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| Left to right: Horse, Sandy, Monkey, Tripitaka, Pigsy (Wikipedia) |
Note: Great books often lend themselves to a deeper way of reading. Let's see how that works with this popular Chinese novel.
Get Ready: Are you familiar with the Chinese novel (or Japanese TV show) about the Monkey King?
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| (Wikimedia) |
Note: Some people think that the giver in this song gave only one partridge in a pair tree. But it was twelve!
Get Ready: Do you know a formula for adding tetrahedral numbers? Look at this.
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| Scheherazade and Shahryar by Ferdinand Keller, 1880 (Wikipedia) |
Note: This amazing collection is like a library unto itself; some tales are familiar, but there are lots of hidden gems waiting to be discovered!
Get Ready: Do you like stories with lots of magic--genies and other spirits and so on? Why or why not?
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| Nimue and Merlin (detail) (Wikimedia) |
Note: Even the wisest of wizards can be a fool for love. Case in point: the humbling of Merlin.
Get Ready: Why do you think folk stories are told with so many variations?
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| The Knight, from an old manuscript of The Canterbury Tales (Wikipedia) |
Note: "There is no new thing under the sun": another love triangle, this one with a Chaucerian twist at the end.
Get Ready: Are there hard-and-fast rules in relationships? Or is "all fair"?
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| Illustration from A Lover's Complaint (Wikipedia) |
Note: Think Shakespeare only wrote plays, and perhaps sonnets? Think again! He also wrote four longer (and fascinating) narrative poems.
Get Ready: Why do you think Shakespeare's plays remain far and away his most popular works today, totally eclipsing his sonnets and narrative poems?
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| Una and the Lion by Briton Rivière (1840–1920) (Wikipedia) |
Note: Spenser's Faerie Queene works as an allegory, in which each character represents a virtue (or vice). Let's meet a few of them now.
Get Ready: Do you enjoy a story with clear-cut "good guys" and "bad guys," or do you prefer characters to be portrayed with more subtlety?
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| Mad King Lear and his Fool (Wikipedia) |
Note: Shakespeare's tragedy about a foolish old king who governs by whim, and ends in disaster.
Get Ready: What is the system for succession in your country? That is, how is power transferred from one national leader to another?
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| Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches for the first time (Wikipedia) |
Note: Macbeth is another of Shakespeare's great tragedies, in which a power-hungry couple fails in their attempt to usurp the throne of Scotland.
Get Ready: Would you ever make life decisions based on prophecy or fortune-telling? What do you think of people who do?
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| Julius Caesar: the Murder Scene (Wikipedia) |
Note: The question has been asked whether "art imitates life" or "life imitates art." Whatever the answer, there's no doubt that much of our historical "knowledge" actually comes from creative works rather than actual history. Shakespeare's play presents an excellent example.
Get Ready: What (if anything) do you know about the death of Julius Caesar?
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| Faust and Mephisto (Wikipedia) |
Note: There is a long tradition in literature of people "selling their soul to the devil"; the most famous example is the German scholar Faust (or Faustus).
Get Ready: What would you trade for financial, romantic, or intellectual success?
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| Titania, Bottom, and Puck (Wikipedia) |
Note: A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's "funnest" plays, set on the summer solstice.
Get Ready: Do you believe certain days in the year, such as solstices and equinoxes, cause different behavior in humans (or animals)?
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| Prince Arthur and the Faerie Queen (Wikipedia) |
Note: Centuries before us considered The Faerie Queene to be one of the greatest works in the English language. Though it's not easy to read, it's still a fascinating work today, with many a moral lesson.
Get Ready: If you were to write a book about morality, what virtues would you consider the most important? Name at least three or four.
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| Horatio, Hamlet, and the ghost (Wikipedia) |
Note: Considered by many to be Shakespeare's greatest work, Hamlet tells the story of a "modern man" who is unable to choose his best path forward--he was lost, like many people today.
Get Ready: If the ghost of someone you trusted appeared to you and told you what to do, would you do it?
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| Ferdinand, Prospero, Miranda, and Caliban, with Ariel above (Wikipedia) |
Note: Prospero the magician and his daughter Miranda have for twelve years been stranded on an island by his brother, Antonio. But all will be set right, as we shall see.
Get Ready: Two characters in this play represent the higher and lower "natures" of humans. Which do you think is usually more powerful? Why?
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| Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (Wikipedia) |
Note: "To dream the impossible dream": The quest of Don Quixote has been made popular in a charming Broadway musical (and subsequent film), Man of La Mancha. But the rather long book itself, by Miguel de Cervantes (arguably Spain's greatest writer, comparable to Shakespeare) has much to offer.
Get Ready: If you were to undertake a "noble quest," what would it be?
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| Romeo and Juliet in the famous "balcony scene" (Wikipedia) |
Note: The "stars" of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet are often held up as paradigms of romantic love. But are they really good role-models for young lovers to follow?
Get Ready: Should young people follow the wishes of their parents and society when it comes to relationships, or is "being in love" a good enough reason to break the rules?
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| Scene from a live performance of La Vida es Sueño (Wikipedia) |
Note: The Spanish playwright Pedro Calderon de la Barca, commonly called simply "Calderon," was a near-contemporary of Shakespeare, and holds a position in Spanish literature similar to that of the Bard in English (along with countryman Lope de Vega). Few of his works have captured the imagination of the English-speaking world like Life is a Dream, which has one of the cleverest philosophical plot twists imaginable.
Get Ready: Is it possible to think one is awake while dreaming--or dreaming while awake? Has this ever happened to you?
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| Dante with scenes from The Divine Comedy (Wikipedia) |
Note: England has Shakespeare. Spain has Cervantes. Italy has Dante Alighieri, best known by just his first name, Dante, but in Italy known as "the Supreme Poet." His works raised the status of vernacular Italian, and his home dialect became the base of the modern national language.
Get Ready: Do you believe in Heaven and Hell? How about Purgatory? What are those places like (real or imagined)?
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| Mercator projection map of the world (Wikipedia) |
Note: They say, "The map is not the territory." Even more so, the map is not the globe!
Get Ready: Do you ever use maps (on paper)? Do you think they're accurate? How about digital maps, like Google Maps? Have you ever found a mistake on one?
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