Our first assigned reading was Daedalus and Icarus, and we were asked to print out the painting by Pieter Bruegel entitled “Fall of Icarus”. We searched the net and found some other paintings with the same title.
The painting was about a landscape of land and sea, where Icarus had fallen from his flight with his father, Daedalus. One might not notice him as the only visible feature is his legs pointing out on the surface of the water. From the class discussion, I acknowledge that the painter purposely made it insignificant than the title, probably because to emphasize one paragraph of the text which I found quite interesting. As we can see the shepherd and the fisherman did not even bother about Icarus falling into the vast ocean as they thought that he and his father were Gods soaring across the sky.
Other than that, Dr. Edwin asked us to simplify the text which I only took about fifteen minutes to complete. I found out that the simplified version would be more suitable for secondary school students from both high and low level of proficiency. But the most basic thing is the simple plotline that covers all points according to the conventional plot structure. As instructed by the lecturer, it should include the reason Daedalus invented the flying device, how Icarus was thrilled with his flight and caused his own death by flying near the sun, and his burial.

my reflections

Since I had some experience posting journals in this site, I don’t find it hard to do except for composing the entries. For the first blog, I would start by doing some reflections about my experience and expectations for the course.
First of all, I had this thought that this course would be just the same with my previous literature course, well, maybe what differs is the more difficult texts to study. I was quite right but it obviously has more distinct features than that. Skimming through the course outline and the compilation book, I noticed that we are to study different genre of literary works, such as letters, folk tales, diary entries and also fables. They somehow ignited my interest in reading them especially the folk tales.