the city's name is derived.
In some versions, they also had a daughter, Metharme
b. Pygmalion effect

The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon whereby higher expectations lead to an increase in performance. The effect is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.

A corollary of the Pygmalion effect is the golem effect, in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance;both effects are forms of self-fulfilling prophecy. By the Pygmalion effect, people internalize their positive labels, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly. The idea behind the Pygmalion effect is that increasing the leader's expectation of the follower's performance will result in better follower performance. Within sociology, the effect is often cited with regard to education and social class.

Studies of the Pygmalion effect have been difficult to conduct. Results show a positive correlation between leader expectation and follower performance, but it is argued that the studies are done in an unnatural, manipulated setting. Scientists argue that the perceptions a leader has of a follower cause the Pygmalion effect. The leader's expectations are influenced by their perception of the situation or the followers themselves. Perception and expectation may possibly be found in a similar part in the brain.

2015.10.28 - Week7

A. Vocabularies to Know

Xerox copy

1) Xerox copy:  a copy made by a xerographic printer
1-1) carbon copy: the under-copy of a document created when carbon paper is placed between the original and the under-copy during the production of a document (c.c. 通常是上對下)
( Q-lip和Xerox Copy都是用做得最好的廠商命名)
2) ally: a country that has agreed officially to give help and support to another one, especially during a war
3) silver-footed: like mercury, the metal, also called "quicksilver", silver -footed means fast. So the god mercury is a fast moving god. Someone who is silver footed can run very fast.
4) rage: (a period of) extreme or violent anger
4-1) fury: extreme anger
4-2) angry: having a strong feeling against someone who has behaved badly, making you want to shout at them or hurt them
5) mourn: to feel or express great sadness, especially because of someone's death
5-1) lament:  to express sadness and feeling sorry about something
6) attendant: someone whose job is to be in a place and help visitors or customers
6-1) flight attendant: someone who serves passengers on an aircraft
7) elegy: a sad poem or song, especially remembering someone who has died or something in the past
8) Eugenics: the study of methods of improving humans by allowing only carefully chosen people to reproduce
9) foreshadowing: to act as a warning or sign of a future event
10) swine: a person who you consider to be extremely unpleasant and unkind
11) nemesis: someone's nemesis is a person or thing that is very difficult for them to defeat.
12) omen: something that is considered to be a sign of how a future event will take place
13) chron- time
14) treaty: a written agreement between two or more countries formally approved and signed by their leaders
15) entreaty: an attempt to persuade someone to do something
B. Movie - In her shoes

In Her Shoes is a 2005 American comedy-drama film based on the novel of the same name by Jennifer Weiner. It is directed by Curtis Hanson with an adapted screenplay by Susannah Grant and stars Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, and Shirley MacLaine. The film focuses on the relationship between two sisters and their grandmother.
C. Movie - Four wedding and funeral

Four Weddings and a Funeral is a 1994 British romantic comedy film directed by Mike Newell. It was the first of several films by screenwriter Richard Curtis to feature Hugh Grant. It was made in six weeks and cost under £3 million, becoming an unexpected success and the highest-grossing British film in cinema history at the time, with worldwide box office in excess of $245.7 million, and receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.

2015.10.21 - Week 6

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) suitor:  a man who wants to marry a particular woman
2) Archery contest: 射箭比賽
3) -naut: 人
3-1) Astronaut: a person who has been trained for travelling in spacecraft
4) siren: a device for making a loud warning noise (原: 海神女妖的歌聲)
5) innovation: (the use of) a new idea or method
6) cunning: describes people who are clever at planning something so that they get what they want, especially by tricking other people, or things that are cleverly made for a particular purpose
7) Menelous: 斯巴達國王(老婆被搶走的)
8) Ithaca: Odyssey的國度
8-1) Ithaca, New York: Cornell大學的所在地
B. Penelope's weaving

Penelope is in a very dangerous situation when the suitors begin invading her house and asking — and then demanding — her hand in marriage. Although the suitors abuse an important social tradition of hospitality, Penelope lacks the natural, social, and familial protections that would enable her to remove them from her house. Her son, Telemachus, has neither the maturity nor the strength to expel the invaders. Although unassuming, Penelope has a cunning that indicates she is a good mate for her wily husband. He claims — rightly, by the way — that she has misguided the suitors for nearly four years, leading on each man with hints and promises but choosing no one.
The story of the loom symbolizes the queen's clever tactics. For three years, Penelope worked at weaving a shroud for the eventual funeral of her father-in-law, Laertes. She claimed that she would choose a husband as soon as the shroud was completed. By day, the queen, a renowned weaver, worked on a great loom in the royal halls. At night, she secretly unraveled what she had done, amazingly deceiving the young suitors. Her ploy failed only when one of her servants eventually betrayed her and told the suitors what was happening.
C. Search" Electra" on Wiki Pedia

In Greek mythology, Electra was the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus princess of Argos. She and her brother Orestes plotted revenge against their mother Clytemnestra and stepfather Aegisthus for the murder of their father, Agamemnon.Electra is one of the most popular mythological characters in tragedies. She is the main character in two Greek tragedies, Electra by Sophocles and Electra by Euripides. She is also the central figure in plays by Aeschylus, Alfieri, Voltaire, Hofmannsthal, and Eugene O'Neill.In psychology, the Electra complex is named after her.

2015.10.14 - Week 5

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) nature: all the animals, plants, rocks, etc. in the world and all the features, forces and processes that happen or exist independently of people, such as the weather, the sea, mountains, reproduction and growth
1-1) nurture: to take care of, feed and protect someone or something, especially young children or plants, and help them to develop; to help a plan or a person to develop and be successful
2) messenger:  someone who takes a message or documents from one person to another
2-1) passenger: a person who is travelling in a vehicle but is not driving it, flying it or working on it; a train carrying people rather than goods
3) fate: what happens to a particular person or thing, especially something final or negative, such as death or defeat; a power that some people believe causes and controls all events, so that you cannot change or control the way things will happen
3-1) fatal: A fatal illness or accident, etc. causes death
4) fate: what happens to a particular person or thing, especially something final or negative, such as death or defeat
4-1) destiny: the things that will happen in the future
5) hubris: being very proud and believing in your own importance
6) para- 平行並立
6-1) paragraph: a short part of a text, consisting of at least one sentence and beginning on a new line. It usually deals with a single event, description, idea, etc.
6-2) parallel: If two or more lines, streets, etc. are parallel, the distance between them is the same all along their length
6-3) parasol: a type of sunshade (= round frame covered in cloth on a stick) carried especially by women in the past, to give protection from the sun
6-4) paradox: a situation or statement which seems impossible or is difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics
7) dic- to say, to tell, word
7-1) dictionary:  a book that contains a list of words in alphabetical order with their meanings explained or written in another language, or a similar product for use on a computer
7-2) dictator: a leader who has complete power in a country and has not been elected by the people
7-3) predict: to say that an event or action will happen in the future, especially as a result of knowledge or experience
8) vir& ver在拉丁文中是一樣的
virtual: almost a particular thing or quality

B. Greeks call themselves Helens

* 舊約聖經是希伯來文 新約聖經是希臘文

新約聖經

舊約聖經

2015.10.7 - Week 4

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) provoke: to cause a reaction, especially a negative one
1-1) evoke: to make someone remember something or feel an emotion
2) anxious: worried and nervous
2-1) anxiety: an uncomfortable feeling of nervousness or worry about something that is happening or might happen in the future
3) initial:  of or at the beginning
3-1) initiate: to cause something to begin
4) rage: (a period of) extreme or violent anger
4-1) outrageous: shocking and morally unacceptable; describes something or someone that is shocking because they are unusual or strange
5) vulnerable: able to be easily physically, emotionally, or mentally hurt, influenced or attacked
6) snobbish: like a snob
B. Introduction of Hephaestus

Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. Hephaestus' Roman equivalent is Vulcan. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was the son of Zeus and Hera, the king and queen of the gods. In another version, he was Hera's parthenogenous child, rejected by his mother because of his deformity and thrown out of heaven and down to earth

As a smithing god, Hephaestus made all the weapons of the gods in Olympus. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, and was worshipped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly Athens. The cult of Hephaestus was based in Lemnos. Hephaestus' symbols are a smith's hammer, anvil, and a pair of tongs.

C. Search " Epic poetry"

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Milman Parry and Albert Lord have argued that the Homeric epics, the earliest works of Western literature, were fundamentally an oral poetic form. These works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature. Nearly all Western epic self-consciously presents itself as a continuation of the tradition begun by these poems. Classical epic employs dactylic hexameter and recounts a journey, either physical (as typified by Odysseus in the Odyssey) or mental (as typified by Achilles in the Iliad) or both. Epics also tend to highlight cultural norms and to define or call into question cultural values, particularly as they pertain to heroism.

Another type of epic poetry is epyllion , which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means "little epic", came into use in the nineteenth century. It refers primarily to the erudite, shorter hexameter poems of the Hellenistic period and the similar works composed at Rome from the age of the neoterics; to a lesser degree, the term includes some poems of the English Renaissance, particularly those influenced by Ovid. The most famous example of classical epyllion is perhaps Catullus 64.

Some of the most famous examples of epic poetry include the ancient Indian Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Ancient Greek Iliad and the Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the Portuguese Lusiads.

2015.9.30 - Week 3

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) Heifer: a ​young ​cow, ​especially one that has not ​yet given ​birth to a ​calf
    Bull:  a male cow, or the male of particular animals such as the elephant or the whale
    Cub: a young lion, bear, wolf, etc.
2) nymph: (in ancient Greek and Roman traditional stories) a goddess or spirit in the form of a young woman, living in a tree, river, mountain, etc.
B. The Story about Achilles

Achilles’ most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan hero Hector outside the gates of Troy. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the Iliad, other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, who shot him in the heel with an arrow. Later legends state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel. Because of his death from a small wound in the heel, the term Achilles' heel has come to mean a person's point of weakness.

C. The Judgement of Paris

All of the gods were invited to Peleus and Thetis' wedding and brought many gifts, except Eris (the goddess of discord), who was stopped at the door by Hermes, on Zeus' order. Insulted, she threw from the door a gift of her own: a golden apple on which was inscribed the word Kallistēi ("To the fairest"). The apple was claimed by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They quarreled bitterly over it, and none of the other gods would venture an opinion favoring one, for fear of earning the enmity of the other two. Eventually, Zeus ordered Hermes to lead the three goddesses to Paris, a prince of Troy, who, unaware of his ancestry, was being raised as a shepherd in Mount Ida, because of a prophecy that he would be the downfall of Troy. After bathing in the spring of Ida, the goddesses appeared to him naked, either for the sake of winning or at Paris' request. Paris was unable to decide between them, so the goddesses resorted to bribes. Athena offered Paris wisdom, skill in battle, and the abilities of the greatest warriors; Hera offered him political power and control of all of Asia; and Aphrodite offered him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite, and, after several adventures, returned to Troy, where he was recognized by his royal family.

* Peleus and Thetis are Achilles' parents

D. Zeus and Europa in Greek Mythology

The legend of Europa and Zeus begins when the ruler of the Olympian gods glimpses the young woman one day. At first sight of Europa, Zeus is instantly overcome by her beauty and grace. Not being one to ignore his desires, the god immediately comes up with a plan - he assumes the form of a glorious white bull and swims to the shore on which Europa and her female companions are playing . The bull is so sleek and handsome, not to mention gentle, that the maidens all take turns stroking and petting the pretty creature.

In time, Europa feels comfortable enough with the bull to climb upon his back for a little ride. However, as soon as she is safely seated, the bull moves toward the sea, carrying the object of his affection with him. They together cross the water. Their strange but compelling journey leads them eventually to the island of Crete.

Upon arriving in Crete, Zeus finally casts off his disguise and reveals his divine identity to Europa. The mortal woman then becomes yet another of the god’s lovers. Ultimately, Europa gives birth to a trio of sons - Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon.

* It was said that Zeus so loved Europa that he gave her three priceless presents. The first was Talos, a magical man made of bronze, who served as a guard on Crete. The second was Laelaps, a dog that excelled at the hunt. And the third and final gift was a javelin that always hit its target. In addition, as a last poetic touch, it is worth mentioning that the bull that “stars” in this story was transformed into the constellation Taurus.

E. The Story of Ceres and Procepina

 Pluto fell in love with Proserpine, and carried her off to the Underworld. Ceres searched everywhere, but couldn't find her. Eventually Ceres refused to let the plants grow any more, and everyone begun to die of hunger. So Pluto admitted he had Proserpine, but said she could only go back home if she had eaten none of the food of the Dead. Proserpine had eaten almost nothing, as she was so sad at being kept underground, but she had eaten six seeds from a pomergranate. This means that she could go home, but had to return to her husband for six months every year. When this happens, Ceres stops everything growing, and winter comes

2015.9.23 - Week 2

A. Vocabularies to Know
1) dia-
    diaspora the spreading of people from one original country to other countries
    diameter (the length of) a straight line that reaches from one point on the edge of a round shape or object, through its centre, to a point on the opposite edge
    dialect  a form of a language that people speak in a particular part of a country, containing some different words and grammar, etc.
    diagnosis a judgment about what a particular illness or problem is, made after examining it
    dialogue (a) conversation which is written for a book, play or film
2) eliminate
    to remove or take away; to defeat someone so that they cannot continue in a competition
3) evacuate
    to move people from a dangerous place to somewhere safe
4) de- down, away from
    deported to force someone to leave a country, especially someone who has no legal right to be there or who has broken the law
    departure when a person or vehicle, etc. leaves somewhere; when someone leaves a job
    decline   to gradually become less, worse, or lower
    depreciate to (cause something to) lose value, especially over time
5) poly- many, lots of
    monopoly (an organization or group which has) complete control of something, especially an area of business, so that others have no share
    polygamy the fact or custom of being married to more than one person at the same time
*   monotheistic the belief that there is only one god
     polytheistic    belief in many different gods 
6) amoral without moral principles
    abnormal different from what is usual or average, especially in a way that is bad
    aboriginal describes a person or living thing that has existed in a country or continent since the earliest time known to people
7) perspective a particular way of considering something
    inspect to look at something or someone carefully in order to discover information, especially about their quality or condition; to officially visit a place or a group of people in order to check that everything is correct and legal
8) spectator V.S. audience
    spectator: to look
    audience: to listen
9) lyre - lyrics

C. 辨別阿波羅與雅典娜

雅典娜 : 肩上有貓頭鷹

阿波羅 : 拿著七弦琴

2015.9.16 - Week 1

Textbook of this course

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A. Three important questions we should put in our mind :


a) What is that?

b) What is that for?

c) What should we care?

B. Vocabularies to know

a) pre- 

    predict  to say that an event or action will happen in the future, especially as a result of knowledge or experience

    prefix  a letter or group of letters added to the beginning of a word to make a new word

    - before

b) ori-

    original existing since the beginning, or being the earliest form of something

    orientation  the particular preferences, tendencies, beliefs or opinions that a person has

    originate to start something or cause it to happen; to come from a particular place, time, situation,

    - from the beginning

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Homework : Watch the movie - Helen of Troy