Planning for our Fourth Read of 2020

[Ian]

Kathy wrote: "The term "first-year" is now preferred at many US colleges & universities. Ungendered. ;)" ..."

This is, for once, fairly transparent, at least in regards to higher education.

I'm not sure that it has made significant inroads in the High School vocabulary, since in some districts ninth-grade is/was not the first year of High School, but the last year of Junior High. Which has been further muddled by re-arranging which grades they cover, and changing the term to "Middle School."

(I am not sure how widespread the changes are, but they are fairly old in the huge Los Angeles Unified School District.. Back during the O.J. Simpson trial, some reporters indifferently referred to a school mentioned in the testimony as a "Middle School" or a "Junior High School." I noticed because it was a a Junior High when I attended it.)

By the way, some dictionaries explain "Frosh" not as a abbreviation and variation, but as a loan-word, from German "frosch," meaning "frog," used in dialect as a term for "Grammar School students". The etymologies do not explain whether "Grammar School" is to be defined as in British English (in which it is apparently mainly historical), or as an American alternative to "Elementary School," comprising the first six (or eight) grades.

In other contexts, this latter point confused me for some time, until I found a short history of American education which actually explained why the British and American books I had been reading used the same term differently.

[David]

Remember to vote:
The poll ends at: Sep 09, 2020 11:59PM PDT

[Ian]

I should have posted this information earlier, but I trust that it will be found helpful to those looking for a translation if we wind up selecting Apollodorus (or Pseudo-Apollodorus).

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) presents on-line reviews of new (or at least recent) books on Ancient Greek and Roman topics (and sometimes a bit later, like Medieval Latin or Greek).

A generally favorable review of R. Scott Smith and Stephen Trzaskoma (ed. & tr.), "Apollodorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae. Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology," can be found at https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007.1...
You may decide that you want this one, over Robin Hard's, or alongside Frazer.

The review emphasizes a point which I skipped over, that the translations from Greek and Latin have been thoroughly revised, including using newer text editions, over their previous appearance in the same editor/translators' earlier "Anthology of Greek Myth" (first edition)

Having brought up the Anthology (which I also mentioned earlier) there is now a second edition, as "Anthology of Classical Myth. Primary Sources in Translation. With an Appendix on Linear B Sources by Thomas G. Palaima," edited and translated by Stephen Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, and Stephen Brunet, plus translators of some non-Classical myths (Babylonian, Hittite, Biblical). The review can be found at https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2005/2005.0...

The reviewer makes clear how it is designed to be used in introductory courses. Personally, I think that, for a noviced reader, it almost has to be used with help from someone experienced in classical mythology: the selections are in alphabetical order, by author, so the casual reader is left to figure out which sources are of primary importance, and which are not, and which myth about which god is worth remembering, as it shows up in later literature.

Indeed, some of the selections are extremely obscure, and likely to have been known only to a handful of classicists at any given time, so their cultural impact on the post-classical world has been limited. Which is not to say that some of them aren't worth reading -- they mostly will hold the reader's interest for their fairly short lengths.

[David]

Thank you to everyone who participated in the poll. The Library of Greek Mythology by Apollodorus is officially our next read. Discussion will open on September 30th after a special two-week interim read. Based on the activity already seen here, we will open a Library background discussion soon, but make sure you participate in the interim read too, I am sure you will like it.

Here are the weighted results.

R	W	W%	Book
11	20	39%	The Library of Greek Mythology
5	11	22%	Brave New World
3	7	8%	My Antonia
3	5	10%	Meditations
2	4	14%	Silas Marner
1	3	2%	The Awakening
1	1	6%	A Journal of the Plague Year
R = Raw vote
W = Weighted vote

I hope to hear from all of you in the discussion, especially the 11 of you that voted for it and the other 15 of you that thought about it.

[Aiden]

I’m greatly looking forward to discussing Greek mythology after studying the Greeks independently since the beginning of this year. I hope we can make the dry treatment more interesting than some expect.

[David]

Sons castrating their fathers, mothers killing their children, Zeus appearing all over his own and other family trees; this is dry?

[Nidhi]

Dry or not, most of the classic English literature is based on it. Just like nomenclature is derived from ancient languages , we have this option to understand what inspired the authors we are reading. I think reaching to the roots is never boring.

[Ian]

Those puzzled by the stories in Apollodorus may find some help -- or in some cases more confusion -- may want to look at either (or both) of two fairly recent "Companions," both available FREE on-line, at least for the moment. They are:

A Companion to Greek Mythology. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World, edited by Ken Dowden and NIall Livingstone, 2011
https://www.academia.edu/7333850/A_Co...
If you aren't familiar with academia.edu, see the NOTE below.

The second is currently available at the Internet Archive.

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, edited by Roger D. Woodard, Cambridge UP., 2007
https://archive.org/details/TheCambri...

Both contain useful essays on a great variety of topic.

{NOTE on ACADEMIA.EDU}
This site requires an account. If you don't already have an account, you can create one, free. You can choose to login using Facebook or Google, or your e-mail address instead.

The site sometimes fails to work properly. If you have problems with it, I'll be glad to suggest some work-arounds -- but they don't always work, either.}

[David]

Hello everyone. I started a "background" discussion for The Library. Please post any additional comments there with the book discussion instead of it getting lost in this discussion. Please feel free to repost anything from here you find helpful from here as well.