Western Literature Week 2

ÀCourse Objectives

Students would be able to know how to read, understand, and appreciate the great books as well as the major literary genres of western civilization in the context of their political, social, and intellectual background.

öIntroduction & syllabus

An Introduction to Western Literature

      The importance of this book lies in the allusion of biblical, classical and literature, which helps us gain more insights into western literature.

     rrepeatable " important , main idea

Genre: is any category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones is discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.

Bard: In medieval Gaelic and British culture, a bard was a professional story teller, verse-maker and music composer, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or noble), to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.

Originally a specific, lower class of poet, contrasting with the higher rank known as fili in Ireland and Highland Scotland, with the decline of living bardic tradition in the modern period the term "bard" acquired generic meanings of an author or minstrel, especially a famous one.

Lyre:

The lyre is a string instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later periods. The lyre is similar in appearance to a small harp but with distinct differences. The word comes via Latin from the Greek the earliest reference to the word is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script. The lyres of Ur, excavated in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), date to 2500 BCE.

 The earliest picture of a lyre with seven strings appears in the famous sarcophagus of Hagia Triada (a Minoan settlement in Crete). The sarcophagus was used during the Mycenaean occupation of Crete (1400 BCE). The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing.

Epic poetry:

An epic poem, epic , epos , or epopee  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 (including Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy) 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.

For example: ILIAD

  öRoman numerals

       The numeric system represented by Roman numerals originated in ancient               Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into       the Late Middle Ages. Numbers in this system are represented by combinations of         letters from the Latin alphabet. Roman numerals, as used today, are based on seven        symbols.

     ´ Roman numeric system

The numbers 1 to 10 are usually expressed in Roman numerals as follows:

I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X.

Numbers are formed by combining symbols and adding the values, so II is two (two ones) and XIII is thirteen (a ten and three ones). Because each numeral has a fixed value rather than representing multiples of ten, one hundred and so on, according to position, there is no need for "place keeping" zeros, as in numbers like 207 or 1066; those numbers are written as CCVII (two hundred , a five and two ones) and MLXVI (a thousand, a fifty, a ten, a five and a one).

Symbols are placed from left to right in order of value, starting with the largest. However, in a few specific case to avoid four characters being repeated in succession (such as IIII or XXXX), as in this table:

Number	4	9	40	90	400	900
Notation	IV	IX	XL	XC	CD	CM

·         I placed before V or X indicates one less, so four is IV (one less than five) and nine is IX (one less than ten)

·         X placed before L or C indicates ten less, so forty is XL (ten less than fifty) and ninety is XC (ten less than a hundred)

·         C placed before D or M indicates a hundred less, so four hundred is CD (a hundred less than five hundred) and nine hundred is CM (a hundred less than a thousand)