Tagged: CC201

Analects of the Core: Voltaire on Cunégonde’s disposition for the sciences

Un jour, Cunégonde, en se promenant auprès du château, dans le petit bois qu’on appelait parc, vit entre des broussailles le docteur Pangloss qui donnait une leçon de physique expérimentale à la femme de chambre de sa mère, petite brune très jolie et très docile. Comme Mlle Cunégonde avait beaucoup de dispositions pour les sciences, […]

Analects of the Core: Petrarch on sailing with a foe at the helm

Today’s Analect is drawn from Petrarch’s Canzoniere (#189) translated by Mark Musa: My ship full of forgetful cargo sails through rough seas at the midnight of a winter between Charybdis and the Scylla reef, my master, no, my foe, is at the helm… Passa la nave mia colma d’oblio per aspro mare, a mezza notte […]

Crib notes for Hamlet

You may be asked to summarize the plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet during your study of the play in CC201 this fall. If so, you couldn’t do worse than to give as precise and cogent an answer as the student author does here: Hamlet was a young man very nervous. He was always dressed in black […]

Analects of the Core: Cervantes on having one’s own fish to fry

Let them eat the lie and swallow it with their bread. Whether the two were lovers or no, they’ll have accounted to God for it by now. I have my own fish to fry. – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote

Montaigne On Modern Living and Fulfillment

American Interest Online offers a book review with commentary on How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell.  The review offers first insight into the peculiarities of Montaigne’s approach to his writings, and then on happiness itself, providing humanities scholars a cohesive argument on […]

The Don takes up his lance again

An allusion to Cervantes, noted by Core alumna Fabiana Cabral (CAS ’10). From the website of the XKCD webcomic, by artist Randall Munroe.

Analects of the Core: Machiavelli on reputation and hatred

Whoever examines in detail the actions of Severus, will find him to have been a very ferocious lion and an extremely astute fox, and will find him to have been feared and respected by all and not hated by the army; and will not be surprised that he, a new man, should have been able […]

Cartoon comfort for paper-writers

Current and former Core students in the midst of their semester-end exams and papers will be amused by this cartoon from Cabanon Press, featuring second-year author Cervantes.  They have a whole series of these looks at the private composition habits, even including another Core author, Emily Dickinson.

Analects of the Core: Milton on charity

This having learnt, thou hast attained the sum Of Wisdom; hope no higher, though all the Stars Thou knew’st by name, and all th’ ethereal Powers, All secrets of the deep, all Nature’s works, Or works of God in Heav’n, Air, Earth, or Sea, And all riches of this World enjoy’dst, And all the rule, […]

Analects of the Core: Bach on the ease of playing music

It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself. – J. S. Bach (whose St. Matthew Passion is studied in CC201)