LATIN LITERATURE- TERENCE

 "Andria", scene I. 

The first scene is about Simo, Pamphilus' father, talking to his freedman, Sosia, about Pamphilus and his wedding. Simo wanted Pamphilus to marry Philumena, but then he discovers that he's in love with Glycerium, a woman from Andria that Pamphilus got pregnant. Not only Simo wanted his son to marry Philumena, but also Chremes, Philumena's father. He complained to Simo that Pamphilus wasn't going to marry his daughter, instead he was going to marry Glycerium. Although, all that was part of Simo's plan, to pretend Pamphilus was going to marry Glycerium but at the end he wanted him to marry Philumena. 

Then Simo and Sosia kind of discuss the bad things about marrying Glycerium, and explain why they shouldn't get married. After that, the scene ends with Simo telling Sosia that was the plan and that he had to pretend the wedding was real, terrify Davus, Pamhilus' slave in case he was making a scheme helping Pamphilus to marry Glycerium. Also, he said that there was no doubt that his son didn't wish for a wife.

This play is on of the six comedies of Terrence, it was actually the first one he wrote. This genre, comedy, is very different than what I thought it was. I thought it would all fun and laughs, but it's actually about a love story about a man trying to marry a woman that his dad doesn't approve. In class we saw comedy kind of a subgenre of drama. I think that's why a comedy doesn't have to be all funny. Probably as the play goes on it gets a little funny because from what I read it sounds like a love story to me. Also, I found this play very interesting from the beginning. It has a great background, but a little confusing at the beginning because of all the characters' strange names. Most of the time I don't like romantic stories, but I find this comedy very amusing.

Link of the play: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22188/22188-h/files/terence1_2.html#andria

CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGES

The Na'vi languague is a constructed languague created for the Na'vi in the movie Avatar with fictional purposes. It was created by Paul Frommer, a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business with a doctorate in linguistics. Naʼvi was designed to fit James Cameron's conception of what the language should sound like in the film, to be realistically learnable by the fictional human characters of the film, to sound alien but pleasant and appealing to audiences, to be a language that humans could plausibly learn to speak, and to be pronounceable by the actors, but to not closely resemble any single human language.

The Naʼvi language has its origins in James Cameron's early work on Avatar. In 2005, while the film was still in scriptment form, Cameron felt it needed a complete, consistent language for the alien characters to speak. Based on Cameron's initial list of words, which had a "Polynesian flavor" according to Frommer, the linguist developed three different sets of meaningless words and phrases that conveyed a sense of what an alien language might sound like: of the three, Cameron liked the sound of the ejectives most. When the film was released in 2009, Naʼvi had a growing vocabulary of about a thousand words. However, this has changed subsequently as Frommer has expanded the lexicon to more than 1,500 words and has published the grammar, thus making Naʼvi a relatively complete and learnable language.

SPOT THE CLASSICS

Ángel de la Independencia, México D.F.

Los Arcos, Guadalajara 

Acueducto, Culiacán

Rotonda de los Jaliscenses Ilustres, Guadalajara 

Mercado Garmendia, Culiacán

THE TROJAN WOMEN

 “The Trojan women” is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides, which was made into a film. This takes place during the Trojan War which starts when Paris of Troy took Helen from his husband, the king of Sparta. The part that I watched starts when a soldier brings water to a part of Troy were a lot of women are and Helen of Troy, but she was in a prison. The soldiers drank almost all of the water, and didn’t give anything to the women of Troy, but they gave a little of water to Helen which she used to wash her body. That made the women of Troy really angry and started a kind of rebellion. The soldiers thought that gave the women of Troy a reason to start fighting against them and kill Helena, but it wasn’t very smart since the soldiers had horses and started hitting them. They also brought Melanaus, the king of Sparta. The Trojan women wanted Melanaus to kill Helena, and then Hecuba, the queen of the Trojans, arrived and told Melanaus to kill Helena just like all the Trojan women. Then Helena tried to defend herself giving all the reasons why she shouldn’t be killed and said it was Hecuba’s fault because she gave birth to Paris, also she said that she went away in secret from Melanaus’ house with Paris because when she saw him Aphrodite came with him and it was her fault she ran away. And she finished saying that when Paris died she tried to go back to Greece, but she couldn’t. Although, the queen of the Trojans wasn’t going to stay in silence. She said that she was lying, that she desired Paris without the need of a goddess, and that she wanted more luxuries, luxuries that Paris could give her. Also, that Helena was looking for the winning side and that was Paris’ side. After saying all that, Hecuba insisted telling Melanaus to kill Helena. After hearing all that, the king of Sparta said he will take Helena back to Greece and give her away to all the relatives of the people that died because of her.

I found this movie really interesting because of the story. I think it’s a really good story with a very good film production. It looks a lot like an ancient place in Troy and the dialogues are great even if there’s some kind of poetry in it. I really liked the parts I watched.