literature
Geek literature from the New York Times or the recesses of online. Our favorite stories showcase geeks.
'Mahabharata' (Pt. 3)
The very first book depicts the society of the Vedic period in India. Called the Adi Parva it depicts the caste system and how class and society works in the Middle Vedic Era. If we were to take this as how the text depicts a historical era, we look at the fact that it is the middle of the Vedic era and that these castes have been established since the beginning of both sides of the war, especially the Puranas. The beginning of the Vedic era starts with the establishment of the Kuru Kingdom and, by the height of its political power—it would be well established into the families mentioned within the text. Thus, it shows historical accuracy and can be placed within that particular time period.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
'Mahabharata' (Pt. 2)
Now we're going to look at the perspective of philosophy and how this suggests at the historical accuracy of the narrative. This is still working inside the text; we're looking and what happened, how do we know when it happened in terms of a time frame —and how historical sources support or oppose this. Philosophy is one of the ways in which we can gage a time frame. For example, we know that if a text was written in the ancient times and iterates Socratic philosophy that it was probably written in the times just after the death of Socrates when his philosophical views were at their most famous and important. We're going to do the same for the Mahabharata, we're going to place it in a philosophical time frame.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
'Mahabharata'
It stands at seven times the length of Homer's poetic epics of ancient Greece, it is over 1.8 million words long and even the abridged version is just under 1,000 pages. With 200,000 verses, it is the longest poem in all of existence and is more than twice as long as than the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid and Divine Comedy put together.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
Books Published in the 1950s that You Should Definitely Read Before You Die
There are a ton of books you should definitely read, but in this article we're going to explore some books from the 1950s that you should definitely read. Yes, there are a number of great authors from this era, but we want to explore different books by different authors. This means you may or may not see your favourites on this list. I'll be going through my own personal favourites in some more detail; however most of this will just be a list. I have read all the books I put on the list (I never add anything I haven't read myself!) and if you'd like to talk to me more about these books then I'd love to—my social media handles are in my bio at the end of the article.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
'The Iliad' by Homer (Pt. 4)
The way in which the ancient Greeks of classical Greece thought about the Iliad was not how we do today. In the 21st century, we understand that there are things far too impossible about the Iliad to believe and can distinguish between what seems to be realistic and what is a fabrication for entertainment purposes. But, in classical Greece, they tended to think of this text entirely as a history. This book was a form of historical documentation and, in this day and age that we live in, we must agree with them to some percentage. Believe it or not, there's evidence that this war happened. What we're going to look at now is the evidence for the Trojan War taking place in the time and place it did—uncovering the reality of it and debunking the myths. As we have seen in the various texts we have looked at that are based in The Iliad's story, we can see that there was treatment of the Iliad as some sort of fact. Especially in The Aeneid in which the fall of Troy is part of the imagined genealogy of the Romans from Aeneas to Augustus. The fact that the Aeneid is meant to act as a genealogy and a history of the discovery and first generations of Rome means that this culture must have treated The Iliad as its own history as well as the rest of the epic cycle as The Aeneid includes the book that to our day, is now missing; it is called Iliou Persis.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
'The Iliad' by Homer (Pt. 3)
Now, we are well aware of what went on during the era in which the war took place and we have asked ourselves the Homeric questions regarding the writing of the text. We want to explore whether the characters have any historical groundings. We know for a fact that Troy most probably existed exactly where we have now found it and we know about the Greek empire during the Late Bronze Age, but we do not know about the characters and their sources. In understanding this, we may understand the way in which the epic serves as not only a poem, but also as a historical source or a historical bias in order to influence an entire culture of people for the next 500 plus years.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
'The Iliad' (Pt. 2)
First of all, we'll look at what the text tells us regarding date and time. Then, we'll match them up with the dates of the artifacts and sites that have been found regarding Troy and the war. The first source for the dates regarding Homer that we have come from the historian, Herodotus. The Pseudo-Herodotus text, Life of Homer, contains a section in which Herodotus places Homer 400 years before his own time. This would suggest that Homer was around in probably c.850 BCE. This would be fairly odd in suggesting the text's historical accuracy since Homer would've therefore existed 400 years after the historical pinpointing of the Trojan War, which is said to have taken place in the 12th century BCE. Or, as we know it today, the Late Bronze Age.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
Literary Analysis
In Eudora Welty’s short story, “A Worn Path,” an African American woman named Phoenix Jackson travels into town for her beloved grandson. Set within the Christmas season in Southern Mississippi during the reconstruction era, the author shows the hard years of racism and prejudice that continued to persist since the emancipation proclamation in 1865.
By Sophie Jiwoo7 years ago in Geeks
'The Iliad' by Homer
The book's name is translated directly into "the song of Ilium" and written entirely in dactylic hexameter; The Iliad and The Odyssey are two of the most well-known and widely read epic poems ever written. It documents the siege of Troy throughout ten years and one man's gruelling journey back over the course of another ten years, having it been 20 since he had seen his family. Written around the 8th century BCE, the Iliad has stood the test of time and continues to be adapted, revisited and re-analysed to this day. This is the text we will focus on.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
Ten of the Best Fantasy Novels of All Time
The border between science fiction and fantasy can often be hard to define, but for the purposes of this list, the ones that fall on that border have been ignored, and the selection below clearly falls into the fantasy camp, from epic sagas such as Lord of the Rings to the short but famous Dracula. More modern fantasies are represented by the likes of Neil Gaiman’s Hugo Award winning American Gods and the Harry Potter books.
By Betty Glauder7 years ago in Geeks
'The Aeneid' by Virgil (Pt. 3)
We are now going to look at the history of TheAeneid briefly as there are a couple of question which require immediate answering. These questions, when answered, change the meaning of the text and change how we understand why it was written at all. The very first question is of whether Virgil died before he could finish writing it.
By Annie Kapur7 years ago in Geeks
