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- Great Writing Curriculum
- Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Gr. 3-5 Units of Study)
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Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3-5 (Units of Study)
Lucy Calkins ,
Marjorie Martinelli ,
Ted Kesler ,
Cory Gillette ,
Medea McEvoy ,
Mary Chiarella , and
M. Colleen Cruz
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Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency: Thinking, Talking, and Writing About Reading, K-8
ASIN: 0325008701 |
Book Description
Building on the teaching and instructional features in Units of Study for Primary Writing, Lucy Calkins and her colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project extend their writing curriculum to the upper-elementary grades with Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3-5. Offering a whole new set of units, this series places and added emphasis on mechanics, assessment, and collaborating with colleagues.
Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3-5 is organized around 6 Units of Study. Each Unit of Study lays out four to six weeks of instruction. Together the units provide the teaching points, minilessons, strategies, and tools you'll need to jump in and teach writing to your students. Presented sequentially, these units help you teach narrative and expository writing with increasing sophistication.
1. Launching the Writing Workshop
This unit jumpstarts your year by reviewing and teaching the essentials of writingcollecting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. In addition to introducing practical strategies for finding topics and generating writing, this unit also helps you foster a community of writers in your classroom and teach students how to work with partners constructively .
2. Raising the Quality of Narrative Writing
In this unit students learn how to use emblematic details, images, dialogue, and carefully-chosen words to make a small moment into a compelling story. While developing a personal narrative students learn to create suspense, align story elements into a cohesive whole, and use timelines to link internal thoughts with external plots.
3. Breathing Life Into Essays
This unit guides you in teaching students how to craft thesis-driven essays drawn from their own personal experiences and expertise. Throughout this unit students learn how to develop a thought, organize their thinking with boxes and bullets, and use writing conventions to strengthen their work.
4. Story Arcs: Writing Short Fiction
This unit helps you expand students' previous learning by helping them use story arcs to create rising action, a conflict, and a resolution. Students learn to use character development, symbolism, and their knowledge of the elements of a story to develop powerful, realistic fiction.
5. Writing About Literature
In this unit students draw on what they have learned about writing stories to read stories well. They use what they've learned about essays to help them craft essays that analyze and respond to literature.
6. Memoir: Putting It All Together
This introspective unit on memoir writing is designed to help students draw on all they have learned about the structure and craft of writing. From their experience writing essays, students learn to make points about their lives. From their understandings about personal narratives, students learn to write about memories that illustrate their points in compelling ways.
These 6 Units of Study are reinforced by two resources that offer everyday support.
A Guide to the Writing Workshop, Grades 35
This overview volume equips you to teach a productive, well-managed writing workshop, introduces you to the methods that underlie writing instruction, and helps you plan a yearlong writing curriculum.
Resources for Teaching Writing, Grades 35
This CD-ROM supports your writing program with samples of student writing, video clips of the authors teaching, and a range of printable reproducibles organized unit-by-unit.
In total Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3-5 contains 7 books and 1 CD-ROM.
Customer Reviews:
Great Writing Curriculum.......2007-01-10
Units of Study, by Lucy Calkins, is a great tool. I've started using it in my fifth grade class and they seem to enjoy it. I also find it very useful.
Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Gr. 3-5 Units of Study).......2006-08-05
Excellent step by step lessons for teaching writing. These units do for the intermediate grades what Lucy's program does for the primary grades. Can't wait to use it with my 5th graders this fall.
Book Description
"Elvia Alvarado tells the story of her life and the life of the people of Honduras. Read it and understand the struggle against tyranny of the poor. Read it and act."--Alice Walker
Customer Reviews:
GOOD.......2006-07-13
It was good and very informative. The only problem is it was out dated.
A realistic account.......2006-01-23
Reading this book, it's important to remember that it wasn't written by someone with a formal, "liberal arts" education. That said, you need to use your own judgement to decide what's perhaps "biased", and what's not. Remember though, that whatever bias exists, exists for a reason, and should be taken in the context of what was going on at the time, as well as within the author's background. This isn't to say she's wrong, but in fact is correct on most issues, you just need to ensure that YOU the reader, are well versed on the subject (or are willing to become so) before reading this book. From my own experiences in the country, Alvarado seems dead on. Remember too, that the author has put herself in real peril to bring you this account, so plan on counting your blessings as you read.
Good Culture Reference.......2004-12-02
I read this book in order to learn something about the people
of Honduras and how they live. I found it to be a good source
for learning about the lives of "campasinos"...peasants.. and
their struggle to live and raise their families in general.
It was not such a good source for learning about this country's
small middle class and since the author's struggle is with the rich,
all references to them were in a negative light... so it was not necessarily an unbiased resource for learning about them.
A real joy.......2004-05-21
This book is beautiful and will inspire you and remind you of what is important in life.
the further you stay clear of Medea Benjamin the better.......2004-03-05
Medea B Wouldn't know justice if it bit her. She has called cuba a paradise where friends of mine are under house watch or have served severe prison terms just for political organization!
Book Description
Euripides' most important plays in one volume. Translations are taken in full text from other single volumes in the Focus Classical Library, by authors Michael Halleran, Anthony Podlecki, and Stephen Esposito, with notes and a new introduction. As with all Focus Classical Library titles, this anthology has been designed with the student of ancient drama in mind, including modern translations close to the original, informed by the latest scholarship, and with an extensive introduction, interpretative essay, and footnotes- all to the purpose of allowing the student to understand Greek drama, Greek mythology, and the context of Greek culture.
Customer Reviews:
Some significant cover damage, more than was described.......2007-09-27
I bought the book as "like new" so I had some high expectations. while my pages were unmarked and in order, the cover was bent, warped, dogeared, with rippled tears. Poor quality, and misfiled as "like new"
student review.......2004-12-08
I found all 4 plays in this book easy to read & easy to get into...this book was awesome & has made me a fan of Euripides.
Book Description
The bestselling author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy offers his most provocative and funniest book yet!
Greg Palast has spent the last thirty years getting the goods on corporate con men and political hucksters. Now he and his special guests cut through the TV news babytalk in Armed Madhouse. Armed with more than fifty classified documents and confidential memos, Palast brings you the stories not allowed in The New York Times, including:
Before invading, George Bush didn't have a secret plan to seize Iraq's oil -- he had two. Palast shows you both.
In "Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?," Palast reveals the horror and humor of the War on Terror.
In "The Network," Palast gives you the skinny on the new global order -- and pushes Thomas Friedman over the edge of his Flat World.
It was Palast, for BBC TV, who first uncovered how Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris stole Election 2000. Now he tells you that Kerry won in 2004 -- and that 2008 is already fixed.
Who drowned New Orleans? Palast names names -- and adds some suggestions for fighting the new Class War.
Greg Palast speaks truth to power the only way you can -- by letting the facts speak for themselves. Get the straight story on what today's self-appointed Masters of the Universe have in store for you.
Customer Reviews:
Read the book, avoid the audio version.......2007-10-10
The material presented seems to be meticulously researched, and clearly and systematically presented. The problem is -on the audio CD edition- the sarcasm with which the lines are spoken. The sneering, cloying sarcasm is so intense, so pervasive, and so grating that it detracts from the narrative. Is it really necessary to emulate Anne Coulter's style?
The truth exponentially!.......2007-10-05
Greg Palast is the modern day Thomas Paine. Believe me when I say that that is not an overstatement at all. This is the book that got a man tazed by his vociferous opining over one single chapter - in fact, the very chapter that is what makes this book so important to understanding the hijacking of an entire country and its Constitution by the Bush crime machine.
The very fact that Palast has to go to another country to speak his truh tells you that we are in big toruble of losing the fourth estate altogether if we don't pay attention and do something about it.
I heard Palast on progressive radio and started my quest for the facts by reading his online pieces and then buying this book. I only wish more Americans had listened much earlier and perhaps we could have avoided the fiasco that began with the hanging chad fiasco of 2001 when the Supreme Court appointed King George that began the decent into constitutional chaos and the monumental abyss of lies, torture, rendering, the attack on human rights in our country and more.
I am so glad there is a Greg Palast. Just as glad as Bush cronies hate everything this man represents. Armed Madhouse is a welcome addition to my reference library and historic archives. Read and become enlightened!
Hostile Takeover.......2007-10-04
Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse documents the thesis of CW Mills' seminal 1956 book The Power Elite - that US politics is just a facade: A facade for a hostile corporate takeover of both governments and nations. Palast asserts and documents that the "war on terror" was conceived as an attempt to destroy OPEC, further impoverish the US middle class, and reap windfall corporate profits from rebuilding Iraq, whose "no-bid", cash cow rebuilding Palast calls "the biggest reconstruction project since the pyramids" [page 277]. Palast humorously remarks in passing that "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was originally dubbed Operation Iraqi Liberation ("O.I.L.") by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
"Conspiracy nuts think George Bush, from the moment he took office, had a secret plan to control Iraq's oil. They're wrong. Bush had two plans. Here they are: One crafted by the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, another fashioned by the State Department and Big Oil. This is the history of the secret cold war between these two power elites, which drives the hot war on the Tigris" [page 51].
"[This book] is about how they are taking these American rights away, stripping them off you one by one, from the Wage and Hour Law's 40-hour week to the Clayton Antitrust Law to the False Claims Act to the laws that keep your lights on and your pensions protected. Many are laws that you've probably never heard of, like the Public Utility Holding Company Act. But, take my word for it, you'll miss them when they're gone" [page 284].
Outstanding book.
Highly Informative, Disturbingly Insightful.......2007-10-01
Palast uncovers advanced economic plots to make the rich richer and the poor their servants. First he discusses the oil economy as it relates to big businesses and the political systems of those countries in power. Although there are those who completely dispel Palast's notion that oil is in seemingly infinite supply (and I don't mean right-wingers, either... do a google), I don't think if Palast is wrong on this count that it destroys his theories on how the oil industry operates and prospers. Other keep-the-rich rich schemes include the stealing of elections, something I've already studied and yet, was completely horrified to learn further extent to this phenomenon. Other notable topics include China, our lack-luster education system, and how the working class is held down. Well worth the listen, but have your brain turned on and focused. You can't be day dreaming and get what the author is saying because there are a lot of details given and he talks rather quickly.
Why Isn't Congress Reading This Book?.......2007-09-23
This book should be a mandatory assignment to be read by every member of congress. It's all about lies and the real reason for this war. Controll of oil prices.
Average customer rating:
- Modern Medea, modern mistakes
- A true story of slavery and infanticide
- Interesting story, well written
- The story behind (or beside) Morrison's Beloved
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Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child-Murder from the Old South
Steven Weisenburger
Manufacturer: Hill and Wang
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Beloved
ASIN: 0809069547 |
Amazon.com
"This is a story of slavery and child-murder, and it begins in northern Kentucky."
Toni Morrison's Beloved was based on a real incident: an 1856 infanticide committed by 22-year-old Margaret Garner, a runaway slave who, when recapture was imminent, cut her daughter's throat with a butcher's knife. "The ensuing public opinion battle raged for months," writes Steven Weisenburger. For the abolitionist movement, "no case more incisively revealed the pathology of slavery, and no deeds better symbolized the slave's tragic heroism." But to those in favor of slavery, "her deeds demonstrated that slaves were subhuman. Only a beast would kill its offspring, they reasoned, so Margaret's child-murder proved the bondservant's need for Southern slavery's kindly paternal authority."
Weisenburger's account of Garner's life has a novelistic flair of its own, laying out the facts in crisp detail. He guides readers through the controversial month-long trial and its aftermath, with her return into bondage and, for a time, obscurity. Modern Medea provides a rich understanding of the realities of life in the antebellum South and the legal and cultural battles that took place over the institution of slavery.
Book Description
The first in-depth historical account of the events that inspired Toni Morrison's novel Beloved.
In the middle of a frigid Sunday night in January 1856, a twenty-two-year-old Kentucky slave named Margaret Garner gathered up her family and raced north, toward Cincinnati and freedom. But Margaret's master followed just hours behind and soon had the fugitives surrounded. Thinking all was lost, Margaret seized a butcher knife and nearly decapitated her two-year-old daughter, crying out that she would rather see her children dead than returned to slavery. She was turning on her other three children when slave catchers burst in and subdued her.
Margaret Garner's child-murder electrified the United States, inspiring the longest, most spectacular fugitive-slave trial in history. Abolitionists and slaveholders fought over the meaning of the murder, and the case came to symbolize the ills of the Union in those last dark decades before the Civil War. Newspaper columnists, poets, and dramatists raced to interpret Margaret's deeds, but by the century's end they were all but forgotten. Steven Weisenburger is the first scholar to delve into this astonishing story in more than a century. Weisenburger integrates his innovative archival discoveries into a dramatic narrative that paints a nuanced portrait of the not-so-genteel Southern culture of slavery and its destructive effect on all who lived in and with it.
Customer Reviews:
Modern Medea, modern mistakes.......2005-01-20
The first chapter is about the Gaines family, how is it Mr. Weisenburger can make so many mistakes and no one seems to notice. Did he use newspaper articles of the day for his chapters having to do with the trial? If he can take a 12 page letter from Sept. 14, 1852 and change the names of those in the letter how can we believe he could get the rest of the story right ? The Gaines family genealogy chart is wrong and possibly gotten off any one of the internet genealogy websites.
He constantly refers to a "teenage or young" Archibald, this Archibald was 25 years old ! And this Archibald was the oldest child of John Pollard Gaines.
He gets the dates wrong to so many things you have to wonder what else is wrong ?
This book may have been more accurate if the author had consulted with descendants of the Gaines, Bedinger or Marshall families, which he did not.
Mr. Weisenburger's bio at the University of Kentucky states "Steven is a fanatical researcher of primary sources." With so many errors, I do not see that...
A true story of slavery and infanticide.......2004-05-16
In February 1857, slave Margaret Garner fled from her master Archibald Gaines's Kentucky plantation. She, her husband Robert, his parents, and their four children crossed the frozen Ohio River in Cincinnati, hiding out in the cabin of one of Margaret's cousins, a free black. Gaines quickly trailed them to the cabin, and, in one quick moment, Margaret picked up a knife and killed one of her children, not wanting any of them to go back into slavery.
In "Modern Medea," author Steven Weisenburger uses court documents, newspaper stories and other sources from the time to examine this almost-forgotten trail that challenged the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. We follow along with the entire trial, seeing all the tricks that both defense and prosecution lawyers used to either bring a quick end to proceedings or to protract them in order to keep the Garners on free soil. The trail also gives us an interesting look into politics, the pro-slavery mindset, abolitionism view, and the media perception and bias of the time.
What I found most interesting about this book is that the trial to determine whether or not the Garner's were still the property of Archibald Gaines took precedent over the charge of infanticide. The outcome would have a profound effect not only on state's rights but would spark a tiny flame leading up to the American Civil War. And even after the trial was concluded, the media, poets such as Elizabeth Barret Browning, and other authors used the events to add fuel to the ever-growing debate on slavery.
But, it still remains a little-known trial, falling into the dust of history in part due to public "whitening" of the events and to the events of the Dred Scott decision almost a year later. Yet author Toni Morrison helped to revive interest in this trial by modeling one of the characters in her novel "Beloved" after the ghost of Margaret's slain daughter, Mary.
The book sometimes reads more like a college text and asks many questions that are never answered. But the amount of information surrounding the trial and concerning the battle of state's rights versus federal law make this a great book to read.
Interesting story, well written.......1999-10-31
Very well done indeed. I am impressed that an English professor could turn in such good work as an historian and cover the courtroom battles with the skill of an experienced lawyer. A well told story of an obscure, but very revealing, chapter in the period just before the Civil War.
Minor criticisms: Too much is devoted to courtroom battles at the expense of describing daily slave life. As the author is a professor at a late 20th Century American university, he feels it necessary from time to time to wave his little red PC book in the air and shout slogans: Slavery was evil! Racism is not nice! Well, duh. None of this adds to the book and all of it detracts from the book.
Still, this is a good read. Buy it; you won't be disappointed. (By the way, I have never read Toni Morrison's "Beloved"; one doesn't need to in order to enjoy this book.)
The story behind (or beside) Morrison's Beloved.......1998-12-12
Weisenburger, with a meticulous eye and a careful hand, vividly retells the story of Margaret Garner, whose case (or rather, one account of whose case) was the seed from which Toni Morrison grew the central stalk of her novel Beloved. It is not exactly facts that he gives us -- Weisenburger is too careful a critic, too aware of the complex nature of the historical record -- but around what facts can be found, he has written a novel of his own, one which richly complements Morrison's though-experiment with the historical legacy of slavery.
Garner's case, though little recalled today, was far better known in its day than many readers of Morrison's novel may realize. The best-known lawyers and abolitionists of the day argued Garner's case, and newspapers across the country reported the story. The most fascinating aspect of the story is the account of the competing legal and rhetorical strategies used to try to free Garner -- or, if she could not be freed, to give her the greatest possible symbolic value for the cause.
Garner's act -- killing one of her children rather than allowing het to be returned to slavery -- placed her between two contrary legal systems. Within the slavery system, and the Federally- administered Fugitive Slave Act, Garner was a piece of property to be returned. Yet within Ohio law, as a person accused of murder, she was subject to persecution for her crime as a human being. Her lawyer, paradoxically, had to persuade a judge to issue a writ for her arrest for murder, in order to prevent her from being returned to Kentucky as a slave -- it was in fact her one hope.
Weisenburger details how, in the end, this defense too failed, partly due to the complicity of certain Ohio officials with the Kentucky counterparts, and partly due to the inaction of then-governor of Ohio Salmon Chase. The actual tale of Margaret Garner, strangely enough, is even more tragic than that of Morrison's Sethe. Margaret was shipped off to cotton-belt slavery with relatives of her Kentucky owner, losing a second child to a streamboat accident en route, and evenrually died a horrible death from typhoid fever.
I'd recommend this book to anyone engaged by Morrison's novel, or by the recent film -- not as 'the fact behind the fiction,' but instead as a vital counterpoint, an *other* story of Margaret Garner, a woman who stood at the razor's edge of on of American history's most brutal junctures.
Average customer rating:
- Great Buy!!
- Medea
- medea
- medea
- An Inner questioning
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Medea (Dover Thrift Editions)
Euripides
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
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ASIN: 0486275485 |
Book Description
One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, masterfully portraying the fierce motives driving Medea's pursuit of vengeance for her husband's insult and betrayal. Authoritative Rex Warner translation.
Customer Reviews:
Great Buy!!.......2007-09-15
This book is an absolute bargain at this price and the shipping was super fast. This translation is great for younger readers and speaks to them in an easily understandable tongue.
Medea.......2006-09-01
Honestly reading this story overwhelmed me. Considering how short the play is, at the end I found myself mentally and emotionally exhausted. "Medea" explores many different themes that are still present in life today. Although I found her undying attachment to Jason annoying, I understood after reading the play how love and revenge can overpower ones mind. I felt as if Euripides toyed with the fact that women are both the weakest and the strongest in relationships. Medea's passion was overwhelming as a reader because I felt like it was a cry for attention rather than a true plea of lost love.
Euripides' "Medea" although short, is very intense and filled with many emotions. I was lucky enough to see an amazing performance of this play. If done thoughtfully, it can engage you to the point where you sympathize with Medea and are annoyed by her at the same time.
medea.......2006-09-01
I thought Medea was pretty interesting to read, especially since I found it difficult to decide whether I supported Medea's decisions throughout the play. So much to go through just to inflict pain on her former husband Jason! I understood her reasoning for revenge, which was fueled by hurt and grief, and enjoyed the fact that unlike most women in ancient Athens, Medea took action when she was wronged. Like the women in the Chorus, I supported Medea. However, when Medea goes as far as to kill her own children, I was disappointed that Medea found Jason's agony to be more important than the lives of her own two sons. Overall, I enjoyed reading Medea, though I would have liked to have known if any guilt managed to catch up to Medea afterwards.
medea.......2006-08-30
In Medea by Euripides, Medea formulates a plan to destroy her husband and his new wife, the princess. Euripides is able to convey to the reader the distress and anger that Medea has within her. Her anger is seen as she is willing to sacrifice her own children so that her plan to kill her husband is followed through with. The reader may become frustrated with her as she almost seems heinous and can be considered the villain. Medea is different from many women because of her strong will and determination. Most women would be filled with sorrow, but instead, Medea plans out her revenge instead of crying her eyes out. She uses however, this soft spot in women to put her plan into action by begging the king for an extended stay in the city, and she succeeds. Medea shows the power and guile of women.
An Inner questioning.......2006-08-28
Euripide's "Medea" certainly has an interesting plotline similar to that of many drama series and movies of today: man falls in love with woman who saved his life, man and woman marry + have kids, man has affair with a king's daughter, wife seeks revenge (Medea= unhappy wife, Jason= cheating hubby).
What makes this story different from the cheesy revenge stories of today is that Euripides, like other Ancient Greek writers, brings in the question of what is morally right or wrong according to the Greek gods who treasure obeyance and trust, more than anything. So! In "Medea," where Jason denies the life-saving help he received from Medea and disobeys her by having an affair with a higher-class person...and Medea is extremely pained by Jason and performs the most inhumane revenge, who is MORE wrong? To rephrase this question... to what extent of inhumanity is a revenge valid/morally right for the oh-so-important Greek gods to accept?
Throughout the book, it was very difficult for me to support either Medea, who is extremely suffering from her husband's affair that she could kill herself, or Jason, who just wants to get away from his wife to start a new, higher-class life with his children. However, I think that it is this inner conflict of who to A. sympathize with emotionally or B. support because he or she is "justified/right", that makes the reader really question his or her viewpoint of extreme situations, making this book sincerely amazing.
Customer Reviews:
Medea is great!!.......2001-05-02
I first heard of Medea in our Latin II class when we covered Greek/Roman mythology. I was really intrigued by her then. This year, in Latin IV we translated a piece of Medea by the Roman author Seneca. I really enjoyed it. I bought Medea at the bookstore and loved it. There is a lot more psychological things going on than you get from the normal myth.
I reccomend this to anyone who likes classical mythology.
Book Description
Translated by John Davie with an Introduction and Notes by Richard Rutherford.
Customer Reviews:
daring, resonant, horrific, and (duh) mythical.......2006-08-30
I, too, was surprised how relevant and easily modern the issues presented in 'Medea' could be. I mean, gender, power, betrayal and revenge are universal and timeless, but Euripides' Medea is breaking all the rules: she's constantly exploding into feminist manifestos, seeking to (figuratively) neuter herself one moment and irradiating torrid womanpower the next, and spitefully slaughters her own family with impunity. In comparison to such a powerful character, the rest of the characters seem mere shades with vague wills and blurred senses of human values- except, perhaps, for Jason, who is so convinced of his own sexual superiority that he doesn't grasp what's going on until it's too late.
The whole thing seemed rather mythic to me, though not immediately because it's an ancient Greek fable with Furies and sun-gods and pervertedly creative murder weapons. I feel that the sheer amount of catharsis in the plotline (which, according to the notes, Euripides practically invented) makes it almost rudimentary and sensationalized. Why does Euripides (figuratively) transform the multifaceted Medea into a demon, rather than allowing her humanity and complexity to show through, perhaps even affirm her demonic actions? It's more daring to deify Medea, which is perhaps why the play seems to smack of modernity. But (to me, anyway) this seems to carve Medea into an archetype, lessening the value of the human realities of the play. It finishes like an allegory, and I think that limits it.
Strength of a Woman.......2006-08-29
Euripides' Medea is a story about a woman's heartbreak and the revenge she consequently seeks on her husband. After her spouse takes another wife Medea is torn apart, unable to distinguish right from wrong. She plots to kill the new wife and eventually Medea murders her own children, all in order to spite her former lover.
Euripides expresses the power of passion without reason especially when it comes to love. Medea is willing to kill her own children out of despair, although they are the only people she really has. She has feelings of trepidation before killing the children, revealing her humanity, but appears triumphant after completing the murders. She appears at the top of a building at the end of the show which is usually reserved for divine appearances (intro), which is a metaphor for Medea's strength and even her unyielding brutality, qualities that many deities were believed to possess.
I really enjoyed this play because of Euripides' representation of the woman. Although tragic, Medea's dramatic actions express her passion, stubbornness, power, as well as her godliness and simultaneous humanity.
A modern suprise.......2006-08-23
I was pleasantly surprised when I was reading "Medea". About halfway through the play, I realized that the themes of revenge, depression, and female empowerment are still relevant. Infidelity and vengeance are things witnessed everyday: in movies, in the news, maybe even in our own lives. This string of themes proves further that human kind hasn't changed too much.
Though I did have some problems with the plot and some of the overdramatics. Medea revealed to the audience a vulnerable, passionate woman who has a bit of a drama problem and needs just a little too much attention. I think any reader can appreciate the pain she suffered and the disgusting way people in power dealt with her. But is there a line being far over-stepped by killing one's own children just to make a man feel guilty?
Though there is some undeniable hyperbole, it is a story a reader or audience member can empathize, and is totally plausible in a modern setting.
surprisingly modern.......2006-08-23
Having read a decent amount of classical poems and plays, I drew from previous experience and started "Medea" with the expectation of appreciating but not neccessarily loving it. But "Medea" pleasantly surprised me with its timeless story of a woman's revenge driven by her own selfish pride and the disgusting lengths she goes to hurt her husband. I found myself completely fascinated by Medea's manipulative antics and sociopathic tendencies. This play has definitely conquered time and remains thrilling a couple thousand years later with themes like betrayal, justice and honor which are still prevalent in modern stories. As a crime show junkie, I constantly drew parallels from recent story lines on a million shows on television to Medea's chilling story. I highly recommend this play.
Great Collection.......2004-11-15
I think this is one of the better compilations I've seen. I've really been impressed with all of the Oxford World's Classics series. The information given in the Introduction as well as the maps and reference materials mentioned are very helpful. In addition I like having the notes listed at the end of the compilation rather then interspersed, I find it less distracting that way. A must have for any Greek Literature Scholar.
Product Description
To make Medea more accessible for the modern reader, our Prestwick House Literary Touchstone EditionTM includes a glossary of the more difficult words, as well as convenient sidebar notes to enlighten the reader on aspects that may be confusing or overlooked. In doing this, it is our intention that the reader may more fully enjoy the beauty of the verse, the wisdom of the insights, and the impact of the drama. Witch, barbarian, foreigner, or a woman wronged and committed to the most horrific kind of justice, Medea is a heroine who makes her audience shudder. Euripides shows us an astonishingly strong female protagonist, whom some readers have identified as the first feminist in Western literature. Seeing where her strength leads her, though, we must wonder if she was intended to be portrayed a model or as a warning. Because the three other plays that were traditionally performed with Medea have been lost, it is difficult to say whether EuripidesÂ’ Athenian audience was as upset by the play as modern readers are. It won only third place at the biggest festival in the city, indicating that ancient audiences also found it controversial. With its still-relevant examination of marriage, love, and revenge, and its explicit scenes of mental and emotional agony, Medea continues to demand our attention.
Customer Reviews:
Amazing.......2007-07-19
The book was in excellent condition and it was a joy to read! It was a quick and easy read. If you enjoy scandal, murder, and women overpowering men, then this is the book for you!
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