tobyrumpus is currently reading Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
I’m 52 years old, male, from the United States. I’ve been a DailyLit member since November 23, 2008. My reading interests include History.
Books
Posts
The Bacchae - Lessons to be learnt
Gripping stuff - both sad and cautionary. Wimmins liberation is nothing new, but what good does it do them? Don't piss-off gods either, or tempt fate if you are agnostic - hubris can be a terrible thing. On a technical note it is wonderful to see how a play can develop by describing actions off-stage - I am sure there is an expression for this - but given the limitations of the Greek staging, it works well here.
One couldn't help but imagine the backcloth to be a vast landscape by Claude Lorraine of mountains, sea and distant palaces.
A ripping (literally and figuratively!) yarn - pity about the missing pages.
The Theogony - How to know your gods.
Poetic tension is in short supply, there is no story-line as such to be tense, but there are lyric moments. Phrases like a well-turned ancle or flashing eyes speak volumes in this litany of who begat who on Moutnt Olymus. If you need to know the ancestry of the gods according to the Ancient Greeks - and this is by no-means the last, or even first, word on the subject, then this is for you. Short, to the point, but with some wonderful evocative prose.