Instructor: Professor Emma Gorst
Time and venue: The second Wednesday evening at EAWLC Zoom room
For details, latest schedule, and Zoom link, please visit: Reading for Culture with Emma: Monthly Reading Group @East and West Learning Connections
Please come back to check this page often as we will update the reading materials and podcasts as it goes.
Readings for December 8, 2021:
Book 2 of the Iliad by Homer. This is an Ancient Greek epic poem that influenced a lot of modern European literature and culture.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343306510_Homer_Iliad_Book_2
Podcast for Emma’s lecture on The Confessions of Saint Augustine in November 2021:
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-fqftp-113da5d
Readings for November 10, 2021:
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
https://wesleyscholar.com/wp-
– I would like to focus on books 4, 6 and 9. These books start on the following pages in the PDF:
Page 92, Page 134, Page 209
Podcast for Emma’s lecture on Consolation of Philosophy in October 2021:
https://open.spotify.com/
Readings for October 13, 2021
Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.
The link for THE READING:
https://www.exclassics.com/consol/consol.pdf
Podcast for Emma’s Paradiso lecture in September 2021:
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-gpf3u-10fcaf8
Readings for September 8, 2021
Dante’s Paradiso
Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet who died in 1321. He influenced Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Dante’s poem The Paradiso is divided into 33 Cantos (a canto = a chapter or song).
The Paradiso is one of three parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It can be read here –
https://digitaldante.columbia.
Canto 1 of the Paradiso
https://digitaldante.columbia.
When you click on the Canto number, from the first link, you will go straight to a page with the explanation of the Canto. However, you should click on “texts and translations” to read the actual text of the Canto.
Please take a look at texts of these cantos –
Cantos I-V (1 to 5)
Canto X (10)
Canto XVIII (18)
Canto XXXIII (33)
In the lecture I’m not going to discuss Christian imagery as such, although Dante’s express purpose is obviously to promote Christian values and beliefs. Instead I’m more interested in the poetry he uses to express these ideas. For example, what kind of natural imagery does he use, and what sort of images speak to us still. I want to know what you think of the imagery.
Is it poetic? We talked about poetry in July – and how poetry is good if it
imitates good things, according to Aristotle. Poetry is good if it evokes
human emotions that make us think about what it means to be human. Do you agree? Think about it and please pay attention to any images of the following things:
– birds (larks, eagles, wings, flying)
– other natural things (fish, water, ice, snow, and so on)
– fire (candles, sparks, burning)
– light (fire, sunlight, candles, reflections)
– music, symmetry, patterns, order
Podcast for Emma’s lecture in July 2021:
https://open.spotify.com/episo
Readings for July 14, 2021:
- Aristotle’s Rhetoric, chapters 1-6
https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/stasis/2017/honeycutt/aristotle/rhet1-1.html
Index / overview of topics here –
https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/stasis/2017/honeycutt/aristotle/oneindex.html
- Aristotle’s Poetics Parts 1-10 (I – X)
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html
Please attention to the words purgation (catharsis) and reversal (Peripeteia). The “six parts” of tragedy are important too. Poetry is seen as a kind of imitation of life. Aristotle’s theory is only one of many theories of “what poetry is.” Although the Poetics might seem to be just about “poetry,” in fact the theory was later applied to many mediums – art, music, poetry, drama, fiction, and so on.
See also – a short overview of what is important in the Poetics
http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/aristotle/
Podcast of Emma’s lecture in June 2021:
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-cz5w2-10823e0
Readings for June 9, 2021:
Link for Antigone:
https://mthoyibi.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/antigone_2.pdf
Link for Oedipus – Rex:
https://www.fusd1.org/cms/lib/AZ01001113/Centricity/Domain/1385/Full%20text%20Oedipus.pdf
These plays are very short. Emma recommends reading the whole of each play. If you are short for time, you could read one play and a summary of the other:
https://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_sophocles_antigone.html
Podcast of Emma’s lecture in May 2021:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5FYLELmfyZlzuuQpkjn7LN?si=ztE3nwY1S6OZIxJCQ_AsFg
Reading for May 12 2021 is the Symposium.
Here are 2 links – Emma talked about the nature of love.
https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Plato-Symposium.pdf
http://faculty.sgc.edu/rkelley/SYMPOSIUM.pdf
Podcast of Emma’s lecture in April 2021:
https://chryllus.podbean.com/e/the-book-of-john-and-the-story-of-orpheus/
Readings for April 14, 2021:
The Bible – The Book of John
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%201&version=NIV
Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 10
https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph10.htm
Podcasts of Emma’s lecture in March 2021
https://chryllus.podbean.com/e/genesis-and-metamorphoses/
https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-2ybr5-fd5284
Readings for March 10, 2021:
Genesis Books 1-4 (Creation, Eden, and the serpent, Cain and Abel)
Genesis 1
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201&version=NIV
Genesis 2
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202&version=NIV
Genesis 3
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203&version=NIV
Genesis 4
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%204&version=NIV
Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 1, lines 1-200
https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph.htm#488381088
In summary, here is a general list for the year 2021.
Month 1: Ovid’s Metamorphoses lines 1-200 and The Bible – Genesis
Month 2: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 10 (Orpheus) and The Bible – The Book of John
Month 3: Plato’s Symposium
Month 4: Oedipus Rex and Antigone
Month 5: Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics, Lactantius, and Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy
Month 6: Virgil’s Aeneid
Month 7: Dante’s Paradiso, Cantos 1-5; Inferno, Cantos 1-3
Month 8: Boccaccio’s Decameron, sections TBD
Month 9: Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, sections TBD