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Bookworm
Bookworm
8:34 AM
0
Q: Literature of change

ShoaibI am new to literature and was trying to find material on social change. The names of Mrs Gaskell, William Hale White and Thomas Hardy came up. I am interested in turning points in social history and what the literature says about recognizing that we are passing through one and change is needed.

historical-context
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
9:15 AM
0
Q: How to measure the reception of a literary work

martA while back I asked on anoher SE "Which, originally non-english, work has the widest reception in english SF?". Shortly after the question was closed for beeing opinion based. Now another user nodified the question by ading the qualifier "... widest reach as measured in google scholar citations"...

meaning
 
 
3 hours later…
IkWeetHetOokNiet
IkWeetHetOokNiet
12:02 PM
After reading The Epic of Gilgamesh I continued my "tour" of ancient literature by rereading the Iliad and the Odyssey.
What struck me in those works is how much of the events is steered or influenced by the gods. Wikipedia says the Iliad "tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles", but does not mention the gods, as if biased by the fact that they (rightly) don't believe in those gods.
(The versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey that I read while I was at school must have been retellings for young readers that left out or played down some of the influence of the gods. Or I forgot that aspect because I found it silly at the time.)
I had also completely forgotten that the death of Achilles and the fall of Troy weren't even part of the Iliad. I read a lot of Greek and Latin mythology, legends and other stories while at school and forgot which events were described in which sources ...
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
12:39 PM
1
Q: How did the Greeks anger Pallas Athena?

IkWeetHetOokNietDuring the Iliad several of the gods take sides in the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. For example, Ares, Apollo and Aphrodite side with the Trojans, while Pallas Athena, Hera and Poseidon favour the Greeks. However, the Odyssey tells us Pallas Athena had been angered by the Greeks (even...

greek-literature homer the-odyssey
 
IkWeetHetOokNiet
IkWeetHetOokNiet
1:20 PM
 
IkWeetHetOokNiet
IkWeetHetOokNiet
2:01 PM
Recently deceased: Gudrun Pausewang, German author of many children's books, including Die Wolke (The Cloud / Fall-Out): twitter.com/BooksByNana/status/1220758436125659136 Has anybody read any of her works? At least four of them have been translated into English.
 
 
3 hours later…
Napoleon Wilson
Napoleon Wilson
4:31 PM
@Gallifreyan I watched The Witcher now and I really liked it. They naturally had to change up a few things, but that's unavoidable. All in all, though, I think they managed to strike a nice balance between telling the short stories and establishing the bigger scope of the novel series for the following seasons.
What I do wonder is how they are going to avoid a major spoiler in the future given that they already showed Duny's face.
You also asked me about Cahir's depiction specifically and I think it's okay, given that we're not seeing too much of him anyway. I think they play the "religious fervour" of the Nilfgaardians up a little too much, including his, where he's actually just an ambitious guy trying to prove his worth in the army, rather than seeing the emperor as some kind of saviour. But there's sure potential for turning him around Jaime Lannister style.
In general, I really like the casting of the major characters. Yennefer is a little younger than I would have imagined, but given that the mages can just choose their appearance at will, it makes sense you'd rather want to look like a girl in her late 20s. ;-)
 

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