Tag: poetry
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As You Like It, Act II
Scene 1 In Act II, the longest of the five Acts in the play, we are redirected to (presumably) the Forest of Arden where Duke Senior praises the innocence of the noblemen’s new idyllic life. He calls it “sweet”, “free from peril”, and without the “penalty of Adam”. He hearkens a golden age, but not […]
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As You Like It, Act I
Scene 1 At the outset, we encounter Orlando, an English spelling of the French hero named Roland (of Chanson de Roland, or the “Song of Roland”, the great French heroic poem from the reign of Charlemagne) bemoaning his state of affairs to the family servant Adam in an orchard. The setting is far from the […]
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On Herodotus
Herodotus’s Histories, or “Inquiries”, traces the conflicts that emerged between the Greeks and the Persians (the Achaemenid Empire), culminating in the great battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, Platea, and Mycale. Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, or modern day Bodrum in western Turkey. Much of his life was spent in Exile, living in Samos, Athens, and apparently […]
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Notes on Sappho
As with much of ancient literature, the life of Sappho is shrouded in mystery. She is said to have been a poet hailing from the islands of Lesbos and was revered in antiquity for her short songs of revelry -praising the stars, the gods, children, a woman’s love, carefree summer days, and cool evenings. We […]
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Important Reflections on the Tao Te Ching.
The Tao Te Ching, sometimes translated as the “Classic of the Virtuous Way”, is rumored to have been written by Lao Tzu. He is said to have been a sage of the royal court, or also a magistrate or astrologer, perhaps during the Warring States Period, though others claim he was a contemporary of Confucius. In […]
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What Is A Fable?
Unlike the Homeric epics or the histories recounted in the early Biblical texts, the fables of Aesop are short allegories intended to encourage appropriate actions. As elsewhere recounted, the Homeric epics are concerned with the noble deeds of great men, particularly duality between wrath of swift-fated Achilles and long-enduring Odysseus, and the Biblical texts are […]
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