Brilliant Minds

Fall 2013 Brilliant Minds preview

The books on our reading list for Fall 2013 are:

The Epic of Gilgamesh; Book of Job; Ovid's Metamorphoses; Murasaki's Tale of Genji; Shakespeare's Richard III; Austen's Emma; Poe's Tales; Woolf's To The Lighthouse; Achebe's Things Fall Apart; and Saramago's Blindness. Recommended editions to be announced.

Lyrical Ballads selections

For our discussion of Lyrical Ballads (1798 edition) by Wordsworth & Coleridge, the two must read poems are:

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey".

Other poems to consider are: 

• "Goody Blake and Harry Gill"
• "Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman"
• "We Are Seven"
• "The Thorn"
• "The Idiot Boy"
• "Expostulation and Reply"
• "The Tables Turned"

 Also, I strongly suggest you read the "Preface" to the expanded 1800 and 1802 editions of Lyrical Ballads, which you can find here below:

Preface to Lyrical Ballads 1800

Preface to Lyrical Ballads 1802

I mentioned Renata Adler's use of the "Ancient Mariner" in her novel Pitch Dark. Here's a link to the reissue of the novel at Amazon: Pitch Dark (NYRB Classics)

 

Preview for Summer 2013

Here is a preview of the book selections for Literature for the 21st Century, Summer 2013:

Alice Munro, Dear Life; Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies; Louise Erdrich, The Round House; Joydeep Roy-Battacharya, The Watch; Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King; Bernardo Atxaga, Seven Houses in France; Mo Yan,Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

Readings for Paradise Lost

Here are the reading selections to concentrate on for our sessions on Milton's Paradise Lost:

• Book 1, especially lines 1-26
• Book 2
• Book 3, lines 1-371
• Book 4, especially lines 295-311
• Book 5, lines 1-223
• Book 6, argument
• Book 7, lines 1-39
• Book 8 (skip if you must)
• Book 9, especially lines 886-91, 938-44
• Book 10
• Book 11, argument
• Book 12, lines 466-649

Prometheus

Here is a link to an article tracing the many & varied stories about Prometheus with references to their sources. Plenty of additional reading!

Prometheus at the Theoi Project

Spring 2013 Schedule

Here's our Reading Schedule for Pring 2013: see page 2 of linked PDF file.

Download BMinds_Spring2013syllabus

Books for Spring 2013

Here's the updated list for Brilliant Minds, Spring 2013

• Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
• Plato, "Ion"
  
• Anonymous, The Song of Roland
• Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Milton, Paradise Lost
• Sterne, Tristram Shandy
• Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• Wordsworth & Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads
• Lampedusa, The Leopard
• Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Video and visuals

I had mentioned that the Wooster Group performed Racine's Phedre, an adaptation of Euripides' Hippolytus, titled To You the Birdie. Here is a clip from YouTube: 

 

Also explore the iconic Dore illustrations of Dante's Commedia: Gallery & a dual language presentation of the text with digital annotations, e.g. Canto I

 

Dante Essentials: Second Session

I hope you and your families are well in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Most of us have power, but some are still waiting. 

My understanding is that classes are resuming this week, so we will be meeting Tuesday and Wednesday. For our second session on Dante, please add the following selections for our discussion (you can view the previsous list of selections by scrolling down or clicking here):

• Canto XIV: Capaneus
• Cantos XVI - XVII: Florence, Geryon, and usury 
• Canto XIX: Boniface and Clement
• Canto XXVIII: Schism and retribution
• Cantos XXXI - XXXIV: From the frozen lake to the morning stars

In addition, consider this Wikipedia entry on the four types of allegory.

Three Resources

A useful outline of Dante's Inferno at: italianstudies.org

Great site on performance of tragic drama: Didaskalia

Excellent but at times technical information on the meters of ancient Greek poetry (PDF file will open): Aoidoi.org