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Shakespeare's educational value?
- Thread starter SoulTYPE
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lilithu
The Devil's Advocate
I think that a lot of UUs would agree with you.Sunstone said:
Personally, I still see greater depth in scripture. We just have to stop looking at it solely as a historical document. As Dante said, only two written works can read on different four levels - literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. And those two written works are the Bible and his Divine Comedy.
No*s
Captain Obvious
SoulTYPE01 said:
Yes, our earliest English is a dialect of Anglo-Saxon and is called "Old English." This dialect was highly inflected. This means that the words changed according to their usage in the sentance. If I said "ship" it would be "scip." If I were to say "On ship," it would be "on scipe." If I were to say "ships," it would be "scipes," and so on. It also had numerous other differences (like a different 2nd person pronoun for singular and plural).
Beowulf and King Aelfrid's histories are in this language. There are also still some extant translations of the Bible. Very few of us could even begin to read them, though.
In the 11th century, the Normans conquered England, and the result of this is called "Middle English." In this time period, English changed radically. It lost most of its inflection, so that words became formed a lot more like they are today. It also gradually lost the distinction between "thu" ("thee") and "you," wherein they both collapsed into "you." This is probably a result of the fact that the Normans had a formal and informal "you." The meshing of the two caused our "thu/thee" to vanish.
Its vocabulary changed fundamentally. Words from Norman and Latin flooded into English and many of the older words were replaced. It also created word connotations that changed with the class of people using it (English common folk, Latin clergy, and Norman nobles), so that we get sets of three words that mean the same thing, but are subtley different, such as "kingly," "regal," and "royal." They are all technically the same thing...but they're different.
Middle English is much closer to ours, and is quite readable to us. The most immanent example of this is Chaucer.
Starting in the 13th century, the language's pronunciation began to change dramatically. This occured to all Germanic languages, and I have no clue why (I can barely make my way through Middle English and read patches of Old, and none of the others). "Sheep" was pronounced like "shape" before this, but the change in pronunciation changed how all our vowels were pronounced. The result of this is "Modern English," our language. Shakespeare, Mark Twain, the KJV, and Stephen King are all part of this phase of English.
Scuba Pete
Le plongeur avec attitude...
It's all Greek to me!
Dr. Nosophoros
Active Member
Just speaking for myself, I found Shakespear extremely boring, I found no use for it, it was just words for a grade when I was in school, I hated every minute of it.
Fat Old Sun
Active Member
Shakespeare has done more to shape my morality and understanding of human nature than any of the religious doctrine I have read.Sunstone said:
I feel ashamed to find out more about the history of the English language from some of you, until I remember Its not my first language. So there! thats my excuse.
I always loved Macbeth until I went to see an 'operatta' version of it. Bored me to tears. I do love his turn of speech though....
I always loved Macbeth until I went to see an 'operatta' version of it. Bored me to tears. I do love his turn of speech though....