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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. 1st millennium BC was 1000-0. 2nd millennium BC was 2000-100

1.

3rd millennium BC was 3000-2001. AD 1st millennium was AD 1-1000. AD 2nd millennium was 1001-2000. 

 

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

a. b. c. d.

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

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

What three benefits did writing also give “cultures”?

a. b. c.  

The Beginnings of World Literature

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

Where were the four places these literary texts were written?

a. b. c. d.

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

What did each of the following do:

Stories of creation—

Epic accounts of battles—

Laws—

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”?

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

“Pastoral poems” are poems about what?

What were the pastoral poets “dreaming of”?

When did “cultivation of crops” begin?

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

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

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

a. b.

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

Between which two rivers can Mesopotamia be found?

a. b.

Which river forms the “backbone of Egypt”?

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

What type of “writing developed in Egypt”?

Which rivers were important in the following places:

China

India

During which millennia were the first empires “born”?

Over which areas did the following empires control:

Babylonian/Assyrian—

Egyptian—

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

 

Travel, Migration, and Trade

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

Where was the “silk road”?

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

What does most “ancient literature play to”?

 

Lyric and Epic

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

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

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

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

Powerful…

Modestly as…

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

Which four ancient cultures had “epic poetry”?

1.

2.

3. 4.

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

1. 2.

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

1. 2. 3. 4.

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

 

Myth, Legend, and History

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

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

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

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?

“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?

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?

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

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

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

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

 

The Ancient Near East

Where does world literature begin?

Where is the “fertile crescent”?

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

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

During the 2nd 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

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

“Mesopotamia” was “made up of” what?

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

When did Egypt “achieve unity as a country”?

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

1. 2.

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

Name the river(s) associated with each place:

Mesopotamia—

Egypt—

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

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

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

How did Semi nomadic herdsmen view the following:

cities’ kings?

Their own clan leaders?

The
Tower of Babel?

How did Babylonians view the following:

Their city?

Tower of Babel?  

Courts and Temples

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

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

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

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

 

The Rebirth of the Past

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

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

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

Who were the “Minoans”?

Who were the “Mycenaeans”?

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

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

What does Hesoid’s Theogony tell the story of?

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

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

  Cities

What is a “polis”?

What did a polis incorporate?

What three aspects “differed from city to city”?

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

1.      Sparta

2.      Corinth

3.      Thebes

4.      Athens

Define “aristrocracy”?

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

Who did the Greeks refer to as “tyrant”?

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

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

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

Who “ruled themselves” in a democracy?

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

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

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?

Describe “Platonic dialogues”?

 

Drama

“Greek drama” probably began in which century?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

What was a “dithyramb”?

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

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

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

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

 

Gender

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

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

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

“Male virtue was strongly connected to” what?

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

1. 2.  

Barbarians

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

Barbarians could have what three types of status:

1. 2. 3.

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

Who fought the following wars:

Persian Wars—

Peloponnesian War—

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

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

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

When did Alexander die?

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

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

1. 2. 3. 4.

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. 4.

5.

6.

Alexandria was also famous for what “monumental” building that “housed the greatest works of classical Greek antiquity”?

What people group conquered the Hellenistic kingdoms and fell under the influence of those great works on Greek antiquity?

The last paragraph in this section discusses the legacy of Greece and Rome after both had fallen. How did Greece and Rome influence the following:

Medieval monasteries and libraries—

Arab Scholars—

Byzantine Scholars—

European Renaissance—

Enlightenment Thinkers (including American founding fathers)—

Lord Elgin—

Romantics—

Byron—

Heinrich Schliemann—

 

Early South Asia

Until around 500 BC, the “history of South Asia” is what?

Although it was composed beginning around 1500 BC, Rig Veda Samhita was not “committed to writing until” when?

What does kavi mean and what did it “become the term for”?

What Sanskrit epic of “Valmiki” is “known as the first poem”?

Composed around 200 BC, the first poem “shares much of the political perspective of” what king”?

Who is the “second great epic of South Asia, the Mahabharata,” which is said to be a “history rather than poetry” ascribed to?

What “principal theme” do Ramayana and Mahabharata share?”

What problems do Ramayama and Mahabharata “contemplate” that “no one anywhere has escaped”?

How do the two pieces of literature differ in their endings?

What “literary culture dominated the cultural scene in South Asia” beginning with the establishment of the “Gupta polity around 320 BC”?

When did “regional languages begin to replace Sanskrit for literary and political purposes”?

“The world of the Vedic culture was one of punctilious observance of” what?

At some point, “many thinkers began to sense that sacrifice by itself might not encompass the ultimate meaning of human existence, and a true crisis ensued.” Explain what the two responses were:

1. 2.

What is “transmigration”?

What is “karma”?

This new way of thinking about life and death produced writings, like the Upanishads, that created a “wide range of spiritual masters on the margins of or outside the Vedic world. Chief among these was” who?

What were the doctrines of Buddha and what social practices were new?

 

China: The Classical Tradition

While China may not be the “earliest civilization in human history…[it] has been” what?

According to “material evidence and historical documents,” China can be traced back in time how many years?

What two rivers show evidence of “Neolithic cultures”?

“Historical records begin with” which dynasty and in approximately what year?

The Zhou people took power in what year?

What two aspects did the Shang and Zhou people have in common?

What type of “tribe succeeded in sacking the Zhou…in 770 BC”?

Confucius, a “native son of Lu,” which was “most closely identified with ancient Zhou tradition” believed “the remedy for contemporary troubles lay in” what?

Who was the “first emperor of China”?

The first emperor of China “adopted the advice of Han Fei”; what was his advice?

The Qin Dynasty only lasted from 221-206 BC and which new dynasty was established?

During the Han Dynasty, what school of thought replaced Han Fei’s?

Each of the following is one of the Five Classical Texts, and each is in some way connected to Confucius. Explain what each text is about and how it is connected to Confucius:

1.      Book of Changes (Yijing or I Ching)—

2.      Book of Documents (Shujing or Shangshu)—

3.      Book of Songs (Shijing)—

4.      Record of Rites ( Liji)—

5.      Spring and Autumn Annals—

“As Confucius looked back to the early Zhou; so all later dynasties would look back to the Han as the embodiment of” what?

 

Rome and The Roman Empire

“According to tradition,” who founded Rome in 753 BC?

                                                                                                           

Whose “twelfth-century arrival” did “the historian Livy and the poet Virgil” claim was the “genesis of the Roman people”?

What are the “double identities” of Rome:

1. 2.

Who ended the Roman republic in 27 BC?

Augustus Caesar put a “premium on gravity, dignity, austerity, integrity, fortitude, and disciplined obedience to the mores maiorum.” What did this mean for:

Women—

Men—

“Money was poured into” what?

Since so many writers were writing about the “austere virtues of the legendary past”…it seems “many wealthy and powerful Romans were in need of” what?

This “self restraint and self sacrifice” made it easy “to understand how the later empire and its citizenry would adapt so readily to the ascetic demands of” what?

 

The World City

“Until the division of the empire between east and west in the fourth century AD,” “Rome was the center of” what three aspects of life?

1. 2. 3.

By first century BC, Rome had become a “dominant power in the Mediterranean” and had how many inhabitants?

How many people lived in Rome by AD 100?

What about Rome is the poet Ovid said to have “attested from unhappy exile on the Black Sea”?

What had been “enclosed” by the “late republic”; “its tunnel ran nearly a kilometer and was large enough for the imperial administrator Agrippa to cruise through on a tour off inspection”?

Public baths were “central to the social life of Rome and its provincial towns, and they grew progressively larger and more spectacular.” They existed as a “[d]isplay of wealth,” but what was the other more “practical” reason for their existence?

 

The Literature of Rome

“The satirist Juvenal  complained there was no money in” what?

“All educated Romans were bilingual” in which two languages?

In what language was most higher education “conducted” and by teacher of what origin?

“Latin literature grew out of imitation and translation” of what?

Explain “the three forms” on which writing took place:

What two “literary genres” does the textbook call “most Roman”?

How was the “elegy transformed from its Greek model”?

Which poet was a “major influence on this poetry”?

Describe “neoteric poets.”

What did “satire [focus] primarily on”?

“Rome was a record-keeping society, setting down” what?

“While historiography developed a distinctly Roman form, epic remained self-consciously indebted to” what?

 

Imperium Sine Fine

What were the years of Caesar Augustus’s (formerly Octavian) reign?

The “restrictions of Augustus’s rule seemed to many a small price to pay for” what?

49 BC saw the end of “reforms and grabs for power” with the dictatorship of who?

Caesar’s “power was based in [his] army…reputation…and most notably his subjugation of” what place?

When a group of senators assassinated Caesar in 44 BC, “war broke out among his heirs and rivals.” Who did his adopted son, Octavian, defeat at the battle of Actium in 31 BC?

“The Roman empire was a complex combination of” what two aspects?

1. 2.

 “The Roman legions…fought with disciplined efficiency…however, defeated peoples retained” what?

While “roads to allow rapid movement of persons and goods between Rome and the provinces,” what three aspects were “local people…allowed to preserve”?

“The borders of Rome extended to” what places?

“The need for military support would contribute to” what?

 

The Eternal City in Ruins

“The empire endured by name until” what event?

In what year and from what event did the Romans themselves consider the empire to have ended?

Who converted to Christianity and inaugurated the spread of Christianity through western Europe?

What is the Vulgate?

By the middle of the ninth century, Rome had how many inhabitants left?