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Exploring the Foundations of Democracy through the Magna Charta and Shakespeare's King John A Monument to Shakespeare Influenced by Ben Jonson The influence of the ancient Greek school is evident in the work of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Elizabethan Era, and Revolutionary times. We will prepare ourselves to understand and thereby appreciate exceptional poetry; for example, a volume available at the following link Victor Hugo's Les Années Funestes and after Module 4 The Blueprint, which is at the end of this page, follows these Modules to the Program Development in Literature
Module 1: Foundations in Literature. Please review the following as an introduction into the literary masterpiece: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34746641/Aesthetics-and-Universality-in-Perspective Module 2: Further
Foundations in Literature; briefly review and analyze exemplary works;
identify principles of masterpiece style. Even during the 19th
century, University and/or tutored students learned of classical principles
defined by Aristotle, such as the following, which are important to consider.
Aristotle had described the Tragedy, which was improvised originally in terms of
the Cyclopes popular during those times, as an attempt to convey individuals in
a manner which is better than they are currently.
On the other hand, comedy attempted to convey those individuals in a
manner which is worse than they are currently. The Dorians were dramas (drontas—individuals
in action), and their reveling (komazein) in villages (kumai) evoked activities
that the poet and/or playwright would record and share with all intention on a
scale as grandly constructed as the work itself. Of further relevance is the
Elegy—the elegiac poet, which referred also to the “epic poet”,
significant characteristics of the dithyramb of the original amphitheater. • Does the work evoke
transcendence? • Does a protagonist
begin and complete a course of action that unites instances of reversal and
recognition so as to compel katharsis
or moments of katharsis? • Does chaotic evidence
exist of emotions to compel the pity and fear that inhibit the orderly course of
action? • Do you detect taxonomic
principles—components of plot, denouement, resolution or anti-resolution in a
conflicting manner; components of tragedy and dramatic tragedy and mimetic
impulse? • Do you detect any
reversal of fortune (periipeteia)? • Does the protagonist
experience recognition (anagnorisis)
of his/her fate in that reversal of fortune? • Aristotle had described
the importance of metaphor. Are any metaphors evident in the work? • Is any denouement
evident as typical and universal consequence or solution to the conflict? • Does the diction follow
a metrical pattern—are the strong rhyme and rhythm flowing as music (melopoeia)? • Consider evidence of
fable—contexture of incidents or plot. Explain. • Does the work consist
of all of the six components that identify tragedy? • Does the work consist
of all of the six components that identify tragedy (contexture of incidents or
plot), manner, diction, sentiments, decoration, and music? Explain. • Is hope evident to
transcend or to sense transcendence—an escape to resolve problems in the
physical world through vision? • Does evidence exist of
surrealist lyrical qualities that evoke the supernatural? Module
3.
The Importance of Tragedy; how tragedy
is important to the revelation of new knowledge and rationale; how tragedy is important to all areas of
literature; how concepts and relations of Katharsis apply to other dynamic
functions. Dichotomy: the active real world versus the
visionary evoked through reading, outlets of current physical movement and
properties, both influencing transcendence of the immediate environment, as
prevalent themes of tragedians, for example.
Even though some independent writers have varied their meter, rhyme
schemes, and style to deviate from classical conventions of epic, tragedy, and
comedy, for example, their work nonetheless does follow significantly a varying
range of those conventions. Melancholy may vary in intensity from light to
revolutionary and nihilistic. The fundamental tragic vision, however, is
basically the same—the spectacle of a highly respected individual whose
idealisms, respect, and courage conflict with his/her restricting nature that
must hopelessly struggle in an indifferent or rivaling universe. Traditionally,
the classic tragic hero was a hero or individual of significant prestige or
honor whose significance is undone through a personal flaw (hubris),
by the will of a supernatural dimension or through relentless support of a value
or desire. Modern tragedy developed from the struggle against fate, or the force
of hubris, to the conflict with genealogical, social, psychological,
environmental, and semantically idiosyncratic forces. Original tragic plays of
Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus dramatically compelled the audience and
reader to pity, fear, sometimes compassion; thereby generating the simultaneous
consequence for a katharsis of those emotions.
Among the first tragedians, Euripides’ innovation of Andromache
did convey the message about the unsupportable and needless sinister suffering
and inhumane behaviors that prompted and sustained war. The components of
tragedy that reveal the mortal struggle against fate or the force of hubris
indicate the caustic criticism and subtle analysis of psychological motives
through Euripides’ characterization, for example. Euripides even challenged
the common Athenian attitude about the subordination of women in his tragedy Alcestis;
and, the spiteful Athenian attitude for foreign women in Medea.
Furthermore, Euripides attacked the prevalent attitude and inhumane treatment of
illegitimate children in Hippolytus.
These tragic plays were introduced by a choral ode, also composed by the
tragedian. The other two original tragedians, Sophocles and Aeschyles, also
sought to search for effective revelations and insight—the truth and
introspective understanding to correct the current brutality of the moral order,
which abounded in the massacre and annihilation of entire communities. Through
impressive grandeur of language and prolific works, Sophocles and Aeschylus
magnificently portrayed and deciphered the conflicts between historic heroes in The
Persians and in mythology in Agamemnon,
scrutinizing between old and new
policy and law in Eumenides, and
between supernatural and mortal beings in Prometheus
Bound. Another critical issue about the ancient playwrights involves the
elaborate and intricate costumery in which the tragedians did clad their
characters. Through the scrutiny of these playwrights, innovated through the
original Academy and Poetics of Aristotle who began to derive variations of
style, the Comedy did evolve through these same tragedians.
Thus, a dichotomy of forces prevails in the apocalypse suggested by a
physical or communicative property of highest artistic quality. One must observe
from his/her real surroundings the work that influences a visionary escape
through summaries, dialogues, colors, imagery, and attitudes. One must grasp the
components that suggest the mortal dilemma that may be surmounted by
transcendence, the process of concepts, conceptualization, progression,
socialization, and behaviors. Dating to the first tragedians of ancient times,
the first tragedians, Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet is perhaps the most known tragedy today. Family feuding results
in misunderstandings and the unnecessary mortality of young lovers, for example.
First published in 1562 as a poem by Englishman Arthur Brooke, who had
translated Masuccio Salernitano’s original version of Il
Novellino in 1476, the play had also been treated by Luigi da Porto in
approximately 1530 before Shakespeare adapted it to his inkhorn. Beginning with
the chorus typical of the ancient tragedy, which introduces the abounding
reveling of the Verona households, Montecchi and Capeletti in the Da Porto
version; the Montagues and the Capulets in the Shakespeare version, Shakespeare
did name the character who advocates for good will “Benito.” Benito was an
invention that is accredited to the Bard that sought for the reconciliation of
family differences that existed between the Montagnes and the Capulets. Hence,
one detects that tragedians throughout time have studied the psyche of
protagonists and antagonists as they attempt to reveal to their audiences the
pitiful mortal conditions that could be resolved conscientiously and
diplomatically, rather than through bloodshed and further preventable fatality.
Furthermore, the apocalypse and transcendence that the ancients and the inkhorn
compel through their treatment of tragic conditions that could be corrected are
a part of the aesthetic quality of literary masterpieces.
The recounting of the following works is important to understanding Hugo,
for example, whose innovations vary to some degree but not considerably from the
original ancient poets-playwrights. They are so important to Hugo, for example,
that he refers to them in his work. Even James Joyce’s Ulysses
is an introspective search through his stream-of-consciousness style into the
human faculty to generate a solution to the mortal dilemma, and I suggest a
review into the psyche of the protagonists and antagonists of these works which
present bounding conflicts. Prometheus Bound, The
Persians, Hippolytus (which includes Electra, to whom Hugo refers in his
Les Années Funeste), Medea, Trojan Women,
Andromache, Helen, and Electra. These
introduce us to psychological conditions that influential tragedians attempted
to address even during ancient times, from the original Greek Academy. Do these
conflicts resolve themselves? That is the foremost question. Module 4: Considerations: Conventional Style; review common
literary terms; relate those terms with the influence of the ancients, such as
Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Aristophanes; considering the following
will enable one to decipher the true intentions of the literary artist who
follows classical or neoclassical principles:
Even Dante (Durante Degli Alighieri, 1265-1321) had referred to Aristotle
as the “Master of those who know.” From science, physics, rhetoric,
metaphysics, and natural history to Poetics, Aristotle observed, analyzed, and
documented all sides of every spectrum. Syllogism and dialectic were evident in
the approaches of philosophers and dramatic writers to reason or logic, and Nichomachean
Ethics and Eudemian Ethics were
the foundations of his own treatises, which indicated that mortals did seek a
happiness that could not be achieved through wealth, fame, and wealth. Rational
principle, virtue, and the contemplation of philosophic truth were essential to
the secure longevity and health of the community, and instructors did imitate their instructors,
while their plots did imitate important issues that they endured and analyzed
toward perspective improvement. Aristotle had been taught by Plato in the
Academy and Lyceum in which Plato had learned from Socrates; the semantics and
diction evoked by the teachings of the teacher of wisdom are evident in the
Dialogues of Plato and the treatises of Aristotle. The diction of Socrates and
his students sought a universal definition of virtue in all areas of ethics,
knowledge, and logic.
To Aristotle, Poetics and tragic drama are achieved through unity of
action, place, and time. Both epic poetry and Tragedy should be achieved through
the imitation of verse that characters express of a divine awareness—a
cognizance of wisdom. Butcher recognizes the praxis
of Aristotle as action—the motivation
from which deeds originate (Aristotle & Butcher, 2011; Aristotle, Butcher,
& Fergusson, 1961)—a psychic energy that projects and works itself
outwards. All of the inspiration of ancient Greek tragedians treated plot
through modes of pathos and purpose to the concluding perception, parts of the
work which Aristotle and his students identified as “quantitative parts.”
Prologue, Episode, Exode, and Choric song (Aristotle et al, 1961). He also
concerned himself with what he recognized as the “organic parts” of his
plots—the action that gives rise to the instance of the catastrophic finale: (1) Reversal of Situation; (2) Recognition; and (3) Pathos (i.e., “Scene of Suffering”) (Aristotle
et al., 1961, 16) Other terms important to
the tragedians who had been influenced by the wisdom of Socrates and by the
quest for truth and justice: • Katharsis (cleansing of emotions) • Peripeteia (reversal of fortune) • Anagnorsis (to experience recognition) • Metaphor • Aristotle’s Rhetoric • Tragedy as a unity of plot or contexture of
incidences; manner, diction, sentiments, decoration, and music • Denoement • The Choral Ode • Deus ex machine • The Episode (episodes of tragedy being
distinguished from those of epic) • Thought as an intellectual element that is
developed in dramatic speech or dialogue • Gender of Nouns The review of common
literary terms in respect to the ancients—Aristotle, Plato, Socrates,
Aristotle, Euripedes, and Sophocles does relate directly to their generations of
students. Please share your reviews in respect to this important humanitarian
issue. ♦ Pertinent titles
that address these issues which one will note in classic masterpieces, such as
Hugo’s Années Funeste, for example
are as follows: Appelbaum, S. (Gen Ed.)
& Koss, R. (1997). Aristotle poetics.
Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Aristotle & Butcher, S.
H. (2011). The poetics of Aristotle.
Martino Fine Books. Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books. Aristotle, Butcher, S. H.
(Translator), & Fergusson, F. (Introduction). (1961). Aristotle’s
poetics (dramabook). NY: Hill and Wang. Asimov, Isaac (1970). Asimov’s
guide to Shakespeare. NY: Random House Publishing. Dunn,
A., & Singer, A. (2000). Literary
aesthetics: a reader. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Hammond,
N. G. L. (2001). Aristotle poetics.
University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Sachs,
J. (2001; 2005). Aristotle: poetics. Internet
Encycopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-poe/
Aesthetics Through the Classical Masterpiece--An Introduction and Program Development Blueprint |