Hellenistic age

The Hellenistic age begins with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian empire and its incorporation into his vast, Macedonian-controlled state. Alexander reached as far as India, and although his empire was divided after his death, cultural connections between the subcontinent and the classical world began to flourish.

During the Hellenistic period, great advance in knowledge were made, while in other areas scientific study was diverted by erroneous theories which took centuries to erase from men’s minds.

Alexander was very interested in scientific study (as might be expected from student of Aristotle and took a number do scientist along with him on his campaigns.

Drunken old woman sculpture from Hellenistic era

The Hellenistic era also was a period of considerable cultural accomplishment in many areas of literature, art and philosophy.

The Ptolemies in Egypt made Alexandria an especially important cultural center. The library became the largest in ancient times, housing more than half a million scrolls.

Hellenistic age ends in more piecemeal fashion with Roman conquest one by one, of the various regions, now separate kingdoms, into which his empire had divided after his death. The Roman takeover of much of the Hellenistic world, hardly deliberate but a long-drawn process, which started in the late third century BC but was not complete till 30 BC with the overthrow of the Ptolemic dynasty after the Battle of Actium.
Hellenistic age

Form and function to language literature

Linguistics does not have a universally agreed role in the analysis of literature among either linguists or literary theorists.

Disagreement about the use of linguistics can often be traced to views about functions, and the relation between form and function.

Linguistics is a practice which seeks to find a final analysis of the forms of language but which cannot do so because it is unable to escape itself to become a theory of how the world actually is.

This view is associated in particular with poststructuralist theorists, who has a general principle feel that any kind of form can never finally be determined, but always from the gaze of the analysts.

Another view is that literary text exceeds their form. Thus the text as a whole may be seem as having holistic qualities such as a whole it is more that the sum of its parts, and has qualities as a whole cannot be underside by the analysis of the parts.

Or the text may be seen as having transcendent qualities, aspect which hold of it but which cannot be discovered by formal analysis.

Both views are associated in particular with Romantic and post Romantic theorists; these views remain quiet influential and are often invoked in the suggestion that linguistics cannot ultimately cope with literature.

Form and function to language literature