4 sections 

World Literature I

Ancient Period (pages 1-23 of The Longman Anthology of World Literature)

Reading Guide

 

Directions: Read the assigned pages, looking for the answers to the questions below.  Word in quotes come directly for the text and are meant to help you locate the answer.

Note 1: While the text refers to “B.C.E” (Before the Common Era) and “C.E.” (Common Era), I continue to “buck the system” and use BC and AD, respectively. As a well-rounded student, you should know both.

Note 2: We are currently in the AD third millennium. 1^st millennium BC was 1000-0. 2^nd millennium BC was 2000-1001. 3^rd millennium BC was 3000-2001. AD 1^st millennium was AD 1-1000. AD 2^nd millennium was 1001-2000. 

 

1. What four “innovations” of the ancient period helped to shape it? (Hint: Three of them are listed as “firsts.”)

a.

b.

c.

d.

1. What “invention” was integral in the four innovations listed above?

1. Who wrote down the teachings of the “great religious leaders” while also playing a “major role in the worldwide spread of the religions”?

1. What three benefits did writing also give “cultures”?

a.

b.

c.

 

The Beginnings of World Literature

1. What were the approximate years of the “first great bodies of literary texts”?

1. Where were the four places these literary texts were written?

a.

b.

c.

d.

1. Where do ancient writers look “to understand the present”?

1. What did each of the following do:

1. Stories of creation—

1. Epic accounts of battles—

1. Laws—

1. The works of the ancient writers became what “for later writing in their own cultures and beyond” as well as shaping “our understanding and practice of literature to present day”?

1. Because “writing was employed mostly in courts and temples in the cities” the “origins” of the first ancient writers are “largely” what?

1. “Pastoral poems” are poems about what?

1. What were the pastoral poets “dreaming of”?

1. When did “cultivation of crops” begin?

1. What did farming “produce” and “allow for”?

1. What did the Sumerians have in their “large cities” as early as 5000 BC?

1. Rivers were VERY important during the ancient period. What two necessities were they “conduits of”?

a.

b.

1. From what “Greek phrase” does “Mesopotamia” derive its name?

1. Between which two rivers can Mesopotamia be found?

a.

b.

1. Which river forms the “backbone of Egypt”?

1. In approximately what year was Egypt “united into a single country”?

1. What type of “writing developed in Egypt”?

1. Which rivers were important in the following places:

1. China

1. India

1. During which millennia were the first empires “born”?

1. Over which areas did the following empires control:

1. Babylonian/Assyrian—

1. Egyptian—

1. What did “great writers like Virgil both celebrate and probed” and for whom did they do this?

 

Travel, Migration, and Trade

1. When “entire peoples journeyed in search of new grazing lands and new fields to farm,” what did it create?

1. Where was the “silk road”?

1. What did Phoenicians and Greeks send out that “established contacts around the Mediterranean”?

1. What does most “ancient literature play to”?

 

Lyric and Epic

1. “The invention of writing allowed” who to “record their poems”?

1. What musical instrument lent its name to “lyric poetry”?

1. “[I]n all of the ancient cultures presented [in this textbook], lyric poetry was recorded before” what other genre?

1. What were the two ways “poets could be seen”?

1. Powerful…

1. Modestly as…

1. In China, “any educated person, male or female, was expected to be able” to do what?

1. Which four ancient cultures had “epic poetry”?

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. Which two ancient cultures did not have “epic poetry”?

1.

2.

1. “Works labeled epic” can be defined by what four characteristics?

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. “Epics present a range of forms and styles, through which their authors probe” what?

 

Myth, Legend, and History

1. How did “[m]ost ancient cultures [reckon] years”?

1. “Myth” has “many meanings. Often today we call something a myth simply to say” what?

1. “[I]n ancient Greek, the term mythos… meant” what?

1. Later “myth” referred to “early doings of the gods, or the gods and mortals together, in distant, shadowy past.” The term “myth,” then, “in the ancient world meant” what?

1. “Anonymous in origin, handed down over the years from one teller to another, a myth would vary in form and content as it circulated  within a culture and beyond, and over time myths could be” what?

1. History is indirectly referred to in the first sentence of this section as “verifiable fact.” “Legend,” we are told, falls “in between myth and history proper” and is “traditionally” what?

1. “Often a single work will blend” what, which challenges “us to see the world in a new way”?

1. How many “manuscripts” or “copies” of an ancient text usually “existed,” causing the “majority” to be lost over time?

1. The ancient literature that survived both “warfare and disruption” were “rare exceptions” that were “widely circulated”  and “preserved” because they were what?

1. What are the four mediums used by ancient writers as they “captured their world”?

 

The Ancient Near East

1. Where does world literature begin?

1. Where is the “fertile crescent”?

1. Around 3000 BC, the Sumerians began using what system of writing?

1. Also, around 3000 BC, the Egyptians use a system of writing called what?

1. During the 2^nd millennium BC (1999-1000 BC), the first of what type of “alphabet was created”, eventually “becoming the alphabet we use today”?

 

Empires, Cities, and Nomads

1. “The first writers faced the challenge of recording” what?

1. “Mesopotamia” was “made up of” what?

1. Because many different empires’ influences (Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hittite, for example) and immigration, what happened to “Mesopotamia’s ethnic composition”?

1. When did Egypt “achieve unity as a country”?

1. What two factors contributed to Egypt remaining “a single country with an unbroken culture for…more than three thousand years”?

1.

2.

1. For both Mesopotamia and Egypt, the key to “prosperity and life” was what?

1. Name the river(s) associated with each place:

1. Mesopotamia—

1. Egypt—

1. What “allowed for the growth and support of cities and the development of urban culture staring in the fourth millennium BC”?

1. What did citizens of the newly formed cities of the ancient world think about their cities?

1. In what region did the “semi nomadic herdsmen” live?

1. How did Semi nomadic herdsmen view the following:

1. cities’ kings?

1. Their own clan leaders?

1. The Tower of Babel?

1. How did Babylonians view the following:

1. Their city?

1. Tower of Babel?

 

Courts and Temples

1. What did the “polytheistic societies” (those who worshipped many gods) “develop”?

1. What were each of the “gods and goddesses…associated with”?

1. “In the Near East as in medieval and early modern Europe, noble and especially royal women could” do what?

1. “In Hebrew wisdom tradition, wisdom itself—a female noun in Hebrew, hokmah–came to be personified as” what?

 

The Rebirth of the Past

1. What book “contained the only ancient Near Eastern literature that anyone could read” for “nearly two thousand years”?

1. The text explains that the term “Near East” was coined by the nineteenth century archeologists and scholars who sought out and deciphered these works. The people themselves, for example the “residents of cities like Babylon and Thebes typically thought of themselves as living” where?

 

Classical Greece

1. What were “the earliest writing in the Greek world…written on”?

1. Who were the “Minoans”?

1. Who were the “Mycenaeans”?

1. When were tales like the Iliad, Odyssey, and Oedipus first written down?

1. From whom did the Greeks “borrow” an alphabet and what did that add to it to create a “concise writing system that serves as the basis of our modern Roman alphabet”?

 

Immortals

1. What does Hesoid’s Theogony tell the story of?

1. In addition to “many gods and goddesses” what else does “Greek polytheism encompass”?

1. “Some of the most beautiful poems, before there were poems in a purely literary sense, are” what?

 

Cities

1. What is a “polis”?

1. What did a polis incorporate?

1. What three aspects “differed from city to city”?

1. Describe each city listed below, according to what the text provides:

1.      Sparta

2.      Corinth

3.      Thebes

4.      Athens

1. Define “aristrocracy”?

1. Who was “exiled from Lesbos because of her implication in [aristocratic] struggles”?

1. Who did the Greeks refer to as “tyrant”?

1. What did “tyrants…only gradually [become] associated with”?

1. What did tyrants “frequently [try] to establish”?

1. What “new form of government…evolved especially (though not only) in Athens after the late sixth century BC”?

1. Who “ruled themselves” in a democracy?

1. Who was “excluded” in this early form of democracy”?

1. What did “Athenian democracy [encourage] and [support]”?

1. The “questioning of received truths…came to fruition in the circle of Socrates and his friends…who took the drama of the fifth-century city and transformed it into” what?

1. Describe “Platonic dialogues”?

 

Drama

1. “Greek drama” probably began in which century?

1. In a similar fashion to modern-day American Idol, who chose the “plays to be performed and then awarded victory to the best” in the dramatic festivals of Athens?

1. The open-air theaters of the time were comprised of stone benches that “rose in ranks above” who?

1. In front of the benches and thrones, there was what shaped “dancing floor”?

1. There was also a “building façade, called a skene” (tent) from which who emerged? 

1. “Some dramatists used a crane, ending plays with the appearance of a god or goddess on high”; this is referred to as what?

1. What does the word “tragedy” mean and what might they have “referred originally to”?

1. What was a “dithyramb”?

1. Unlike the dramatic festivals that were decided upon by citizens, “tragedians presented their plays” to whom?

1. The three chosen plays were to be performed. Who was to pay for the “training of the actors and choruses”?

1. Where were the stories for the tragedies “drawn from”?

1. What were tragedies able to express “indirectly” that “speeches in the democratic assembly could not”?

 

Gender

1. The “powerful goddesses…and heroines of the remote past” contrasted who?

1.   “Daughters and wives and mothers of citizens had no political rights…and were represented by” whom?

1. With the exception of Sappho, “there remains very little writing by” who?

1. “Male virtue was strongly connected to” what?

1. “[I]nitiation into the army marked” what two rites of passage in a man’s life?

1.

2.

 

Barbarians

1. Other people the Greeks “came into contact with…around the Black Sea and Mediterranean” were referred to as what?

1. Barbarians could have what three types of status:

1.

2.

3.

1. Herodotus’ “interest in the Greeks’ near and distant neighbors persists throughout Greek literature and [depicts] the Greeks” as having what two feelings:

1.

2.

 

Alexander and After

1. Who fought the following wars:

1. Persian Wars—

1. Peloponnesian War—

1. Who “came from the north and defeated the alliance of Greek cities in 338 BC”?

1. Who inherited the throne after Phillip of Macedon and what was his relationship to Phillip?

1. After he “conquered the Greeks” who else did Alexander conquer?

1. When did Alexander die?

1. What did Alexander’s “heirs, his generals,” do with his kingdom after Alexander’s death?

1. What four aspects of the Greek world did the “Hellenistic” rulers “try to impose…on the indigenous cultures”?

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. Although Alexander the Great’s name became the name of many Hellenistic cities, the “Egyptian Alexandria became the intellectual capital of the Hellenistic world” and was “inhabited by” which six people groups:

1.

2.

3.  

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let’s say I chose from Wikibook a section on multiculturalism, then reading 2 will consist of another reading on multiculturalism which challenges the views expressed in the Wikibook’s reading. And reading 3 will be a reading on multiculturalism chosen by you, an article, chapter, or essay from a newspaper, magazine; it can come from the web or a book or a journal.

you can write more, debating which argument is better. It may be that you disagree with reading 2, and decide to choose a reading 3 that makes more sense to you; then your journal should reflect your reasons why the arguments in reading 3 make more sense than the arguments in 2. Or, it may be the other way around, you actually agree with the reading I chose, 2, and although you chose a reading with a different view, 3, you may not agree with it, and so you explain why. However,  you may also choose a reading which agrees with 2, and your notes then are about these two readings say and why you agree with both. 

———

what I need in this task is the following:

reading 2: Why Women Make Less Than Men

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303592404577361883019414296.html

reading 3: chosen by the writer as explained above.

Note:

Read the following Instructions and write 3-4 pages paper as per as given instructions. Include headings before starting each new section. Must include 3-4 scholarly references in APA. Your answer must be 100% original.

 

helping me with a thesis statment, also introduction paragragh re writing it.

 

Will add extra 5$ if he writes a Plot paragraph of the essay and a sentence from each paragraph explaing what is being explained.