Ancient Period

World Literature I

Ancient Period (pages 1-23 of The Longman Anthology of World Literature)

Reading Guide

 

Directions: Read the assigned pages, looking for the answers to the questions below.  Word in quotes come directly for the text and are meant to help you locate the answer.

Note 1: While the text refers to “B.C.E” (Before the Common Era) and “C.E.” (Common Era), I continue to “buck the system” and use BC and AD, respectively. As a well-rounded student, you should know both.

Note 2: We are currently in the AD third millennium. 1^st millennium BC was 1000-0. 2^nd millennium BC was 2000-1001. 3^rd millennium BC was 3000-2001. AD 1^st millennium was AD 1-1000. AD 2^nd millennium was 1001-2000. 

 

1. 1. What four “innovations” of the ancient period helped to shape it? (Hint: Three of them are listed as “firsts.”)

a.

b.

c.

d.

1. 1. What “invention” was integral in the four innovations listed above?

1. 1. Who wrote down the teachings of the “great religious leaders” while also playing a “major role in the worldwide spread of the religions”?

1. 1. What three benefits did writing also give “cultures”?

a.

b.

c.

 

The Beginnings of World Literature

1. 1. What were the approximate years of the “first great bodies of literary texts”?

1. 1. Where were the four places these literary texts were written?

a.

b.

c.

d.

1. 1. Where do ancient writers look “to understand the present”?

1. 1. What did each of the following do:

1. 1. 1. Stories of creation—

1. 1. 1. Epic accounts of battles—

1. 1. 1. Laws—

1. 1. The works of the ancient writers became what “for later writing in their own cultures and beyond” as well as shaping “our understanding and practice of literature to present day”?

1. 1. Because “writing was employed mostly in courts and temples in the cities” the “origins” of the first ancient writers are “largely” what?

1. 1. “Pastoral poems” are poems about what?

1. 1. What were the pastoral poets “dreaming of”?

1. 1. When did “cultivation of crops” begin?

1. 1. What did farming “produce” and “allow for”?

1. 1. What did the Sumerians have in their “large cities” as early as 5000 BC?

1. 1. Rivers were VERY important during the ancient period. What two necessities were they “conduits of”?

a.

b.

1. 1. From what “Greek phrase” does “Mesopotamia” derive its name?

1. 1. Between which two rivers can Mesopotamia be found?

a.

b.

1. 1. Which river forms the “backbone of Egypt”?

1. 1. In approximately what year was Egypt “united into a single country”?

1. 1. What type of “writing developed in Egypt”?

1. 1. Which rivers were important in the following places:

1. 1. 1. China

1. 1. 1. India

1. 1. During which millennia were the first empires “born”?

1. 1. Over which areas did the following empires control:

1. 1. 1. Babylonian/Assyrian—

1. 1. 1. Egyptian—

1. 1. What did “great writers like Virgil both celebrate and probed” and for whom did they do this?

 

Travel, Migration, and Trade

1. 1. When “entire peoples journeyed in search of new grazing lands and new fields to farm,” what did it create?

1. 1. Where was the “silk road”?

1. 1. What did Phoenicians and Greeks send out that “established contacts around the Mediterranean”?

1. 1. What does most “ancient literature play to”?

 

Lyric and Epic

1. 1. “The invention of writing allowed” who to “record their poems”?

1. 1. What musical instrument lent its name to “lyric poetry”?

1. 1. “[I]n all of the ancient cultures presented [in this textbook], lyric poetry was recorded before” what other genre?

1. 1. What were the two ways “poets could be seen”?

1. 1. 1. Powerful…

1. 1. 1. Modestly as…

1. 1. In China, “any educated person, male or female, was expected to be able” to do what?

1. 1. Which four ancient cultures had “epic poetry”?

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. 1. Which two ancient cultures did not have “epic poetry”?

1.

2.

1. 1. “Works labeled epic” can be defined by what four characteristics?