Showing posts with label classic mythology and literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classic mythology and literature. Show all posts

15% Off Discounts: Best Buy for Plato: Republic Review

Plato: Republic

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Plato: Republic Review

Plato's Republic is unparalleled in its coverage of all areas of life. While Plato addresses metaphysical issues, he does so with language and analogies that most people can grasp with studious reading. But Plato talks about much more than metaphysics. Marriage, music, war, kings, procreation and more are all topics of discussion for Plato's dialog. In addition to the teachings about life, this book also offers a great introduction to philosophy. The famous "cave story" illustrates not only the purpose of philosophy, but also the inherent difficulties. While this book is absolutely necessary for students of philosophy and religion, I think there are golden truths for all people no matter what they do.
So, why this particular translation of the work? This translation offers the best ease in reading while mainting a tight grasp of the original Greek meanings of Plato's text. Besides, it isn't that expensive.
This book is clearly a timeless classic, and if you can't read classical Greek, this translation is probably the best you will get.

Plato: Republic Overview

Since its publication in 1974, scholars throughout the humanities have adopted G M A Grube's masterful translation of the Republic as the edition of choice for their study and teaching of Plato's most influential work. In this brilliant revision, C D C Reeve furthers Grube's success both in preserving the subtlety of Plato's philosophical argument and in rendering the dialogue in lively, fluent English, that remains faithful to the original Greek. This revision includes a new introduction, index, and bibliography by Reeve.

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32% Off Discounts: Lowest Price The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus Review

The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus

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The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus Review

Researching translations is never an easy task, and in this case, where you'll have to search on Amazon for the title and the translator to find what you want, it's particularly difficult.
Here's what I've found by comparing several editions:
1. David Grene translation: Seems to be accurate, yet not unwieldy as such. My pick. Language is used precisely, but not to the point where it's barely in English.
2. Fitts/Fitzgerald translation: Excellent as well, though a little less smooth than the Grene one. Certainly not a bad pick.
3. Fagles translation: Beautiful. Not accurate. If you are looking for the smoothest English version, there's no doubt that this is it. That said, because he is looser with the translation, some ideas might be lost. For instance, in Antigone, in the beginning, Antigone discusses how law compels her to bury her brother despite Creon's edict. In Fagles, the "law" concept is lost in "military honors" when discussing the burial of Eteocles. This whole notion of obeying positive law or natural law is very important, but you wouldn't know it from Fagles. In Grene, for example, it is translated to "lawful rites."
4. Gibbons and Segal: Looks great, but right now the book has only Antigone (and not the rest of the trilogy) and costs almost 3x as much. I'll pass. But, from a cursory review, I'm impressed with their work.
5. MacDonald: This edition received some good write-ups, but I wasn't able to do a direct passage-to-passage comparison.
6. Woodruff: NO, NO, NO. Just NO. It's so colloquial it makes me gag. Very accessible, but the modernization of the language is just so extreme as to make it almost laughable. You don't get any sense of the power of language in the play. You just get the story. If you want this to be an easy read, then get Fagles, not this.
7. Kitto: Looks good, though not particularly compelling over either Grene or Fitzgerald (or Gibbons if I wanted to pay so much more).
8. Roche: Practically unreadable the English is so convoluted. Might be the most literal translation, but what's the point unless you are learning Greek and want such a direct translation.
9. Taylor: Way too wordy. Might be more literal, but again, why?
Hope this all helps. Translations can make or break the accessibility of literature. Pick wisely.

The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus Overview



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The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Verison with an Introduction (Penguin Classics)

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The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Verison with an Introduction (Penguin Classics) Review

I ordered the hardcover edition of this book from ... , and it is unfortunate that it is not readily available in the US. At least the softcover edition is now available, and worth acquiring for anyone interested in a glimpse of what life-and thought-was like nearly 4000 years ago. I was unaware, before reading this volume, that Gilgamesh, despite it's significance and popularity in its day, does not come down to us in any complete form. George provides both a background of the civilization that produced Gilgamesh and also a history of the various partial versions that have survived and been found. Throughout the text he is careful to explain where different versions disagree, where he has interpolated fragments from other versions to fill gaps, and where no known version exists. He appends translations of various fragments and of earlier Sumerian poems of "Bilgames". While lacking the completeness, and therefore coherence, of the Homeric epics, George's translation of Gilgamesh offers at least a peephole, if not truly a window, into a civilization very far removed from ours. Despite the distance the desires and fears-particularly the fear of death-expressed seem very human and recognizable. In fact, and in spite of, the archaic structure of the verse, Gilgamesh seems more human to me than many of the semi-divine heros of Homer. Certainly not light reading, but very much worth the time and effort.

The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English Verison with an Introduction (Penguin Classics) Overview



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Antigone

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Antigone Review

I read Sophocles Antigone for graduate Humanities class. It is an essential reading to understand Greek Tragedy. It is also a foundation stone of literature in studying Western Civilization.
Antigone, daughter of Oedipus in 3-cycle play, faces capital punishment for burying her brother who rebelled against Thebes. Obeying instincts of loyalty of love and the divine law, she defies Creon, the King and her uncle. Creon says laws of states outweigh all other laws, and family loyalty, when he finally relents it's too late.
Over the centuries there has been a great deal made about the conflicts played out in the play, law of state vs. law of goods, personal vs. state duties. Loves knowledge vs. state knowledge. Greek understanding of tragedy- Aristotle lays down understanding of Greek tragedy. He based it on Sophocles. Tragedy- most important thing for tragedy is plot, it is all essential. Tragedy defined as- is imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude in language embellished with incidents arousing pity and fear ant to the audience it accomplishes catharsis of such emotions. Every tragedy must have six parts that determine its quality. 1. plot 2. character 3. diction 4. fault 5. spectacle and 6. melody.
According to Aristotle, tragedy is higher and more philosophical than history or poetry; it is one of the highest expressive forms because it dramatizes what may happen. History is a narrative that tells you what has happened tragedy shows what is possible. History deals with particulars, tragedy deals with the universal. Tragedy creates a cause and effect chain and shows how the world operates. It frames human experience in universal discourse, tragedy is central in this effort. Tragedy arouses pity and fear in audience because we can envision ourselves caught in this cause and effect chain. Plot most important feature, the arrangement of incidents, the way incidents, and action is structured. Tragedies outcome depends on the outcome of these cause and effect changes not on being character driven. Plot must be whole, beginning middle and end. Beginning must have a motivation that starts the cause and effect chain of events must be a center or climax that is caused by earlier incidents. There must be an end some kind of closure caused by earlier events in tragedy. This is all part of the complication of the tragedy all must be connected. You can't have a dues ex machnia in a superior tragedy.
In tragedy, the hero or heroine walks knowingly towards the fate that is written and can't be changed. Unity of action plot must be structurally self-contained, each action leading invariably to the next without outside intervention. The worst kinds of plots are episodic, like a Jerry Seinfeld sitcom, can't be something about nothing, must have unity of action. Magnitude, quantatively meaning length, and quality of action, it must be serious. Must be of universal significance, depth, and richness. Character- most important feature is the fatal flaw. Motivations of characters are important but character is there to support the plot. Character must be a prosperous renowned personage. Change of fortune from good to bad will really matter and bring fear and pity to the audience. In ideal tragedy, the hero will mistakenly bring about his own downfall. Because they make a mistake, because knowledge of our selves is always partial, we can't have complete knowledge of ourselves. Hall quotes Descartes in the article, "The limited error prone perspective of the individual. Subject is always imperfect and human and these limitations include our ability to know in any reliable way ourselves." The fact that we as subjects, as agents can never fully know ourselves means that we are always prone to error, error is the essence of the tragic hero, tragedy is the essential drama of human subjectivity.
What is Hegel's understanding of concept of tragedy? He revises Aristotelian principals and logic. Immensely influential German philosopher, he writes about; tragedy in the Aesthete 1820-29, he proposes, "the suffering of the tragic hero are merely the means of reconciling the opposing moral clients." According to Hegel's account of Greek tragedy, the conflict isn't between good and evil, but between competing goods, all is good. Between two entirely ethical worlds that clash and can't come together. Both characters have an ethical vision or belief that they have to follow it is there one-sidedness of their vision that clashes with the one-sidedness of the other character. Both sides of contradiction are justified. Conflict of irreconcilable justifiable ethical worlds, ethical visions. Just as his dialectic must lead to an ultimate synthesis, so to must tragedy lead to a synthesis. This is dramatized in the death of the tragic actor, which becomes the synthesis. Hegel says; "the characters are too good to live." They are too good to live in this world. What is interesting is that Hegel so wants to correct moral imbalances his emphasis is on moral balances.
Greek tragedy is great reading for people interested in aesthetics, history, psychology, and philosophy.

Antigone Overview

To make this quintessential Greek drama more accessible to the modern reader, this Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition™ includes a glossary of difficult terms, a list of vocabulary words, and convenient sidebar notes. By providing these, it is our intention that readers will more fully enjoy the beauty, wisdom, and intent of the play.The curse placed on Oedipus lingers and haunts a younger generation in this new and brilliant translation of Sophocles' classic drama. The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone is an unconventional heroine who pits her beliefs against the King of Thebes in a bloody test of wills that leaves few unharmed. Emotions fly as she challenges the king for the right to bury her own brother. Determined but doomed, Antigone shows her inner strength throughout the play.Antigone raises issues of law and morality that are just as relevant today as they were more than two thousand years ago. Whether this is your first reading or your twentieth, Antigone will move you as few pieces of literature can.

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Symposium

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Symposium Review

It is rather difficult to review Plato's Symposium from a modern viewpoint. The attempts by Agathon's guests, including Socrates, to define love are largely based on the love of boys rather than women. While that is a difficult concept for me to ponder, I recognize that such a social custom prevailed to some degree in ancient Athens and will attempt to offer an unbiased view of the text. Basically, partygoers celebrating Agathon's first victory in a drama contest decide to do something besides drink themselves into a stupor because they are still paying for such activity the night before. Socrates joins the group on this second night, and it is decided that each man in turn will offer his praises to love. Each of six men offer their interesting, diverse thoughts on the matter, ranging from the conventional to the Socratic ideal. Phaedrus says that the greatest good a boy can have is a gentle lover and that the greatest good a lover can have is a boy to love. He stresses self-sacrifice and virtue as the kind of love the gods love most. Pausanias describes two kinds of love: vulgar love is best explained as love for a woman in the interest of sexual satisfaction; noble love is that concerned with bettering the soul of the object of love (necessarily a young boy). The doctor Eryximachus explains love in terms of harmony, and he goes so far as to credit the vague notion of love with accomplishing all kinds of things in a diverse set of subjects. Aristophanes begins by relating a myth about man's origins. When man was created, individuals were actually attached back to back; the gods later split each human entity in half, and love consists of each person's search for his "missing half" who can be of either sex; even when two mates find one another, their love is imperfect because they cannot become literally attached as they were originally. Agathon says that Love is the youngest of the gods, that he offers the means by which all disputes between the gods and between men are settled, and emphasizes the beauty of love (represented quite well by himself, he seems to say).
Socrates, as can be expected, shifts the discussion of love to a higher plane. Claiming to know the art of love if nothing else, Socrates tells how he gained his knowledge from a fictional character called Diotima. He says that love represents the desire to give "birth in beauty," that love is neither a god or a mortal but is instead the messenger between god and man. To love is to want to acquire and possess the good forever and thus attain immortality. Socrates goes on to give a very important speech about one of Plato's perfect Forms--namely, the Form of Beauty. The advanced lover will learn to seek Beauty in its abstract form and will take no more notice of physical beauty; the perfect lover is a philosopher who can create virtue in its true form rather than produce mere images of virtue. This short summary in no way does justice to Socrates' speech, but it gives the general idea. After Socrates speaks, a drunken Alcibiades (Socrates' own beloved) crashes the party and commences to give a speech about Socrates, the effect of which is to identify Socrates as a lover who deceives others into loving him. As both lover and beloved, Socrates is seemingly held up by Plato as the true embodiment of love. To truly love is to be a philosopher.
I myself don't hold this text in as high regard as many intellectuals, but there can be no doubt of this dialogue's influence on Western thought over the centuries. The book succeeds in the presentation of advanced philosophical ideas and as literature. The discussion of the Form of Beauty is particularly useful in terms of understanding Platonic thought. It would seem that this dinner party and the speeches we read are very likely fictitious and represent Plato's thoughts much more closely than Socrates' own views, but it is impossible to tell to what extent this is true. The Symposium is inarguably one of Plato's most influential, most important texts and is required reading for anyone seriously interested in philosophy as it has existed and continues to exist in Western society.

Symposium Overview

'A model of the kind of text one needs for lecture courses: the translation is extremely readable and made even more accessible by intelligent printing decisions (on dividing the text, spacing for clarification, etc.); the notes are kept to a minimum but appear when they are really needed for comprehension and are truly informative. And the introduction admirably presents both basic information and a sense of current scholarly opinion' - S G Nugent, Princeton University.

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Five Dialogues

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Five Dialogues Review

Many are the college students who have read the Platonic discourses collected in this volume. Along with The Republic, these dialogues form the most basic core of Platonic philosophy and are required reading for anyone interested in the art of philosophy.
In the Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates is on his way to court to answer the charges of Meletus that he creates his own gods and does not believe in the gods of society. On his way, he meets Euthyphro, a lawyer-priest of some sort who tells Socrates that he is prosecuting his own father for the murder of a slave (a slave who had himself committed murder). Socrates compels the learned Euthyphro to explain to him the truth about what is pious and what impious; if he can tell the court what he has learned from the knowledgeable Euthyphro, he will have no trouble countering Meletus' charges. Euthyphro tries to define what is pious as that which is pleasing to the gods, but Socrates shows him that his definition is really just an effect of piety, and Euthyphro bows out of the circular conversation without ever giving Socrates a satisfactory definition of true piety.
In The Apology, Socrates defends himself from both the recent charges of Meletus for impiety as well as the host of charges long leveled at him as being a corrupter of the youth. He cites a pronouncement of the Delphic oracle that he is the wisest of all men and explains how he has spent his life trying to vindicate the god's pronouncement by seeking out the wisest men in society and testing them. The wisest men, he says, turn out to be not wise at all. He himself knows he is not wise, while the supposedly wise think they are wise when they are not, and he has concluded that the gods believe that the wisest man is the man who knows how much he does not know. The fact that he shows men that they are not in fact wise has admittedly made Socrates unpopular and turned the minds of many citizens against him. He bravely says he will continue philosophizing if he is acquitted because the god himself compels him to do so. In fact, he says society benefits from what he is doing (namely, trying to make men more virtuous), and he defends himself by saying that society itself will be harmed by his execution. Of course, claiming that he is actually a gift of the god for Athens is a hard way to win over a jury already biased against him. Upon his conviction, he willingly accepts the death sentence imposed upon him, but he, somewhat oddly, warns his fellow citizens that there are younger men ready to come out and question individuals in the same manner as he has done.
In the Crito, Socrates convinces his friend Crito that it is just and right for him to accede to the punishment of death returned by the Athenian jury. He feels that he has been wronged by men but not the laws or society, and to escape from prison and run away would make of him the very type of man the jury wrongly concluded him to be. It is an exceedingly elegant and brave discourse.
Meno is one of Plato's early and, to my mind, least successful, Socratic dialogues. The conversation centers, naturally enough, on virtue and whether or not it is teachable. Meno's definitions of virtue are woefully inadequate, by and large, and deserving of Socrates' typical arrogance. At one point, Meno says that one cannot learn about what one does not know. To counter this argument, Socrates, arguing that the soul is eternal and that learning is in fact recollection, sets about showing how a slave "remembers" the answers to geometrical questions Socrates puts to him. Later, when Meno agrees with the notion that virtue is knowledge and can be taught, Socrates counters the point by saying he has yet to find anyone who truly practices virtue and is thus qualified to teach it. In the end, Socrates concludes that virtue cannot be taught and is in fact a gift of the gods.
The Phaedo is a third-person account of the philosophical discussion between Socrates and his friends on the day of his death. Socrates accepts his fate most amicably, arguing that death is the means by which to achieve the aims of true philosophy, for only by escaping the evil of the body can the soul truly acquire wisdom. Socrates renews his argument that learning is in fact recollection, supposedly proving that the soul exists before birth. He also argues that everything comes from its opposite; if death comes from life, then life must come from death. The proofs he offers for his belief that the soul is eternal do not strike me as very convincing. In many ways, the Phaedo is a precursor to much of the philosophy of The Republic, in which the concepts of the eternal soul and the invisible Forms mentioned here are threshed out much more satisfactorily.

Five Dialogues Overview

The second edition of Five Dialogues presents G. M. A. Grube's distinguished translations, as revised by John Cooper for Plato, Complete Works. A number of new or expanded footnotes are also included along with an updated bibliography.

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