Ancient Greece made great achievements in literature. The main achievements of early Greek literature are myths, epics, lyric poems and fables.
Greek mythology is not a complete work, but scattered in Homer's epic, Herzog's Divine Spectrum and literature, history and philosophy in the classical period of slavery. The collection of Greek mythology stories that we usually see now is compiled by later generations according to ancient books. Greek mythology was formed in a long time, and the character, responsibility and story of God all developed and changed. It artistically summarizes their understanding of nature and society, expresses their indignation at social injustice, condenses their experiences and thoughts, and is full of optimism. Ancient Greek mythology can be regarded as a hotbed of the beginning of ancient Greek literature. Since then, literature has developed into a mature and more complex expression from content to formal creation methods.
The greatest achievement of epic is Homer's epic, which is also a model of later European epic. Many European writers get their material from the stories and characters of two epics. Up to now, it has also given readers a shocking artistic enjoyment. According to legend, Homer's epic was written by a blind poet named Homer based on the epic short songs circulated orally in Asia Minor. It includes Iliad and Odyssey, each with 24 volumes. The Iliad focuses on the story of the last 5 1 day of the tenth year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey can be said to be the sequel to the Iliad. Focusing on the protagonist Odyssey, it tells the legendary story of his return home after ten years of wandering at sea after conquering Troy. As an epic, in terms of historical value, it fully shows the social features of German Greeks in the Mani era. As far as literary value is concerned, among Homer's epics, Odysseus is the first work in European literature with personal experience as its main content. The persistence and affirmation of individual strength shows the expression of literature on human ideals. He became the pioneer of vagrant novels and critical realism novels in the Renaissance century and18th century. Realism and romanticism, the two most basic methods of literary expression, both appear in epics. In the ode, the realistic method has been strengthened. In literary form, Homer's epic created a perfect epic form. Aristotle believes that there are many kinds of epics, including simple epics, complex epics, suffering epics and character epics. These two homer epics contain the characteristics of these epics and are usually called heroic epics. It takes serious events as the theme, heroes as the center, noble style and full of drama. It adopts the third-person narrative method, which is large in scale, interspersed with many words and decorative in language. It often takes various phenomena in daily life, labor and nature as metaphors, and adopts short six-step poetic style, which is usually called heroic style. As a result, the performance field of literary performance objects can be expanded. The technique of expression also tends to be mature.
In the history of ancient Greek literature, the appearance of female writers is also worth mentioning. The poetess Shafu is also the most famous piano soloist. She was born in a noble family on the island of Sri Lanka, and organized a music school, which specializes in writing love songs and wedding songs and singing with female disciples. She wrote nine volumes of poetry, only two complete poems and some residual sentences have been handed down. She wrote her complicated psychological changes with simple and natural poems, which reflected the life interest of Greek slave owners and nobles. After Sappho's death, her fame spread all over Greece, and even Plato called her "the tenth goddess of literature and art", which was highly respected among poets with aristocratic tendencies in western Europe. The piano solo expressing personal feelings is the exploration and expression of the inner world by literature, and the emergence of female writers is also the development of female themes.
At the same time, there are also some prose stories widely circulated among the people. Many of them are animal fables, which are said to have been written by Aesop in the sixth century BC. Aesop in the legend is an ugly but extremely clever slave, appreciated by his master, set free and liberated. In the 1 century, Ba Briouse rewrote 120 Aesop's fables with metrical poems and compiled them into a collection. Aesop's fables reflect the thoughts and feelings of the lower class civilians and slaves. Many of these stories show the class opposition at that time, such as Wolf and Lamb. A wolf saw a lamb drinking water by the river and wanted to find an excuse to eat it. The wolf accused the lamb of polluting the water, and the lamb said, I am downstream, so it is impossible to pollute the water upstream. The wolf said that the lamb scolded him last year, and the lamb replied that I was not born at that time. The wolf was ashamed and angry, and said, "Even if you defend well, I won't let you go", so he swallowed the lamb. The lesson of this fable is, "A tyrant has no shortage of excuses." This story is a profound portrayal of slave society. Aesop's fables compare the oppressors to lions, jackals, poisonous snakes, crocodiles and foxes, and condemn their atrocities of doing evil and harming the people. In addition, there are many stories in the fable that sum up the life experiences and lessons of ancient people. For example, the quarrel between farmers' sons shows that unity is strength. The Race between the Tortoise and the Rabbit exhorts people not to be proud. Crows and foxes satirize vanity; Fox and Grapes satirizes the self-comfort of the incompetent, while the propagandist of Two Cocks and Eagles must be humble in order to gain favor. Aesop's Fables has a strong ideological content, short and pithy form, appropriate metaphor and vivid image, which has a great influence on later European fable writers and is often imitated and quoted by later generations. From here, literature began to tell people that wisdom is not only in the nobility, but also the expression of literature extends from the upper level to the folk. The theme form also has the humorous characteristics of folk reading, and the use of language began to explore more possibilities from the folk.
From a broader stylistic point of view, these works can be classified as prose works that record various oral legends. From myth to poetry to fable, the connotation and expression of literature are becoming more and more mature. The literary achievements of this period provided the original template and source of inspiration for the development of later European literature. Even the personalized characteristics of modern popularity can be found in ancient Greek literature. All this shows that the literary achievements of ancient Greece are an indispensable part of ancient Greek civilization.
Bibliography: Ancient World History, edited by Mi Chenfeng, China People's Publishing House.
History of World Civilization, edited by Li Shian, China Development Press.
Years are like brothers--gu luanzhai and xu shanwei's exploration of ancient greek civilization.