Every few years, there is a new, and generally assumed to be improved, translation of a major literary classic. Robert Fagles (The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid), Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov), Robert and Jean Hollander (Dante’s Divine Comedy) are just a few […]
Classical Trivia!
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! Not Your Usual New Year’s Resolutions
Make your life wide rather than long. Think rather than know. These are just two of the New Year’s resolutions Jo-Ann Minden sent us from the site Brain Pickings. In its January newsletter, the site offers a list of “higher-order” ideas on how to change your life. See thinkers and […]
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! Will the Real Anna K. Please Stand Up?
How impoverished we would be with no access to literature written in languages unknown to us. Let us give thanks to literary translators. But their challenges are colossal. How do you translate wordplay or a metaphor? What about culturally-specific landmarks or expressions that may be unknown to a foreign audience? […]
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! Literary Real Estate in New Orleans
Last week, in this pictorial puzzle from the Classical Pursuits trip in New Orleans, Ann asked, “What do these two addresses have in common?” We have the answer for you! 632 is the street address of the New Orleans homes of both Tennessee Williams and the fictional Stella and Stanley […]
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! Do You Know What Happens After the Museums Close?
Find out with this whimsical PowerPoint
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! Will the real May Day please stand up?
We shall grow old apace, and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short; and our dayes run As fast away as do’s the Sunne: And as a vapour, or a drop of raine Once lost, can ne’r be found againe: So when or you or I are […]
TORONTO PURSUITS – Evolution of the Darwinians
In July 2013, at Toronto Pursuits, a bunch of inquiring adults gathered each morning for a week to discuss the works of Charles Darwin. Some in the group were anxious and uncertain about their choice of material – calling to ask about switching seminars because they found the material tough […]
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! Literary Villains
As literature PhD candidate Adam Burgess notes, “One of the best parts about reading classic literature is discovering, and often falling in love with, great characters. Talented writers have the ability to craft characters in such a way as to make us, the readers, imagine we could know these people […]
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! – Trip the light fantastic
Trip the light fantastic Meaning To dance, especially in an imaginative or ‘fantastic’ manner. Origin This apparently obscure expression originates from the works of John Milton. In the masque Comus, 1637, he used the lines: Come, knit hands, and beat the ground, In a light fantastic round. By ‘trip’, […]
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! – Traveler or Traveller?
Today, when I was proofing Lisa Pasold’s GUEST BLOG on her walks four our Belle Epoque trip to Paris, I came across this phrase, “…writer Emile Zola—whose famed letter J’Accuse courageously spear-headed the defense of Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus.” I paused at the word defense. Should it be defence? I […]