Week 5

frailty thy name is woman

Hamlet:
Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!

Hamlet, in his first soliloquy, recalls tender scenes between his mother, Queen Gertrude, and her deceased husband. What irks Hamlet is that, after his mother had seemed so sexually dependent on the old king, she could turn around within a month of his death and marry her brother-in-law Claudius, who, Hamlet claims, is "no more like my father/ Than I to Hercules" (lines 152–153) and compares to his father as "Hyperion to a satyr" (line 140)—as the sun-god to a deformed goat-man.

website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJmWpR-4AIg

Hamlet

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet (/ˈhæmlᵻt/), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Set in Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. Claudius had murdered his own brother and seized the throne, also marrying his deceased brother's widow.

Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and is considered among the most powerful and influential works of world literature, with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". The play likely was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime, and still ranks among his most performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879. It has inspired many other writers—from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and Iris Murdoch—and has been described as "the world's most filmed story after Cinderella".

             

Floristry

Floristry is the production, commerce and trade in flowers. It encompasses flower care and handling, floral design, or flower arranging, merchandising, and display and flower delivery. Wholesale florists sell bulk flowers and related supplies to professionals in the trade. Retail florists offer fresh flowers and related products and services to consumers.

Floristry can involve the cultivation of flowers as well as their arrangement, and to the business of selling them. Much of the raw material supplied for the floristry trade comes from the cut flowers industry. Florist shops, along with online stores, are the main flower-only outlets, but supermarkets, garden supply stores, and filling stations also sell flowers.

     

verbal irony

a figure of speech in which what is said is the opposite of what is meant

Verbal irony is used in a variety of circumstances. It may be used in general conversation or also in media. Television sitcoms and movies often use verbal irony, as do many political pundits. 

Examples of Everyday Verbal Irony

• Soft like a brick
• Hard as putty
• Clear like dirt
• As pleasant as surgery 
• Saying “Oh, fantastic!” when the situation is actually very poor
• As calm as a dog in heat
• One got in a car accident and said “Lucky me!”
• In Julius Caesar when Mark Antony states “Yet Brutus says he was ambitious and Brutus is an honorable man”
• Dimmesdale's confession and discussion of his congregation in the Scarlet Letter that is meant to mean he's terrible and should be shunned but the people did the opposite
• As sunny as day in winter in Alaska

website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiR-bnCHIYo

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease affecting humans and other animals caused by parasitic protozoans (a group of single-celled microorganisms) belonging to the Plasmodium type. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, feeling tired, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases it can cause yellow skin, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin ten to fifteen days after being bitten. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the disease months later. In those who have recently survived an infection, reinfection usually causes milder symptoms. This partial resistance disappears over months to years if the person has no continuing exposure to malaria.

         

Omniscience

Omniscience /ɒmˈnɪʃəns/, mainly in religion, is the capacity to know everything that there is to know. In particular, dharmic religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism) and the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) believe that there is a divine being who is omniscient.

Omniscient Point of View

Basically, omniscient point of view means that the story is told from an all-seeing God-like, omnipotent viewpoint. You would use third person pronouns in the writing, but you can choose to dip into the head of any of the characters and reveal things that have occurred in the past or will happen in the future.

This was once a very popular method of storytelling. It is less so now, especially in the North American market. Still there are some cases where this can add extra dimension to your writing when done well. Joseph Conrad was a master of omniscient viewpoint.

The trouble is that each character must have a distinctive voice so that the reader is never at a loss as to whose head he is in at the moment. This is an interesting device for an epic novel which explores a theme with several tangled subplots. It is difficult to manage because if you give away the wrong information (in other words if you tell us what we want to know) then you lose tension using this technique. But if you can control it, and give the reader the right amount of information, you can increase tension considerably. 

Dystopia

A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia, or simply anti-utopia) is a community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is translated as "not-good place", an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, Utopia, published 1516, a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty.

Dystopia societies appear in many artistic works, particularly in stories set in the future. Some of the most famous examples are George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Dystopias are often characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Dystopian societies appear in many sub-genres of fiction and are often used to draw attention to real-world issues regarding society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, or technology. However, some authors also use the term to refer to actually-existing societies, many of which are or have been totalitarian states, or societies in an advanced state of collapse and disintegration.

     

utopia

A utopia (/juːˈtoʊpiə/ yoo-TOH-pee-ə) is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia. One could also say that utopia is a perfect 'place' that has been made so there are no problems.

Utopian ideals often place emphasis on egalitarian principles of equality in economics, government and justice, though by no means exclusively, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology. According to Lyman Tower Sargent "[t]here are socialist, capitalist, monarchical, democratic, anarchist, ecological, feminist, patriarchal, egalitarian, hierarchical, racist, left-wing, right-wing, reformist, free love, nuclear family, extended family, gay, lesbian, and many more utopias".

     

Republic

The Republic (Greek: Πολιτεία, Politeia; Latin: Res Publica) is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BC, concerning justice (δικαιοσύνη), the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. It is Plato's best-known work, and has proven to be one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.

In the book's dialogue, Socrates discusses the meaning of justice and whether or not the just man is happier than the unjust man with various Athenians and foreigners. They consider the natures of existing regimes and then propose a series of different, hypothetical cities in comparison. This culminates in the discussion of Kallipolis (Καλλίπολις), a hypothetical city-state ruled by a philosopher king. They also discuss the theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, and the role of the philosopher and that of poetry in society. The dialogues may have taken place during the Peloponnesian War.

Plato

Plato (/ˈpleɪtoʊ/;^[a] Greek: Πλάτων^[a] Plátōn, pronounced [plá.tɔːn] in Classical Attic; 428/427 or 424/423^[b] – 348/347 BCE) was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition. Unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Plato's entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years.

       

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation. The superstate and its residents are dictated to by a political regime euphemistically named English Socialism, shortened to "Ingsoc" in Newspeak, the government's invented language. The superstate is under the control of the privileged elite of the Inner Party, a party and government that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrime", which is enforced by the "Thought Police".

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.

Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian – descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices – has entered the language together with many of his neologisms, including cold war, Big Brother, Thought Police, Room 101, memory hole, newspeak, doublethink, and thoughtcrime.

John Gardner

John Champlin Gardner Jr. (July 21, 1933 – September 14, 1982) was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic and university professor. He is best known for his 1971 novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view.

Grendel

Grendel is a 1971 novel by American author John Gardner. It is a retelling of part of the Old English poem Beowulf from the perspective of the antagonist, Grendel. In the novel, Grendel is portrayed as an antihero. The novel deals with finding meaning in the world, the power of literature and myth, and the nature of good and evil.

Grendel has become one of Gardner's best-known and best-reviewed works. Several editions of the novel contain pen and ink line drawings of Grendel's head, by Emil Antonucci. Ten years after publication, the novel was adapted into the 1981 animated movie Grendel Grendel Grendel.

Beowulf

Beowulf (/ˈbeɪoʊwʊlf, ˈbiːoʊ-/; Old English: [ˈbeːo̯ˌwulf]) is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It may be the oldest surviving long poem in Old English and is commonly cited as one of the most important works of Old English literature. A date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating pertains to the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025. The author was an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, referred to by scholars as the "Beowulf poet".

scandinavia

Scandinavia^[a] /ˌskændɪˈneɪviə/ is a historical and cultural region in Northern Europe characterized by a common ethnocultural North Germanic heritage and mutually intelligible North Germanic languages.

The term Scandinavia always includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The remote Norwegian islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen are usually not seen as a part of Scandinavia, nor is Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark. However, the Faroe Islands, also a Danish overseas territory, are sometimes included, as sometimes are Iceland, Finland, and the Finnish autonomous region of the Åland Islands, because of their historical association with the Scandinavian countries and the Scandinavian peoples and languages. This looser definition almost equates to that of the Nordic countries. In Nordic languages, only Denmark, Norway and Sweden are commonly included in the definition of Scandinavia.

          

Scandza

Scandza was described as a "great island" by the Roman historian Jordanes in his work Getica, written while in Constantinople around 551 AD. This island was located in the Arctic regions of the sea that surrounded the world. He described the area to set the stage for his treatment of the Goths' migration to Gothiscandza, the island in front of the Vistula river. Composed of information from several sources, his account contains several accurate descriptions of the mouth of the Vistula river. It is possible that Jordanes was describing Scandinavia. Prominent Swedish archaeologist, Göran Burenhult, regards Jordanes' account as a unique glimpse into the tribes of Scandinavia in the 6th century.

     

Verona

Verona (Italian pronunciation: [veˈroːna]  is a city on the Adige river in Veneto, Italy, with approximately 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third largest in northeast Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona covers an area of 1,426 km² (550.58 sq mi) and has a population of 714,274 inhabitants. It is one of the main tourist destinations in northern Italy, owing to its artistic heritage, several annual fairs, shows, and operas, such as the lyrical season in the Arena, the ancient amphitheatre built by the Romans

             

Impeachment

Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body formally levels charges against a high official of government. Impeachment does not necessarily mean removal from office; it is only a formal statement of charges, akin to an indictment in criminal law, and is thus only the first step towards removal. Once an individual is impeached, he or she must then face the possibility of conviction via legislative vote, which then entails the removal of the individual from office.

           

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the Presidency he was the 40th Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and the state's 42nd Governor from 1983 to 1992. Before that, he served as Arkansas Attorney General from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideologically a New Democrat, and many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (/ˈhɪləri daɪˈæn ˈrɒdəm ˈklɪntən/; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician who was the 67thUnited States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, U.S. Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, and the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, Clinton graduated from Wellesley College in 1969, and earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1973. After serving as a congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas and married Bill Clinton in 1975. In 1977, she co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She was appointed the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978 and became the first female partner at Rose Law Firm the following year. As First Lady of Arkansas, she led a task force whose recommendations helped reform Arkansas's public schools.

           

website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khK9fIgoNjQ

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages 

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages is a 1994 book by Harold Bloom on Western literature, in which Bloom defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers whom he sees as central to the canon. The Western Canon is Bloom's best-known book alongside The Anxiety of Influence (1973), and was a surprise bestseller upon its release in the United States.

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (/ˈrʌdjərd ˈkɪplɪŋ/ RUD-yərd KIP-ling (rhotic) 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936 was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.

Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If—" (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature, and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (/ˈiːdɪθ ˈwɔːrtən/; born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.

            

Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: Анто́н Па́влович Че́хов, pronounced [ɐnˈton ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕɛxəf]; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."


        

"The Lady with the Dog"

"The Lady with the Dog" (Russian: Дама с собачкой, translit. Dama s sobachkoy) is a short story by Anton Chekhov first published in 1899. It tells the story of an adulterous affair between a Russian banker and a young lady he meets while vacationing in Yalta. The story comprises four parts: part I describes the initial meeting in Yalta, part II the consummation of the affair and the remaining time in Yalta, part III Gurov's return to Moscow and his visit to Anna's town, and part IV Anna's visits to Moscow. One of Chekhov's most famous pieces of short fiction, Vladimir Nabokov declared that it was one of the greatest short stories ever written.

               

Setting

The setting is both the time and geographic location within a narrative or within a work of fiction. A literary element, the setting helps initiate the main backdrop and mood for a story. Setting has been referred to as story world  or milieu to include a context (especially society) beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour. Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.

Figurative Language 

Figurative language can be found in literature and poetry where the writing appeals to the senses. It can do this by giving a word or phrase a specific meaning that may be different than the literal definition. Sometimes figurative language compares two things in such a way that you find the comparison interesting and descriptive.

There are many types of figurative language. Some include the use of a specific type of word or word meaning such as:

• Metaphor

When you use a metaphor, you make a statement that doesn’t make sense literally, like “time is a thief.” It only makes sense when the similarities between the two things become apparent or someone understands the connection between the two words.

• Simile

A simile compares two things like a metaphor; but, a simile uses the words “like” and “as.”

• Personification

Personification gives human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, or ideas. This can really affect the way the reader imagines things. This type of figurative language is often used in children’s books, poetry, and fictional literature. 

• Hyperbole

A hyperbole is an outrageous exaggeration that emphasizes a point, and can be ridiculous or funny. Hyperboles can be added to fiction to add color and depth to a character.

• Symbolism

Symbolism occurs when a word has meaning in itself, but is used to represent something entirely different.