Western Literature 2016/11/24(Week11)

▲Dionysus

Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in ancient Greek religion and myth. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysus was the main religious focus for its unrestrained consumption. He may have been worshipped as early as c. 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks; traces of Dionysian-type cult have also been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; in others, from Ethiopia in the South. 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, becoming increasingly important over time, and included in some lists of the twelve Olympians, as the last of their number, and the only god born from a mortal mother. His festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre.

▲Herodotus

Herodotus was a Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) and lived in the fifth century BC (c. 484–c. 425 BC), a contemporary of Socrates. He is widely referred to as "The Father of History" (first conferred by Cicero); he was the first historian known to have broken from Homeric tradition to treat historical subjects as a method of investigation—specifically, by collecting his materials systematically and critically, and then arranging them into a historiographic narrative. The Histories is the only work which he is known to have produced, a record of his "inquiry" on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, including a wealth of geographical and ethnographical information. Some of his stories were fanciful and others inaccurate; yet he states that he was reporting only what was told to him and was often correct in his information. Despite Herodotus' historical significance, little is known of his personal history.

▲Iracus

In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the creator of the Labyrinth. Often depicted in art, Icarus and his father attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. Icarus' father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings or the sun's heat melt them. Icarus ignored his father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun, when the wax in his wings melted and he fell into the sea. This tragic theme of failure at the hands of hubris contains similarities to that of Phaëthon.

Sophocles

Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote 120 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in 30 competitions, won 18, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won 14 competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles, while Euripides won 5 competitions

▲Mary Had a Little Lamb

"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is an English language nursery rhyme of nineteenth-century American origin. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 7622.

▸In the 1830s, Lowell Mason set the nursery rhyme to a melody adding repetition in the verses:

Mary had a little lamb, little lamb,
little lamb, Mary had a little lamb
whose fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went
Mary went, Mary went, everywhere
that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.

He followed her to school one day,
school one day, school one day,
He followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rules,
It made the children laugh and play,
laugh and play, laugh and play,
It made the children laugh and play,
To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out,
turned it out, turned it out,
And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near,
He waited patiently about,
ly about, ly about,
He waited patiently about,
Till Mary did appear.

"Why does the lamb love Mary so?"
love Mary so?" love Mary so?"
"Why does the lamb love Mary so?"
The eager children cried.
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,"
lamb, you know," lamb, you know,"
"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,"
The teacher did reply.

▲in Just-

by: e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame baloonman

 

whistles far and wee

 

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

 

when the world is puddle-wonderful

 

the queer

old baloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

 

it's

spring

and

the

 

goat-footed

 

baloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

▲Definition

◆peculiar: belonging exclusively to one person, private property

◆fleece: The coat of wool of a sheep or similar animal.

◆chorus: A group of singers who perform together, usually singing multi-part compositions with more than one singer for each part.