Last. Blog. Ever.

As I've said before, World Literature was by all means not one of my favorite classes but I did like learning some new stuff about the world around us. This is my last blog that I have to type ever in my career, unless I'm old and have no life so I decided to start a blog. This semester we learned about The Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis 6-8, Chinese Literature, Ancient Persian Literature, Ancient Greek Literature, Ancient Roman Literature, Ancient Italian Literature, and English Literature were the eight topics that we studied in a time frame of 18 weeks. I think that my favorite topic would have to probably be the Ancient Italian Literature because we got to learn about the Inferno by Dante and the rings of Hell. That was most likely one of the funnest projects in this class.

The Inferno

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So this week we have been reading small parts of the Inferno. We have read Cantos I, Cantos III, and Cantos V and for the Cantos V we were split into two groups and had to write a story in poetic form about two different topics out of one story. These stories are a bit confusing but they were interesting to read. The poem that we had to write was about Francesca and how she was cheating on her husband, Giovanni, with his brother, Paolo. When Giovanni found out, he killed both his own wife and brother. So they both went to Hell because they hadn't confessed their sins yet. Francesca hadn't been to a church to to her confession so she had all of her sins built up inside her. What we wrote was that Giovanni had been suspicious about his wife and that she was sneaking around. So one night he went out and followed her and found out she was cheating, so his first reaction was to kill them both, and when that matter was done, he had no remorse for what had just happened. In the Cantos V there were also MINOS and that is what my picture is of.

The Rings of Hell

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The past few days we have been working on a presentation that involves the nine rings of Hell. Holly and I got assigned to Ring 8 which is called Fraud. The lower down that you go into the Rings of Hell, the worse it gets. Satan is in ring 9 which is called Treachery. The rings of Hell are Ring 1 Limbo, Ring 2 Lust, Ring 3 Gluttony, Ring 4 Greed, Ring 5 Anger, Ring 6 Heresy, Ring 7 Violence, Ring 8 Fraud and Ring 9 is Treachery. We did a power point on Google Docs called World Lit's Inferno Show. Ring 8 is all about being punished for sins that involve of course, Fraud. Both Ring 8 and 9 can be reached by descending off of a vast cliff. Ring 8 is also broken down into 10 smaller rings itself. They're called Bolgia's. Each one has its own punishments for depending on the crime that was committed. This was probably one of the more interesting activities that we did in class, it was interesting learning about all the Rings of Hell and what happens in each one of them.

Virgil...

Virgil and the Aeneid

This week we are blogging and having our test over the Epics in one assignment. Explain and discuss who Virgil is and why he wrote the epic poem The Aeneid. Be sure to discuss the historical importance of the work. This was the question that I was given to answer. Virgil was born Publius Vergilius Maro, he was unquestionably one of the greatest poets born near Mantua in what was then the province of Gaul. Virgil's childhood experiences on his family's farm marked his outlook on a profound permanent way. When he was eleven years old, Julius Caesar came to govern the city of Gaul, when he arrived it opened Virgil's eyes and gave him a different world from his father's farm in a backwater town. Virgil then traveled to study around to many places, including Rome. He had also taken courses in rhetoric-the construction and delivery of speeches that was important for young Romans to be trained for public affairs. Virgil was actually trained as a lawyer but ended up never pursuing the legal career. 
Virgil wrote the Aeneid between 29 and 19 BC. It tells a legendary story about Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the Ancestor of the Romans. The Aeneid was composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell about Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latin's, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed. The first six books are the Journey to Italy and the second set of six is the War in Italy. 
The Aeneid was in fact written in a time of major political and social changes in Rome. Despite the polished and complex nature of the Aeneid, the legend is said to be that Virgil only took time to write three lines of the poem each day, so therefore it would be in the making for a long period of time, there were half complete lines, abrupt endings were generally seen throughout and that was shown to be evidence that Virgil had died before he could finish his piece. The Aeneid is more complex than most classical epics because it was composed and preserved in writing rather than orally. Some legends that have been stated that Virgil had actually feared that he would die before he could finish the piece, so therefore he went to his friends and the emperor at the time, Augustus, and asked them to burn what he had done upon his death. Augustus and his friends didn't comply with his wishes and some few minor modifications were made to the Aeneid, and it was then published.

-Photo Courtesy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid#History
-Photo Courtesy - goodreads.com


































My reaction to the RWLD was that the opera based on Dido and Aeneas was really confusing and hard to understand because opera music is not modern day music one bit.  I get the meaning that she was depressed because Aeneas was leaving her to go conquer Rome but she was shot by Cupid's arrow then she was in love with Aeneas and could never love anyone else again. So when Aeneas left her to conquer Rome, she stabbed herself and the opera was based on that scene. The art isn't what you see around today, it was very unique and individual. It was pretty interesting and if I enjoyed art as much as some people, I would be interested in pursuing to do more research.    

The Epics in World Lit

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We've been learning about Greek and Roman Literature. We've read two epics and the one's that the class has read is The Death of Hektor and The Meeting of Hektor and Andromache from the Iliad. I have only read the death of Hektor, and those are both from Greek Literature. We care all currently working on reading The Passion of the Queen from the Aeneid. I have only gotten a few pages into The Passion of the Queen but so far its good, they're talking about Dido, the queen of Carthage, and how she has lost her husband in war. She claims that he has died and failed her and she's all depressed. But her sister Anna is trying to talk her out of being depressed and to look at the positive side of everything not the negative. On the next page of the story it talks about how Dido got shot with an arrow by a hunter on accident. She feels as if she is weak and it says "But though she runs for life through copse and glade the fatal shaft clings to her side." I'm not quite sure how to comprehend that to my understanding but I take it as she's okay, guess reading more in the story will let me know. The picture that I have is a scene from Troy, its the Trojan Horse, in how Hektor fought at one point in time.

Oedipus The King

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So this week during world literature, we have been reading Oedipus The King. Its about the King and Queen of Thebes and how they were cursed and they're first son would kill his father and marry his mother and make children with her. So when Laius' wife Jocasta had a boy, they put a hook through his ankles and they gave him to a Shepard to take and leave on the top of the mountain for death. Then the Shepard gave the baby to another Shepard to take to Corinth for the King and Queen there because they were unable to have children. So when Oedipus grew up and realized he had the curse on him, he went away from his family in Corinth and never thought twice about going back, and on his way to Thebes he ran into a carriage full of men. Neither would move out of each others way so Oedipus ended up killing three out of the four men that he ran into and one of those three men that he killed happened to be Laius. When he got to Thebes he met and soon married and had children with his real mother, Jocasta. That was only after taking the curse off Thebes by solving the riddle.

Whats Going On In World Literature

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We just finished up our Chinese literature in World Literature with an open book test over all the stuff we've learned. It was definatly a difficult test for me since I'm not good at taking them in the first place. Though some of the stuff that we did learn was in fact quite interesting it was kinda boring for me because it's weird to learn about another culture that I've never thought about learning about before but I'm sure that down the road, I'll be happy that I learned it. We even saw some videos that our teacher showed up from when she went to Beijing, China last year. Those videos were actually more interesting because they were from the present day and not thousands of years in the past. In a way I wish that I could definatly experience China in my own hands right now. I think that it would indeed interesting to learn whats its like now comparred to thousands of years ago. I love learning about history and what not, but I think Chinese history would be a little bit farther down on my list.