Approaches to Literature 2017/2/22(Week2)

Genre	Genre is most popularly known as a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones is discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible.
Agamemnon	In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra and the father of Iphigenia, Electra or Laodike , Orestes and Chrysothemis. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. When Helen, the wife of Menelaus, was taken to Troy by Paris, Agamemnon commanded the united Greek armed forces in the ensuing Trojan War.
Orestes	In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older ones.
Electra	In Greek mythology, Elektra was the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus princess of Argos. She and her brother Orestes plotted revenge against their mother Clytemnestra and stepfather Aegisthus for the murder of their father. Electra is one of the most popular mythological characters in tragedies. She is the main character in two Greek tragedies, Electra by Sophocles and Electra by Euripides. She is also the central figure in plays by Aeschylus, Alfieri, Voltaire, Hofmannsthal, and Eugene O'Neill.
Clytemnestra	Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon and queen of Mycenae (or sometimes Argos) in ancient Greek legend. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she murdered Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess Cassandra, whom he had taken as war prize following the sack of Troy; however, in Homer's Odyssey, her role in Agamemnon's death is unclear and her character is significantly more subdued.

✱ 5 main genres

✱prefix

✪ver-: German prefix "denoting destruction, reversal, or completion" [Watkins], from Proto-Germanic *fer-, *far-, from PIE root *per- (1) "forward," hence "through."

verdict (n.)

1530s, alteration of Middle English verdit (c. 1300), "a jury's decision in a case," from Anglo-French verdit (Old French voirdit) "sworn testimony, affidavit; judgment, written record of a verdict," literally "a true saying or report," from ver, veir "true" (from PIE root *were-o- "true, trustworthy") + dit, past participle of dire "to say" (from PIE root *deik- "to show," also "pronounce solemnly"). Spelling influenced by Medieval Latin verdictum "a verdict."

vernal (adj.)

"pertaining to spring," 1530s, from Late Latin vernalis "of the spring," from vernus "of spring," from Latin ver "the spring, spring-time," from PIE *wesr- "the spring" (source also of Old Norse var "spring," Greek ear, Armenian gar-un, Sanskrit vasantah, Persian bahar, Old Church Slavonic vesna "spring," Lithuanian vasara "summer").