Aristotle from Poetics Duex

After being told what Poetics actually is, I feel as though I made a bad judgement before. I took Poetics as basically just poems and maybe some song like writings but I did not understand what Poetics actually is. The entire reading now makes a little more sense. Also, earlier when I said that Aristotle only wrote stuff that was common sense, I was not trying to taking anything away from him that he is and was a brilliant mind. To come up with all that when at the time common sense was limited to what animals you shouldn't hunt because they are dangerous is a major feat. I personally, thoroughly enjoy reading Aristotle's works because even though it is common sense stuff to us now days he can make how you look at situations or ideas in a completely different way.

How to Read a Book

I did not like this reading at all. It reminded me alot of Aristotles From Poetics because it seemed like it was just describing how to do something that, for the most part, I already knew how to do. I might not be able to follow a play or a tradegy very well because they are not interesting to me, not that I don't know how to feel what the author is trying to convey or understand what the main character is feeling. I do think that alot of people don't see how some characters in stories make the decisions they make because as the reader you know more about certain events that the main character does not so you have to realize that idea when reading.

Aristotle From Poetics

One thing that I kind of like about Aristotle and is also something that I don't like about him, is that alot of his writings seem to be common sense stuff to most people today. Probably worded way better than most of us could have ever written it that way but non the less most people could probably come up with close to the same type of answers. It sounds like in this piece that he is just stating some obvious facts about poetics and tragedy that most of us already know like there needs to be a plot, characters, launguage, and thought. He words it in a way that is interesting and maybe brings up some points that most people probably never even thought about in such that a tragedy has to end with the reader feeling sympothetic or sad towards the main character or otherwise it is not quite a tragedy. I don't know if this is my bias or not because I am from the present but I can see how in the past, people like Aristotle needed to be around because common sense of that time was not quite the common sense of today in that people seemed to be less smart.

The Song of Songs

I feel like with The Song of Songs, that I would have to read it a full 9 and a half times (sarcasm) or so to really grasp the full meaning of it if there even is a full meaning. It sort of bothered me that they kept repeating a lot of the same things over and over possibly to fully get the point across but to me, it just made me lose what was going on like maybe she was searching for her lover and had people helping her and she was just telling stories to them about him to help describe him so the others could help. Or maybe it was flashbacks of actually events that happened at separate times. I am not sure. I just didn't like it that much because it was written in that Old English that is very hard to follow and half the words I did not understand what they even meant. I can deffinately see how it could be a very passionate and loving poem if only I could understand it a little better.

The Invention of Writing and the Earliest Literatures

The Invention of Writing was actually very interesting. Even though I am a physical education major, I still enjoy alot of history. You could kind of call me a random history buff if you wanted; random being the key word. This piece had alot of random histoy throughout it. Including that sweet short lesson on how to read hieroglyphs. It was also interesting to think about that the Hebrews had no other major thing like pictures or music, plays, or any of that. What they did create however was one of the most well known books in the world. It makes sense to me as well that writing in the earliest of civilizations had to be mastered by a select few because they didn't have anything like public schooling or educational system to teach anyone about these traits so from birth most children were raised with one major purpose whether that be fighting, farming, hunting, or what have you. So it was up to these select few to write down everything that had to be written and that is what they were taught to do from birth. Overall, I found this piece very interesting with all its historical value and would love reading more stuff closer to this in the future.