Tag Archives: readings/research

Britannicus

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Britannicus: (original name Claudius Tiberius Germanicus, c AD 41-55) Son of Messalina and the emperor Claudius I, heir apparent to the throne. Through the scheming of his mother, Agrippina, he was denied succession to the throne. It is believed that Nero, his half brother, poisoned Britannicus at a banquet. The name Britannicus was given to him by the senate because the conquest of Britain took place at about the time of his birth. He is the subject of a tragedy (1669) by Racine.”

“Britannicus: A tragedy by Racine. The material of the play is derived from Tacitus. Smitten with Junia, the beloved of his half brother Britannicus, the emperor Nero attempts to win her; unsuccessful, he causes Britannicus to be arrested and poisons him. Junia escapes from the palace and becomes a vestal virgin. The play abounds in political subplots and marks Racine’s first challenge of Corneille on the older playwright’s home ground: political drama.

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Rotten Rejections: A Barbara Pym Omnibus

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

[I think this Wikipedia article on Barbara Pym will provide some much needed context to this particular literary travesty.]

“An Unsuitable Attachment (1963)

Novels like (this), despite their qualities, are getting increasingly difficult to sell.

The Sweet Dove Died (1978)

Not the kind of thing to which people are turning.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Vault, Vaulting

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

“An arched ceiling of roof constructed of masonry. Simplest is a barrel vault or tunnel vault, which is semicircular in section. Two intersecting barrel vaults of equal size form a groin vault. Rib vaulting employs reinforced ribs at the intersections.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Term of Art: Qualia

Posted on December 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

“qualia n. pl. A philosophical term for sensory experiences that have distinctive subjective qualities but lack any meaning or external reference to the objects or events that cause them, such as the painfulness of pinpricks or the redness of red roses. The term is virtually synonymous with sense data. See also sense data, inverted qualia, phi movement, sensation, sensibalia. quale sing. 

[From Latin qualis of what kind]

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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Brewer’s Curious Titles: Sense and Sensibility

Posted on December 12, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Sense and Sensibility: A novel by Jane Austen (1775-1817), published in 1811. As in Pride and Prejudice, the title refers to two of the main characters: the sensible, quiet and dignified Elinor Dashwood, and her highly emotional and demonstrative sister, Marianne. ‘Sensibility’ is an 18th-century usage for ‘feeling’ or ‘sentiment.’

Miss Austen being, as you say, ‘without sentiment,’ without poetry, maybe is sensible (more real than true) but she cannot be great. Charlotte Bronte: letter to George Henry Lewes, 18 January 1848.

The film version (1995), directed by Ang Lee and with a screenplay by Emma Thompson (who also plays Elinor), was a surprise commercial hit.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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Ordering the 7 Heavens

Posted on December 12, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Moon * Mercury * Venus * Sun * Mars * Jupiter * Saturn

The ordering of the seven heavens is one of the mysteries of each culture, especially since it appears to be linked to everything. The Chaldeans created a very influential list, ordering the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. This seems to reflect a very exact ascending order, based on the observed length of time that they circled the earth. The moon, as we know from our months, is 29.5 days, Mercury 88, Venus 224.7, the sun (the length of our year) is 365.25, Mars 687.1, while Jupiter is 12 years and Saturn 29.5.

This remains virtually the pattern we follow today, apart from the reordering of the sun-day as the first not the fourth. This ordering seems to have been achieved in the Hellenistic East, where we know that the Astrologers of Alexandria had created a hierarchy of sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, which ascribed an order of dominant deities to each of the progressive hours of the daylight.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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A Lesson Plan on the Crime and Puzzlement Case “Gang of Four”

Posted on December 12, 2019 | Leave a comment

OK, as I count down to the end of the year, I work on posting the first unit–24 lessons in all–of the work I developed to attend the Crime and Puzzlement books. To that end, here is lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “Gang of Four.”

I begin this lesson with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the American idiom “burn the midnight oil.” This PDF of the illustration and questions drives the lesson; to solve the case, here is the typescript of the answer key.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Battle of Saratoga

Posted on December 11, 2019 | Leave a comment

If you need it, here is a reading on the Battle of Saratoga and the vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. This was an important moment in the American Revolution, and therefore am important moment in United States history.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Historical Term: Calvinism

Posted on December 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Calvinism: Branch of Protestantism founded on the teaching of the French reformer Jean Chauvin (1509-64), known as Calvin from the Latin form of his name. Calvin gave the first systematic justification of Protestantism in Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) and thus became the intellectual leader of the Reformation. Calvinism is marked by its dogma of predestination, the belief that God has unalterably destined some souls to salvation and others to eternal damnation. Its harsh, logical beliefs inspired English Puritans, French Huguenots and some of the Dutch in their fight against the domination of Catholic Spain. The sect has been established in the Reformed or Presbyterian churches of France, Holland, and Scotland; Calvinist rule was also ruthlessly enforced under Calvin himself in Geneva by the Consistorium. The Calvinist beliefs that labor is a command of God and material success a mark of his favor—contradicting the medieval ideas of the virtue of poverty and the evil of usury—may have contributed to the rise of capitalism.”

Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

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Golden Section

Posted on December 6, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Golden Section: (golden mean) A geometrical proportion known at least since Euclid and regarded as a universal law of the harmony of proportions in both art and nature. The common formula is: to divide a finite line so that the shorter part is to the longer part as the longer part is to the whole.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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