Western literature week 10

A gospel is an account describing the life, death, and resurrection ofJesus of Nazareth. The most widely known examples are the fourcanonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John which are included in the New Testament, but the term is also used to refer to apocryphal gospels, non-canonical gospels, Jewish-Christian gospels, and gnostic gospels.

The American Enlightenment is a period of intellectual ferment in the thirteen American colonies in the period 1714–1818, which led to the American Revolution, and the creation of the American Republic. Influenced by the 18th-century European Enlightenment, and its own native American philosophy, the American Enlightenment applied scientific reasoning to politics, science, and religion, promoted religious tolerance, and restored literature, the arts, and music as important disciplines and professions worthy of study in colleges. The "new-model" American style colleges of King's College New York (now Columbia University), and the College of Philadelphia (now Penn) were founded, Yale College and the College of William & Mary were reformed, and a non-denominational moral philosophy replaced theology in many college curricula; even Puritan colleges such as the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and Harvard University reformed their curricula to include natural philosophy (science), modern astronomy, and math. The foremost representatives of the American Enlightenment included men who were presidents of colleges: Puritan religious leaders Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Clap, and Ezra Stiles, and Anglican moral philosophers Samuel Johnson and William Smith. The leading Enlightenment political thinkers were John Adams, James Madison, George Mason, James Wilson, and Alexander Hamilton, and polymaths Benjamin Franklinand Thomas Jefferson. Leading scientists, included Benjamin Franklin for his work on electricity and William Smith for his organization and observations of the Transit of Venus, Jared Eliot for his work in metallurgy and agriculture, the astronomer David Rittenhouse in astronomy, math, and instruments, Benjamin Rush in medical science, Charles Willson Peale in natural history, and Cadwallader Colden for his work in botany and town sanitation; Colden's daughter Jane Colden was the first female botanist working in America.



Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Asia Minor. It reached its most significant form in Athensin the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy. Greek tragedy is an extension of the ancient rites carried out in honor of Dionysus, and it heavily influenced the theatre of Ancient Rome and theRenaissance. Tragic plots were most often based upon myths from the oral traditions of archaic epics. In tragic theatre, however, these narratives were presented by actors. The most acclaimed Greek tragedians are Aeschylus,Sophocles and Euripides.