A brief introduction of ancient Greek- Rome literature10英语师范1班钱婉萍100206124 We regard ancient Greek and Roman literature as the treasure in the human culture. It really makes a difference in various aspects of the society; in philosophy, in science, in art and architecture and so on. They also play a vital part in the Renaissance in Italy and other European countries. Thanks to the ancient Greek and Roman literature, we have the chance appreciate the Homer, the lyric poetry and enjoy the drama.Ancient thinkers wrote verse about what they observed in nature. They are generally referred to as Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Many aspects of culture were still without distinct form then, during the Archaic Age of Ancient Greece. The origin of drama is the legend, but to the best of our information, drama seems to have arisen as part of religious worship and the word tragedy appears to come from the word goat song.Ancient Greek society placed considerable emphasis upon literature. Many authors consider the western literary tradition to have begun with the epic poems. The Iliad and The Odyssey, which remain giants in the literary canon for their skillful and vivid depictions of war and peace, honor and disgrace, love and hatred. Notable among later Greek poets was Sappho, who defined, in many ways, lyric poetry as a genre. A playwright named Aeschylus changed Western literature forever when he introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting. In doing so, he essentially invented "drama": his trilogy of plays is seen as his crowning achievement. Other refiners of playwriting were Sophocles and Euripides. Sophocles is credited with skillfully developing irony as a literary technique; most famously in his play Oedipus the King. Euripides, conversely, used plays to challenge societal norms and mores—a hallmark of much of Western literature for the next 2,300 years and beyond—and his works such as Medea. Philosophy entered literature in the dialogues of Plato, who converted the give and take of Socratic questioning into written form. Aristotle, Plato's student, wrote dozens of works on many scientific disciplines, but his greatest contribution to literature was likely his Poetics, which lays out his understanding of drama, and thereby establishes the first criteria for literary criticism. Greek mythology consists of stories belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their religious practices. The main Greek gods were the twelve Olympians, Zeus, his wife Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Demeter, and Dionysus. Other important deities included Hebe, Hades, Helios, Hestia, Persephone and Heracles. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a large collection of narratives, and implicitly in Greek representational arts, such as vase-paintings and votive gifts. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, and mythological creatures. These accounts initially were disseminated in an oral-poetic tradition; today the Greek myths are known primarilyfrom Greek literature.Let’s take some famous literary works for example. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homer's epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on events surrounding the Trojan War. Two poems by Homer's near contemporary Hesiod, the Theogony and the Works and Days, contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns, in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age, and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias.In Northern Europe, Greek mythology never took the same hold of the visual arts, but its effect was very obvious on literature. The English imagination was fired by Greek mythology starting with Chaucer and John Milton and continuing through Shakespeare to Robert Bridges in the 20th century. Although during the Enlightenment of the 18th century reaction against Greek myth spread throughout Europe, the myths continued to provide an important source of raw material for dramatists, including those who wrote the libretti for many of Handel's and Mozart's operas. By the end of the 18th century, Romanticism initiated a surge of enthusiasm for all things Greek, including Greek mythology. In Britain, new translations of Greek tragedies and Homer inspired contemporary poets (such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Keats, Byron and Shelley) and painters (such as Lord Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema). Christoph Gluck, Richard Strauss, Jacques Offenbach and many others set Greek mythological themes to music. American authors of the 19th century, such as Thomas Bulfinch and Nathaniel Hawthorne, held that the study of the classical myths was essential to the understanding of English and American literature. In more recent times, classical themes have been reinterpreted by dramatists Jean Anouilh, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Giraudoux in France, Eugene O'Neill in America, and T. S. Eliot in Britain and by novelists such as James Joyce and André Gide Ancient Roman culture inherited something from the ancient Greek culture and gradually developed. Many Greek works have been introduced to Roman in the early times and later were translated and imitated In BC146, after Roman invaded Greek, all the Greek myth, poem and drama have been integrated into the Roman literature .The Roman made the Greek slaves the tutor, let them create poem and drama, as a result, ancient Roman literature has much to do with ancient Greek culture. However, the Roman literature is not equal to Greek literature, it is the product of the Roman society after all, it used the Latin as the major language to create the new culture .Compared with the Greek literature, Roman literature has more rational spirit and solemn quality. It pay more attention to the balance and harmony of the works .It also focus on the further polished to make the works.Ancient Greek -Rome literature is the mirror of the social life, they set up the basic of the literature to reflect life, is the origin of realistic. Polytheism conceived a wide range of fantasy, such as Symbol and metaphor expressions, the pursuit of freedom and emotion, and write the deification of God, make full use of the tendency in ancient Greek and Roman literature, opened the way to romanticism.Ancient Greece and Rome put forward the literary works of literature produced in the initial concept; it has a better understanding of the nature and the classification of the literature, affecting the later literary trends, ideas in Europe. In ancient Greek and Roman literature, the reflection of the concept of people, as well as a series of binary oppositions and it throughout the spirit of European Literature。
