Wuthering
Expectations

  A Distinguished Crankologist

Friday, November 25, 2022

The Girl from Samos by Menander - I don’t think any one individual is better at birth than any other

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It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How tastes, or circumstances, had changed i...
3 comments:
Friday, November 18, 2022

Menander's Dyskolos - each man would hold a moderate share and be content

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This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos , or The Grouch , or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may not have inspired the title of Molière’...
2 comments:
Friday, November 11, 2022

Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds

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We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes.  Wealth (388 BCE) ...
Monday, November 7, 2022

Notes on Aristotle's Poetics - What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends?

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Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics (late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The Frogs – but for centuries it was the ...
5 comments:
Friday, November 4, 2022

The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate

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The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women , or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after T...
3 comments:
Friday, October 28, 2022

Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was

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Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of reading or re-reading the complete play...
12 comments:
Friday, October 21, 2022

The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about!

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The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conques...
12 comments:
Friday, October 14, 2022

Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come

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The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis , performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978...
6 comments:
Friday, October 7, 2022

The Bacchae by Euripides - O gods, I see the greatest grief there is.

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Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive Euripides was, he did not write a play qui...
13 comments:
Friday, September 30, 2022

Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous, wrong!

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I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics , the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to ...
10 comments:
Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and sneeze

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Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation:  Symp...
12 comments:
Friday, September 23, 2022

Philoctetes by Sophocles - Let me suffer what I must suffer

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Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in a mood of reconciliation and healing.  ...
3 comments:
Friday, September 16, 2022

The Cyclops by Euripides - the only satyr play - the greatest god of all, / this belly of mine!

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It’s The Cyclops by Euripides, the only surviving satyr play and the greatest mistake in my chronology of the Greek plays.  No one really k...
11 comments:
Friday, September 9, 2022

The Phoenician Women by Euripides - Oedipus, Antigone, et. al. - It would be no grace I would do the gods

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Now I see why I did not remember The Phoenician Women (c. 410 BCE) by Euripides too well, or at all.  It is not one of his messes, but is r...
3 comments:
Friday, September 2, 2022

The Poet and the Women by Aristophanes - What it is to have an intellectual in the family. - Plus: Let's read Plato's Symposium

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Our first Geek play readalong supplement: I would like to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Plato’s Symposium (c. 380 BCE) in ...
9 comments:
Monday, August 29, 2022

There were also the legendary but altogether real nocturnal attacks by large packs of wild dogs - some rewarding César Aira completism

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Why have I been reading the 1995 Rizzoli coffee table book Argentina: The Great Estancias ?  “Estancias” are estates, enormous cattle and sh...
6 comments:
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