Quiz

 Poetry (text analysis)

 Extract a theme by selecting keywords and explaining why you chose the team.
 Difference between theme and subject.

Don Quitxote – Spanish Novel written by Cervantes. Most influential work of literature from the
Spanish Golden Age

Black Death

 Mid 14th Century, Gothic with middle ages (notre dame etc.)
 In 14th century Europe, artistic and literary expression took on a dark humor and tone in
order to cope with the tragedy.For instance, the Italian Boccaccio set his Decameron in the
plague year, 1348 (Keys 35).
 Boccacio and Chaucer both mocked the hopelessness of those who have nothing else to
lose.
 The art of the period also showed the bleakness of the situation.� Drawings were morose,
full of death and destruction.

Renaissance

 Gothic to revival of greek and roman times.

 Dante and Boccacio and Chaucer [wrote Canterbury tales and he is a polymath)
 Golden Ratio

Etopia – Henry the 8th, Elazabeth the 1st this are in the 1600’s. It changed the entire literature of the
word. UTOPIA BOOK written by Thomas morres.

Omar Kayyam – Persian and related el cid. Put forward geometry. Other arab polymaths include
avroyah and avichna and rumi [lived in Persia, poem about drinking.

Polymath – Atchiteture, poetry, Mathematician such as Leonardo da vin ci

Why isn’t beauty the categories of Aristotle – beauty is subject and is related to personal use of the
word.

!!!!PATHOS – persuasion by appeal to emotions

!!!!!ETHOS – Persuasion by appeal to morals.

Art and Non-art : how we connect ourselves with nature.

Marcus Aurelius – Founding Father

Cosmopolitan – related to culture. Society that is influenced by all the world. It is not isolated and
the opposite of isolated. ISOLATION is the opposite. Culture is the dialogue between nations and
time.

Mythology – Homer. Father of mythology is called and give an example.

EPOPE – Epic Poems

Avicha and Almoravid – Saved in the Arab world by these two people and given back to Europe.
What is your understanding of the Ancient Greeks’ Ideas of beauty.

 Socrates was the first philosopher who started looking into beauty. He believed that
features should be kept pure. After Socrates, Pluto started studying beauty and he believed
that it had something to do with symmetry. It is also said that it was Pluto that decided that
beauty cannot be defined.
 The Greeks believe in simplicity. They also thought being pale was prestigious and beautiful.
They way you looked was very important to the Greeks. If you were a Greek and you had
short hair, you were a slave and if you were a Greek and had long hair you were a free
women. Most of the free women wore their hair in buns. Greeks would not try to cover up
certain aspects, instead they would enhance their natural features.
 The Greeks had very high standards and the way they looked. Unlike today, the Greeks
would practice hygiene not to look good, but for themselves.

What is the role of mythology in world literature.

 The great mythic themes were known before literature. All great works of literature are
based upon mythic themes or stories. Noah's Ark, Jonah and the great fish, Moby Dick, and
even the movie Titanic are all stories about man's struggles with the seas {the
unconscious?}). Myths and mythic symbols are the elementary particles of imagination and
creativity. The cultural historian Jacques Barzun has said: What links myth with Literature is
... the Imagination.
 Myth is before philosophy and science. The same questions that our religions used to ask,
now our philosophies and our sciences try to answer. We may be an enlightened,
technological society but we have the same needs as ever: protection, warmth, food, sex
and love and children, happiness, doing good.

Why did the renaissance writers go back to ancient sources?

 During the Renaissance, philosophy started to have a more modern feel, and, compared to
what went on in ancient Greek and Medieval times, it is one that we can more easily identify
with today. Philosophers of the time recognized that they were on a new path that departed
radically from medieval scholasticism, and they soon began to refer to their own style of
philosophizing as “modern” – hence the designation “modern” philosophy.
 Their first efforts were to breathe life back into the old Greek philosophical schools, which,
they believed, contained a vitality that was lost in the middle ages. The freedom to newly
explore those classical schools, though, required philosophy to move out from under the
control of the Catholic Church. Since ancient times, philosophers were regularly in trouble
with legal and religious authorities, and even during the Middle Ages the most innovative
philosophers found themselves accused of heresy. While by our standards today the
Renaissance was still a religiously confining environment, the Reformation sparked an era of
religious experimentation which gave more freedom for philosophical speculation.
What is a polymath and what does he represent.

 A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject

areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific
problems.
 Polymaths include the great thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment who
excelled at several fields in science and the arts. In the Italian Renaissance, the idea of the
polymath was expressed by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), in the statement that "a man
can do all things if he will".
 Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism, that humans are limitless in their
capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all
knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible.
 This is expressed in the term "Renaissance man"—often applied to the gifted people of that
age who sought to develop their abilities in all areas of accomplishment: intellectual, artistic,
social, and physical. The term entered the lexicon in the twentieth century, and has now
been applied to great thinkers living before and after the Renaissance.

Can you find any connections between ancient literature and the new American literature.

 Considering how human consciousness has changed over time. This change has everything
to do with the efficiencies we've created so that we have what's called "leisure time"; time
to gaze at our navels and think about our thinking.
 The ancient Greek heroes speak about motivating forces as separate entities that don't
belong to their personal consciousness. Over time, their dialog goes from something like
"Aphrodite charmed me..." to "The heart within me spoke..." The gods became embodied in
humanity through our development of self-consciousness by having time to ask What is that
voice in my head? Where did that idea come from?
 In literature, human motivation is probably the most important raw material. This shift from
gods to humans figures monumentally in the development of literature over time.
 In the most general sense, we have gone from writing stories of being subject to fate to
writing stories about will. The fated stories still have their charm because they have entered
the realm of archetypes in the collective human consciousness, but the stories of humans
exercising their will upon their environment are what enchant us now.
 Prior to the invention of the printing press, the people's "literature" arose from an oral
tradition of stories set to song/poetic form so they could be easily memorized. A few, such
as the epic Beowulf, were transcribed and survived to our time. Power was held by few in
the secular community and the churches. "Common people" didn't read or write and
depended on their local clergy to deliver the word of God.
 With the printing press and increased distribution of knowledge, particularly in this digital
age, exponentially more people have been empowered to make their thoughts publicly
known, further spurring the development of human consciousness with a freer exchange of
ideas. The literature has shifted from bigger, more basic human drive issues of survival and
ascendency to power, to the very gray and intricate situations in which we now find
ourselves.
Why were the middle ages literatures synchronic across continents.