I’ll try and stay current and catch up later on any plays I miss in Amateur Reader’s AncientGreek-a-Thon at Wuthering Expctations. Up this week is Ajax, Sophocles’ earliest (probably) surviving play, first performed in the 440s BCE. Ajax has long been a character that intrigued me. In The Iliad he performs great feats, yet is […]
Trying to get caught up on everything I mean to post, and feeling frustrated and tired about running into old problems about posting comments on other blogs… A semi-quick comment on Aeschylus’ use of actual events (instead of mythic stories) in The Persians. You usually see a comment about the poet/playwright Phrynichus when there is […]
The Authenticity of ‘Prometheus Bound’ by Mark Griffith 1977: Cambridge University Press When Mark Griffith began researching this topic for his doctoral thesis he believed in the authenticity of Prometheus Bound as a work by Aeschylus, but came to the the conclusion “that the evidence which I was assembling showed Prom. consistently behaving quite differently […]
A great resource for the reading of ancient Greek plays can be found in the posts tagged at Sententiae Antiquae as Reading Greek Tragedy Online. The Reading Greek Tragedy Online discussion and reading of the play for The Persians can be found here. A reading and discussion of Aeschylus’ The Persians (translated by Ian Johnston). […]
Please note this is not intended to be a comprehensive coverage of the play (despite my logorrhea and multiple posts), just a few notes on the play that I find interesting. I’m rusty at this, but let’s give it a go. Original performance, 472 BCE The tetralogy of plays at the Great Dionysia of 472 […]
I’m going to cover some of the introductory chapters from Aeschylus in case they may help you read some of his plays. Herington’s prose is clear and to the point in these chapters and reveal much about the backdrop against which Aeschylus was writing. Herington explores what we could term Aeschylus’ world view which can […]
If you’re planning on tackling some of the ancient Greek plays or other ancient Greek or Roman literature, I’d like to recommend the Hermes Books series from Yale University Press. I think I found all but one of my books from the series in used bookstores. I’ll post a few comments from John Herington’s text […]
Amateur Reader at Wuthering Expectations will be hosting a read-along of all the ancient Greek plays this year. The order of the plays can be found at this post. The schedule is one play a week, with his posts about them on or around each Friday. The first play is Aeschylus’ The Persians, starting on […]
Join the world’s largest Dante reading group. Starting September 8th and ending on Easter 2022, we will read three cantos a week, learning from teachers who know and love Dante well. (Full site coming soon) — 100 Days of Dante Baylor University’s Honors College is hosting what it call “the world’s largest Dante reading group” […]
Sad news: Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Classics and History, prominent for his scholarship, teaching, and social and political commentary, and a longtime colorful figure at Yale, died Aug. 6 in a Washington D.C. retirement home. He was 89. Kagan, who came to Yale in 1969, was a distinguished scholar of Ancient Greek history. […]
The Landmark Ancient Histories has been one of my favorite editions for reading ancient texts. They have long mentioned upcoming editions of Polybius and Xenophon’s Anabasis as “forthcoming” on their website. Yesterday I stumbled across the listing of their edition of Anabasis on Amazon and promptly pre-ordered it. I fully expect the December 7th release […]
Welcome! I have wanted to have my own site for quite a while, so I’m giving it a try. The theme will eventually change and links may or may not work right now. My tags/categories did not transfer quite like I wanted, so I’ll be working on getting those updated. I’m sure there are other […]
St. John’s College brochure for their Summer Classics program came today and there are several tempting seminars I’d love to take. They should update their information page to reflect this year’s program (The Examined Life) in the next few days so you can see in detail what they will cover. It looks like there will […]
Undula by Bruno Schulz Translation and Afterword by Frank Garrett Seattle: Sublunary Editions, 2020 Paperback, 42 pages Time trickles with the kerosene lamp’s faint hissing. Old equipemnt rattles and creaks in the silence. Besides me in the depths of the room there are the shadows, pointy, crooked in shard, who skulk and cheme. They stretch […]
In January 2021, Dædalus became an Open Access journal. The editors of Dædalus thank you for your patience while they work to digitize the back catalog. The current edition of the quarterly journal Dædalus is available online, and as you can see from the above quote from their “About” page they are working to make […]
It has been a busy year, so I’ll take this opportunity to apologize for staying mostly silent. We have been incredibly fortunate and blessed this year in spite of everything that 2020 managed to throw at the world. What could be called my ‘workload’ multiplied this year with caretaking a friend’s property, but it has […]
Radio Prague International named Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude one of its Czech Books You Must Read. It’s an insightful and informative post that I highly recommend. Here’s a comment about the book from Esther Peters, Associate Director of the Center for East European and Russian Studies at the University of Chicago: “The world […]
I’m sure most people have seen the news that New York Review Books will release William Gaddis’ first two novels, The Recognitions and J R, this fall. From the Publishers Weekly article: NYRB editor Edwin Frank, asked why the press planned to republish what he called Gaddis’s “two showstopper doorstoppers,” said that the answer was […]
Vasily Grossman, with mother and daughter Katya Picture sourceFrom Robert Chandler’s Facebook page earlier today: A few minutes ago I received the sad news of the death of Yekaterina Vasilievna Korotkova-Grossman, the daughter of Vasily Grossman. She was someone unusually sensitive, perceptive and witty. We got on well from our very first meeting and I […]
Happy anniversary to this tweet! It couldn’t have been me judging from where Mr. Gay lives and writes. Not to mention I don’t like coffee and never drink it. I’m sure, though, I have engendered the same respone from others in coffeeshops that I have patronized for other caffeine delivery methods. Well, all that plus […]