Friday, March 21, 2008

On the Plutarch Front

So Dryden's Plutarch was a bust. I had read that Plutarch liked to ramble on and digress a bit but holy cow, I had no idea what an understatement that is. It's not that the language is difficult, that's not the case at all. The language is clear and Catherine and I could follow it quite easily. The problem comes when Plutarch mentions Larentia who may have been the nursemaid of Romulus and Remus and then the Feast of Larentia and then offers several enormous run-on sentences about the Larentia whom the feast was based on but had nothing to do with the Larentia who had something to do with the famous twins. Reading that by one's self with some tea and a quiet house, well, that would be a delight. Reading that aloud to a nine year old who's trying to recreate what she's hearing with pokemon figurines? Unmanageable.

We've retreated to the more condensed and child-friendly Plutarch versions offered up on the Ambleside Online site. We'll try again tomorrow with Romulus. I figure that sometime in the future she'll be able to come back to Dryden's Plutarch on her own terms but with a bit of familiarity that will allow her to loiter in the style and enjoy Plutarch's rambles in way we definitely didn't today.

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