hello!

This week in class we talked about greek tragedy and greek comedy in ancient Athens. I learned a lot more about the part of the chorus and found it neat to learn how the chorus interacts with the audience. I also learned that comedies were about issues present at the time while tragedies were about at least a c ouple generations previous to the time of the play. The class discussion helped me understand the play again and I look forward to reading it over before I start the book of Job afterwards. I have read the book of Job when I was a kid and I used to go to church with my grandmother. I anticipate reading it again to see what I get out of it now that I am years older. I remember that the devil challenges god because he says job would not worship him if god took everythjing away from Job. If I remember correctly then Job still worships him. It seems cruel to me that god would punish Job simply over a bet to the devil but I have to read it again because i may not remember it correctly…

hello again,

this week we are reading acharnians by aristophanes for discussion on monday in class. I am trying to get through the play but it has been more difficult for me to read than the other assignments for some reason. I guess I dont really get the sense of humor of the “old comedy”. I am recognizing more characters that we have previously learned about in this course appearing in other works. Moslty the greek god dionysus, but now when the god is referenced, I have a better understanding of the meaning for the placement.  I also did some research on Aristophanes”s life and not too much is known about his personal life but he is known as the father of comedy and 11 of his 40 plays are almost complete. He was also put on trial for his plays by the polititian, cleon, but he was never convivted. I look forward to learning more about the play in class on monday and also about aristophanes.

Until next week…

Hello again. this week i have been reading out of my text book about Islam am I am learning a lo tabout the society that i never knew before. For example i learned about muhammed. I have heard of him but i never read about his life before and i found it interesting that he was married to one woman for over @0 years and then after she died he had multiple wives. it was also interesting for me to learn how the quaran came to be written down and what it actually means. im looking forward to talking about the subject in class more in depth to learn more. i am however dissapointed that i did not make it to hear the lecture last week because i bet there would have been stuff that i would enjoy to hear.

til next week

cass

hello once again,

this week i started reading Antigone by Sophocles. I have never read a greek tragedy before (even in high school), so i am enjoying it so far. There are interesting things that i am picking up that are different from other works of liturature i have read. For example, the way that Antigone basically tells the ending at the beginning when she is talking about how she will die young. I think maybe that is the way all tragedies are supposed to be but i will have to look more into that. THe lectures in class have helped have a better understanding about what is going on as well. for example, learning more about the greek gods because they are referenced a lot in the literature that we have been assigned to ead for this course. Also, reading certain from the text book have had the same purpose and I like the stuff we’ve been learning about too because it’s made me notice other references as well, like in tv shows and trivia questions at work. I had expected reading this play to be more difficult but so far I feel like I have an ok grasp for what is going on and I am eager to read more and talk about it in class.

hello again,

i have just finished the iliad this week and i started on antigone. I enjoyed the ending of the iliad even though it was sad because i felt like the poem came to a good close and there were not ant open endings for me. I am looking forward to reading the oddesey sometime in the near future because a lot of my friends said that they enjoyed it more than the iliad. Im really glad that Achilles decided to give hectors body back to Priam and Priam wasnt hurt in the process. Achilles did change in the poem because at first he seemed as though he was stubborn and childish a bit (even though he should have been mad at Agamemnon for taking his lady friend). At the end of the poem however, Achilles shows that he sympathises with Priam because he thinks of his own father and knows that he will have to suffer the same as Priam.

i started researching about Antigone as well and am very excited to read it. I’ve heard the name of the play but I never knew what it was about so i am excited to finish it as well.

I have also learned a lot through the class presentations. the most interesting ones to me so far have been about Cleopatra and also about the phoenicians. i was a bit nervous about giving mine too but it wasnt so bad in front of everyone.

til next time…

hello again,

tomorrow i am giving a presentation in my humanities class about the TANAKH. It is what many people refer to as the Hebrew Bible. I had never heard the word tanakh before and i had no idea what it was before i looked it up so it was very interesting for me to learn about it. I am also excited about giving the presentation because I found some adio to play for the class as well as written text in hebrew and english along side each other so we can listen and read along at the same time. also, most of the tanakh was composed in 450 BCE and is still basically the same to this day. There is a new version that was composed in 1985 by scholars that took about 30 years that is a modern day translation that is being used. there are differences from this bible and other christain bibles because of the way that the books are seperated and the order that they are put together. plus, in certain denominations there are added books or excluded books. All in all i am glad that i picked this presentation topic because i learned a lot of new things and found it interesting.

til next time….

 hello again,

i have been doing some research lately on Homer in order to get a better picture in my mind about The Iliad and i have discovered some very interesting things about him. Such as, no one really knows whether he actually lived because there is no evidence that he existed, only stories that were passed on. He is acredited with being the first person to write down these stories that were passed down to him but no one really knows for sure whether it was actually him. Also, there are other stories of him being blind too. He was also a singer and a dancer. Scholars dispute over many things that were attributed to homer, such as homeric dialect and style, because they are not sure whether he was even real. But The Iliad seems to capture and portray the way theat ancient greeks felt about themselves at the time and therefore many many people have studied Homer in the past and continue to do so in the present.

Hello,

my name is Cas and this semester i am taking a humanities class with prof. Anderson that i am excited about. This is my first humanities class so i wasn’t really sure what to expect. Now that I’ve been reading the text book I am pleased to discover that it is a lot of history, which I very much enjoy but did not have the time to take a history class this semester. I am also excited that it is a great books class because I feel like the books that are on our syllabus for this semester are important materieals for students to become familiar with and to think about. i am hoping that I will enjoy this class so I can take more in the future. ok, until next week!