2016/06/15

Week Seventeen

Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. The play premiered on Broadway in February 1949, running for 742 performances, and has been revived on Broadway four times, winning three Tony Awards for Best Revival. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century.

Catch Me If You Can is a 2002 American biographical crime film, based on the life of Frank Abagnale, who, before his 19th birthday, successfully performed cons worth millions of dollars by posing as a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. His primary crime was check fraud; he became so experienced that the FBI eventually turned to him for help in catching other check forgers. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, with Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Nathalie Baye and Amy Adams in supporting roles.

Development for the film started in 1980 but did not progress until 1997 when the film rights to Abagnale's book were sold to Spielberg's DreamWorks. David Fincher, Gore Verbinski, Lasse Hallström, Miloš Forman, and Cameron Crowe had all been possible candidates for director before Spielberg decided to direct. Filming took place from February to May 2002. The film was a financial and critical success, and the real Abagnale reacted positively to it.

CliffsNotes (formerly Cliffs Notes, originally Cliff's Notes and often, erroneously, CliffNotes) are a series of student study guides available primarily in the United States. The guides present and explain literary and other works in pamphlet form or online. Detractors of the study guides claim they let students bypass reading the assigned literature. The company claims to promote the reading of the original work, and does not view the study guides as a substitute for that reading.

A Psalm of Life

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BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 

   Life is but an empty dream! 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 

   And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real! Life is earnest! 

   And the grave is not its goal; 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

   Was not spoken of the soul. 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 

   Is our destined end or way; 

But to act, that each to-morrow 

   Find us farther than to-day. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

   And our hearts, though stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beating 

   Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world’s broad field of battle, 

   In the bivouac of Life, 

Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 

   Be a hero in the strife! 

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! 

   Let the dead Past bury its dead! 

Act,— act in the living Present! 

   Heart within, and God o’erhead! 

Lives of great men all remind us 

   We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 

   Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 

   Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

   With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

   Learn to labor and to wait.

SparkNotes, originally part of a website called The Spark, is a company started by Harvard students Sam Yagan, Max Krohn,Chris Coyne, and Eli Bolotin in 1999 that originally provided study guides for literature, poetry, history, film, and philosophy. Later, SparkNotes expanded to provide study guides for a number of other subjects, including biology, chemistry, economics,health, math, physics, and sociology. SparkNotes does not charge users, but instead earns revenue from advertising.

Barnes & Noble acquired SparkNotes.com in 2001 for approximately $3.5 million.

"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills." The story's protagonist, also called Rip Van Winkle, is a Dutch-American villager living around the time of the American Revolutionary War.

Mockingjay is a 2010 science fiction novel by American author Suzanne Collins. It is the last installment of The Hunger Games, following 2008's The Hunger Games and 2009's Catching Fire. The book continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, who agrees to unify the districts of Panem in a rebellion against the tyrannical Capitol. The hardcover and audiobook editions of Mockingjay were published by Scholastic on August 24, 2010, six days after the ebook edition went on sale. The book sold 450,000 copies in the first week of release, exceeding the publisher's expectations. It received a generally positive reaction from critics.

The novel was adapted into two films, with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 released in November 2014 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 released a year later.

Divergent is a 2014 American science fiction action film directed by Neil Burger, based on the novel of the same name by Veronica Roth. The film is the first installment in The Divergent Series and was produced by Lucy Fisher, Pouya Shabazian, and Douglas Wick, with a screenplay by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor. It stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zoë Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn, Ansel Elgort, Maggie Q and Kate Winslet. The story takes place in a dystopian and post-apocalyptic Chicago^[7] where people are divided into distinct factions based on human virtues. Beatrice Prior is warned that she is Divergent and thus will never fit into any one of the factions. She soon learns that a sinister plot is brewing in her seemingly perfect society.

The Giver is a 1993 American young-adult utopian novel by Lois Lowry. It is set in a society which at first appears to be a utopian society but is later revealed to be a dystopian one as the story progresses. The novel follows an 11-year-old boy named Jonas. The society has eliminated pain and strife by converting to "Sameness," a plan that has also eradicated emotional depth from their lives. Jonas is selected to inherit the position of Receiver of Memory, the person who stores all the past memories of the time before Sameness, as there may be times where one must draw upon the wisdom gained from history to aid the community's decision making. Jonas struggles with concepts of all the new emotions and things introduced to him: whether they are inherently good, evil, or in between, and whether it is even possible to have one without the other. The Community lacks any color, memory, climate andterrain, all in effort to preserve structure, order, and a true sense of equality beyond personal individuality.

2016/06/08

Week Sixteen

In poetry, a stanza (/ˈstænzə/; from Italian stanza [ˈstantsa], "room") is a grouped set of lines within a poem, usually set off from other stanzas by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, though stanzas are not strictly required to have either. There are many unique forms of stanzas. Some stanzaic forms are simple, such as four-line quatrains. Other forms are more complex, such as the Spenserian stanza. Fixed verse poems, such as sestinas, can be defined by the number and form of their stanzas. The term stanza is similar tostrophe, though strophe is sometimes used to refer to irregular set of lines, as opposed to regular, rhymed stanzas.

The stanza in poetry is analogous with the paragraph that is seen in prose; related thoughts are grouped into units. In music, groups of lines are typically referred to as verses. The stanza has also been known by terms such as batch, fit, and stave.

Andrew Marvell (/ˈmɑːrvəl/; 31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems range from the love-song "To His Coy Mistress", to evocations of an aristocratic country house and garden in "Upon Appleton House" and "The Garden", the political address "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", and the later personal and political satires "Flecknoe" and "The Character of Holland".

"The Garden", by Andrew Marvell, is one of the most famous English poems of the seventeenth century.

This poem was first published in Miscellaneous Poems. It was published for Robert Boulter, in 1681 This was the first edition. Miscellaneous Poems was sent to the press by Mary Marvell, who claimed she was Andrews Widow.

Andrew Marvell’s poem The Garden is a romantic poem. The poet personal emotions and feelings are told throughout the words of nature. The poet explains the value of nature and is explaining it through the poem.

Marvell recast much of his poem in Latin, "Hortus", printed to follow "The Garden" in the 1681 posthumous Miscellaneous Poems:

Quisnam adeo, mortale genus, præcorda versat?Heu Palmæ Laurique furor, vel simplicis Herbæ!...

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

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BY ROBERT HERRICK

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, 

Old Time is still a-flying; 

And this same flower that smiles today 

Tomorrow will be dying. 

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 

The higher he’s a-getting, 

The sooner will his race be run, 

And nearer he’s to setting. 

That age is best which is the first, 

When youth and blood are warmer; 

But being spent, the worse, and worst 

Times still succeed the former. 

Then be not coy, but use your time, 

And while ye may, go marry; 

For having lost but once your prime, 

You may forever tarry.

"To His Coy Mistress" is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the English Interregnum (1649–60).

This poem is considered one of Marvell's finest and is possibly the best recognized carpe diem poem in English. Although the date of its composition is not known, it may have been written in the early 1650s. At that time, Marvell was serving as a tutor to the daughter of the retired commander of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax.

2016/06/01

Week Fifteen

Theseus (/ˈθiːsiːəs/; Ancient Greek: Θησεύς [tʰɛːsěu̯s]) was the mythical king of Athens and was the son of Aethra by two fathers:Aegeus and Poseidon.

Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles (Hercules), all of whom battled and overcame foes that were identified with an archaic religious and social order. As Heracles was the Dorian hero, Theseus was a founding hero, considered by Athenians as their own great reformer: his name comes from the same root as θεσμός ("thesmos"), Greek for "The Gathering". The myths surrounding Theseus—his journeys, exploits, and family—have provided material for fiction throughout the ages.

Theseus was responsible for the synoikismos ("dwelling together")—the political unification of Attica under Athens, represented emblematically in his journey of labours, subduing ogres and monstrous beasts. Because he was the unifying king, Theseus built and occupied a palace on the fortress of the Acropolis that may have been similar to the palace that was excavated in Mycenae. Pausaniasreports that after the synoikismos, Theseus established a cult of Aphrodite Pandemos ("Aphrodite of all the People") and Peitho on the southern slope of the Acropolis.

Hercules is the Roman name for the Greek divine hero Heracles, who was the son of Zeus (Roman equivalent Jupiter) and the mortal Alcmene. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures.

The Romans adapted the Greek hero's iconography and myths for their literature and art under the name Hercules. In later Western art and literature and in popular culture, Hercules is more commonly used than Heracles as the name of the hero. Hercules was a multifaceted figure with contradictory characteristics, which enabled later artists and writers to pick and choose how to represent him. This article provides an introduction to representations of Hercules in the later tradition.

A demigod or demi-god is a divine or supernatural being in classical mythology. The term has been used in various ways at different times and can refer to a figure who has attained divine status after death, a minor deity, or a mortal who is the offspring of a god and a human being.

The twelve labours of Heracles or Hercules (Greek: οἱ Ἡρακλέους ἆθλοι, hoi Hērakleous athloi) are a series of episodes concerning a penance carried out by Heracles, the greatest of the Greek heroes, whose name was later Romanised as Hercules. They were accomplished over 12 years at the service of KingEurystheus. The episodes were later connected by a continuous narrative. The establishment of a fixed cycle of twelve labours was attributed by the Greeks to an epic poem, now lost, written by Peisander, dated about 600 BC. After Hercules killed his wife and children, he went to the oracle a Delphi. He prayed to the god Apollo for guidance. Hercules was told to serve the king of Mycenae, Eurystheus, for 12 years. During these 12 years, Hercules is sent to perform twelve difficult feats, called labours.

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the Greek and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus. The Aegean Islands are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes.

The sea was traditionally known as Archipelago (in Greek, Αρχιπέλαγος, meaning "chief sea"), but in English this word's meaning has changed to refer to the Aegean Islands and, generally, to any island group.

In Greek mythology, Aegeus (/ˈɛdʒˌjuːs/; Ancient Greek: Αἰγεύς) or Aegeas (/ˈiːdʒiəs/; Αιγέας), was an archaic figure in thefounding myth of Athens. The "goat-man" who gave his name to the Aegean Sea was, next to Poseidon, the father of Theseus, the founder of Athenian institutions and one of the kings of Athens.

In Greek mythology, Eros (/ˈɪərɒs/ or US /ˈɛrɒs/, /ˈɛroʊs/; Greek: Ἔρως, "Desire") was the Greek god of love. His Romancounterpart was Cupid ("desire"). Some myths make him a primordial god, while in other myths, he is the son of Aphrodite. He was one of the winged love gods, Erotes.

love potion-

A story within a story is a literary device in which one character within a narrative narrates.^[1] Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device (also referring to the practice in heraldry of placing the image of a small shield on a larger shield). A story within a story can be used in all types of narration: novels, short stories, plays, television programs, films, poems, songs, and philosophical essays.

Titania is a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the play, she is the queen of the fairies. Due to Shakespeare's influence, later fiction has often used the name "Titania" for fairy queen characters.

In traditional folklore, the fairy queen has no name. Shakespeare took the name "Titania" from Ovid'sMetamorphoses, where it is an appellation given to the daughters of Titans.

Shakespeare's Titania is a very proud creature and as much of a force to contend with as her husband Oberon. She and Oberon are engaged in a marital quarrel over which of them should have the keeping of an Indian changeling boy. This quarrel is the engine that drives the mix ups and confusion of the other characters in the play. Due to an enchantment cast by Oberon's servant Puck, Titania magically falls in love with a "rude mechanical" (a labourer), Nick Bottom the weaver, has been given the head of a donkey by Puck, who feels it is better suited to his character. It has been argued that this incident is an inversion of the Circe story. In this case the tables are turned on the character, and rather than the sorceress turning her lovers into animals, she is made to love a donkey after Bottom has been transformed.

Lysander  was a Spartan admiral who commanded the Spartan fleet in the Hellespont which defeated the Athenians at Aegospotami in 405 BC. The following year, he was able to force the Athenians to capitulate, bringing the Peloponnesian War to an end; he organized the dominion of Sparta over Greece in the last decade of his life.

Hermia is a fictional character from Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. She is a girl of Athens. The dialogue makes it clear that she is shorter than Helena. Hermia is caught in a romantic accident where she loves one man, Lysander, but is loved by Demetrius, whose feelings she does not return.Hermia is named after the Greek god of exchange and dreams. This connects with the economic reasons Demetrius and Lysander desire her, as well as their demands to be in control of her psyche, or dreams.

In Classical Greek mythology, Hippolyta (/hɪˈpɒlɪˌtə/; Greek: Ἱππολύτη Hippolyte) was the Amazonian queen who possessed a magicalgirdle she was given by her father Ares, the god of war. The girdle was a waist belt that signified her authority as queen of the Amazons. She figures prominently in the myths of both Heracles and Theseus. As such, the myths about her are varied enough that they may be about several different women.