I've just been to K City to teach English grammar to a Korean boy, using Japanese, as a volunteer. He can understand Japanese, English and his mother tongue Korean.
I wrote about him last week. He is very quick to learn. We are very good friends and enjoy learning English. I'll miss him when he goes back to Korea in January next year.
Now I think I will go on writing PREFACE of the graduation thesis I wrote 40 years ago.
This is continued from yesterday's article. Of course, I do not completely agree to what karin wrote when she was 22 years old.
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In appreciating any literary work the most essential thing is one's reaction to it---that is, what one feels or thinks about the work. And to make one's reaction a fine and worthy one, one should try to understand the object completely by reading what has been written on it.
Otherwise one would fall into self-complacency and nobody can hope any development from it. We should do so particularly in studying Shakespeare, who lived quite in a different period and age from ours.
In reading Shakespeare, the first thing we should do is to consult the Shakespeare Glossary or some other dictionaries to get the story. The next thing is to pay special attention to our predecessors' studies or views. We must be modest enough to listen to what those scholars or critics did say. This will give us a clear understanding of Shakespeare.
For example, if we are told that Edmund and Lear in the King Lear are two main characters who represent the two opposed views of life and the world in the days of Shakespeare, or that Cordelia in the same play shows us the wisdom Shakespeare himself values most highly---that is the wisdom of Christianity, our own reaction to the play will be a different one from that when we do not know those opinions.
Some other critics may say that Cordelia has nothing to do with Christianity and there is no element of Christianity in the play. This will also helpful for us to decide our reaction.
In what are we most interested when we watch a play on the stage? Story? Plot? Characters? Words spoken by them? One gets interested in the play in one's own way. One has one's own view of a play, just as one has one's own view of life. So, there are a lot of ways of appreciating a play.
(to be continued)
I wrote about him last week. He is very quick to learn. We are very good friends and enjoy learning English. I'll miss him when he goes back to Korea in January next year.
Now I think I will go on writing PREFACE of the graduation thesis I wrote 40 years ago.
This is continued from yesterday's article. Of course, I do not completely agree to what karin wrote when she was 22 years old.
----------------------------------------
In appreciating any literary work the most essential thing is one's reaction to it---that is, what one feels or thinks about the work. And to make one's reaction a fine and worthy one, one should try to understand the object completely by reading what has been written on it.
Otherwise one would fall into self-complacency and nobody can hope any development from it. We should do so particularly in studying Shakespeare, who lived quite in a different period and age from ours.
In reading Shakespeare, the first thing we should do is to consult the Shakespeare Glossary or some other dictionaries to get the story. The next thing is to pay special attention to our predecessors' studies or views. We must be modest enough to listen to what those scholars or critics did say. This will give us a clear understanding of Shakespeare.
For example, if we are told that Edmund and Lear in the King Lear are two main characters who represent the two opposed views of life and the world in the days of Shakespeare, or that Cordelia in the same play shows us the wisdom Shakespeare himself values most highly---that is the wisdom of Christianity, our own reaction to the play will be a different one from that when we do not know those opinions.
Some other critics may say that Cordelia has nothing to do with Christianity and there is no element of Christianity in the play. This will also helpful for us to decide our reaction.
In what are we most interested when we watch a play on the stage? Story? Plot? Characters? Words spoken by them? One gets interested in the play in one's own way. One has one's own view of a play, just as one has one's own view of life. So, there are a lot of ways of appreciating a play.
(to be continued)