I found
this article on Twitter. I thought it was especially interesting for classicists/grad students. Apparently some publishers get really jumpy about publishing books from dissertations that appear online in digital form. Others seem to feel that this means that there is already a market for the product. I wonder whether publishers will end up moving digital information backward by forcing students not to share their work if they want to be considered publishable.
I read over 80 lines of
Μήδεια
today and I am exhausted (how will I ever survive grad school?) so I am not going to finish my addendum to the comments on "
Μήδεια and Rhetoric" tonight. However, they should appear in a semi-coherent form in the next few days along with some addenda to "
Μήδεια and the 'Royal We'," some thoughts on Isocrates,
Parmenides
, and a review of the most recent
Marathon 2500 talk.
You read 80 lines, but I take it you mean not all at once?
ReplyDeleteI have always liked reading things continuously without comprehending them. Because I know it could take hours to read a page of Greek if I looked up every word. And so I don't look up any words, there is a lot I don't understand -- but I feel like I'm just getting the Greek in there, and I don't have to understand it yet.
80 lines in about 5 sittings over the course of the day. I can't usually translate more than 25 lines of Greek without taking a few minutes break here and there because I read very slowly consulting at least the text, some dictionary (often the Perseus LSJ), and usually a commentary (more often than I ought), and if I am being really diligent, All The Greek Verb and my Middle Liddell instead of Perseus, and either or both the Oxford Grammar and Smyth.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, 80 lines tires me out, but I heard from a friend that I will need to be reading about 160 lines a day (80 Greek, 80 Latin) in grad school so I am working on building up my endurance.
I wish I could read it more easily with out so many guides, but I tend to just zone out instead of absorbing when I try. Maybe someday. I am trying to build up my vocabulary in order to make that more likely. On the other hand, when I am reading to go over it with someone (as I am reading Medea with Herodotus II) I have to be very careful and understand each sentence because we share the mutual responsibility of helping each other when one of us gets stuck.
You just need to read it straight. Go cold-turkey. You don't need the comments and the dictionary -- they rob you of the most wonderful thing, which is discovering the language for yourself. (I have this odd belief, that given very minimal context -- and it is not an idle question how much -- anyone can learn to speak any language.)
ReplyDelete