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Eros The Bittersweet
''Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay'' (1986) is the first book of criticism by the Canadian poet, essayist, translator, and classicist Anne Carson. A reworking of her 1981 doctoral thesis ''Odi et Amo Ergo Sum'' ("I Hate and I Love, Therefore I Am"), ''Eros the Bittersweet'' "laid the groundwork for her subsequent publications, formulating the ideas on desire that would come to dominate her poetic output", and establishing her "style of patterning her writings after classical Greek literature". Summary The book traces the concept of eros in ancient Greece through its representations in writings of the time. It examines eros as a simultaneous experience of pleasure and pain, as exemplified by a word of Sappho's creation: "glukupikron" (the "bittersweet" of the book's title). Carson considers how triangulations of desire appear in the writings of Sappho, ancient Greek novelists (Longus, Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, and Chariton), and Plato (in his ''Phaedrus''). Her analysis of S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Carson
Anne Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor. Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across the United States and Canada since 1979, including McGill, Michigan, NYU, and Princeton. With more than twenty books of writings and translations published to date, Carson was awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, has won the Lannan Literary Award, two Griffin Poetry Prizes, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Princess of Asturias Award, the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry and the PEN/Nabokov Award, and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005 for her contribution to Canadian letters. Life and work Early life Anne Carson was born in Toronto on June 21, 1950. Her father was a banker and she grew up in a number of small Canadian towns. Education In high school, a Latin instructor introduced Carson to the world and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phaedrus (dialogue)
The ''Phaedrus'' (; grc-gre, Φαῖδρος, Phaidros}), written by Plato, is a dialogue between Plato's protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus, an interlocutor in several dialogues. The ''Phaedrus'' was presumably composed around 370 BCE, about the same time as Plato's ''Republic'' and ''Symposium''. Although ostensibly about the topic of love, the discussion in the dialogue revolves around the art of rhetoric and how it should be practiced, and dwells on subjects as diverse as metempsychosis (the Greek tradition of reincarnation) and erotic love. One of the dialogue's central passages is the famous Chariot Allegory, which presents the human soul as composed of a charioteer, a good horse tending upward to the divine, and a bad horse tending downward to material embodiment. Setting Socrates runs into Phaedrus on the outskirts of Athens. Phaedrus has just come from the home of Epicrates of Athens, where Lysias, son of Cephalus, has given a speech on love. Socrates, stating that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The L Word
''The L Word'' is a television drama that aired on Showtime from January 18, 2004 to March 8, 2009. The series follows the lives of a group of lesbian and bisexual women who live in West Hollywood, California. The premise originated with Ilene Chaiken, Michele Abbot and Kathy Greenberg; Chaiken is credited as the primary creator of the series and also served as its executive producer. ''The L Word'' featured television's first ensemble cast of lesbian and bisexual female characters, and its portrayal of lesbianism was groundbreaking at the time. One of the series' pioneering hallmarks was its explicit depiction of lesbian sex from the female gaze, at a time when lesbian sex was "virtually invisible elsewhere on television." It was also the first television series written and directed by predominantly queer women. ''The L Word'' franchise led to the spin-off reality show ''The Real L Word'' (2010–2012) as well as the documentary film '' L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin'' (2014) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autobiography Of Red
''Autobiography of Red'' (1998) is a verse novel by Anne Carson, based loosely on the myth of Geryon and the Tenth Labor of Herakles, especially on surviving fragments of the lyric poet Stesichorus' poem '' Geryoneis''. Summary ''Autobiography of Red'' is the story of a boy named Geryon who, at least in a metaphorical sense, is the Greek monster Geryon. It is unclear how much of the mythological Geryon's connection to the story's Geryon is literal, and how much is metaphorical. Sexually abused by his older brother, his affectionate mother too weak-willed to protect him, the monstrous young boy finds solace in photography and in a romance with a young man named Herakles. Herakles leaves his young lover at the peak of Geryon's infatuation; when Geryon comes across Herakles several years later on a trip to Argentina, Herakles' new lover Ancash forms the third point of a love triangle. The novel ends, ambiguously, with Geryon, Ancash, and Herakles stopping outside a bakery near a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and his ideology was disseminated through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay "Nature". Following this work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence."Richardson, p. 263. Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, '' Essays: Firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel De Montaigne
Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne ( ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), also known as the Lord of Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight. Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous Western writers; his massive volume ''Essais'' contains some of the most influential essays ever written. During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that "I am myself the matter of my book" was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne came to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seneca The Elder
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Elder (; c. 54 BC – c. 39 AD), also known as Seneca the Rhetorician, was a Roman writer, born of a wealthy equestrian family of Corduba, Hispania. He wrote a collection of reminiscences about the Roman schools of rhetoric, six books of which are extant in a more or less complete state and five others in epitome only. His principal work, a history of Roman affairs from the beginning of the Civil Wars until the last years of his life, is almost entirely lost to posterity. Seneca lived through the reigns of three significant emperors; Augustus (ruled 27 BC – 14 AD), Tiberius (ruled 14–37 AD) and Caligula (ruled 37–41 AD). He was the father of Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, best known as a Proconsul of Achaia; his second son was the dramatist and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (''Lucius''), who was tutor of Nero, and his third son, Marcus Annaeus Mela, became the father of the poet Lucan. Biography Seneca the Elder is the first of the gens A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John D'Agata
John D’Agata (born 1975) is an American essayist. He is the author or editor of six books of nonfiction, including ''The Next American Essay'' (2003), ''The Lost Origins of the Essay'' (2009) and ''The Making of the American Essay''—all part of the trilogy of essay anthologies called "A New History of the Essay." He also wrote ''The Lifespan of a Fact'', "Halls of Fame," and "About a Mountain." D'Agata has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. He is the M.F. Carpenter Professor of Writing in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Personal life After growing up in Boston and on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, D’Agata attended the liberal preparatory school Northfield Mount Hermon on a scholarship. He graduated from Hobart College with a bachelor's degree in classics and English literature. In 1998 D’Agata moved to Iowa City, where he went on to complete hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sappho 31
Sappho 31 is an archaic Greek lyric poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho of the island of Lesbos. The poem is also known as phainetai moi (φαίνεταί μοι) after the opening words of its first line. It is one of Sappho's most famous poems, describing her love for a young woman. Fragment 31 is one of Sappho's most famous works, and has been the subject of numerous translations and adaptations from ancient times to the present day. Celebrated for its portrayal of intense emotion, the poem has influenced modern conceptions of lyric poetry, and its depiction of desire continues to influence writers today. Preservation Fragment 31 was one of the few substantial fragments of Sappho to survive from ancient times, preserved in the first-century AD treatise on aesthetics ''On the Sublime''. Four stanzas are well-preserved, followed by part of one more line; this, as well as Catullus' adaptation of the poem, suggests that there was originally one more stanza of the poem, often ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chariton
Chariton of Aphrodisias ( grc-gre, Χαρίτων ὁ Ἀφροδισιεύς) was the author of an ancient Greek novel probably titled ''Callirhoe'' (based on the subscription in the sole surviving manuscript). However, it is regularly referred to as ''Chaereas and Callirhoe'' (which more closely aligns with the title given at the head of the manuscript). Evidence of fragments of the text on papyri suggests that the novel may have been written in the mid 1st century AD, making it the oldest surviving complete ancient prose romance and the only one to make use of apparent historiographical features for background verisimilitude and structure, in conjunction with elements of Greek mythology, as Callirhoe is frequently compared to Aphrodite and Ariadne and Chaereas to numerous heroes, both implicitly and explicitly. As the fiction takes place in the past, and historical figures interact with the plot, ''Callirhoe'' may be understood as the first historical novel; it was later imitat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Achilles Tatius
Achilles Tatius (Greek: Ἀχιλλεὺς Τάτιος, ''Achilleus Tatios'') of Alexandria was a Roman-era Greek writer of the 2nd century AD whose fame is attached to his only surviving work, the ancient Greek novel, or ''romance'', '' The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon''. Life and minor works Eustathius of Thessalonica (in his commentary on Homer's ''Odyssey'' 14.350), the ''Suda'', Photius, in his '' Bibliotheca'' (cod. 87), and the manuscript tradition all affirm he lived and wrote in Alexandria. The papyrus, and linguistic evidence demonstrate he flourished early in the 2nd century AD. Suda preserves a tradition that "He became at last a Christian and a bishop." There are literary parallels between Leucippe and Clitophon and the Christian Acts of Andrew, a roughly contemporary composition. The ''Suda'' also ascribes to the author a work on the sphere (in Greek ), a fragment of which, professing to be an introduction to the ''Phaenomena'' of Aratus, may st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
