Ganzi
Myth is "the natural and social form itself processed by people's fantasy in an unconscious artistic way"; It means "to conquer, dominate and imagine the forces of nature with imagination and with the help of imagination." Greek mythology is the spiritual product of primitive clan society, which reflects the world outlook of "childhood of human society" and the living state of primitive clan society. She is a collective oral creation of ancient Greeks, which has become one of the main achievements of early ancient Greek literature through the arrangement and artistic processing of poets.
The characteristics of myth:
The artistic and philosophical ways of Greek mythology systematically reflect the most essential characteristics of clan social life, with rich and complex contents.
② Greek mythology is closely combined with real life, full of artistic expression and imagination.
(3) God, like man, is a personified image. He has human character and lust, but he is immortal, with unparalleled magic and wisdom and extraordinary power.
④ Fairy tales are beautiful and vivid.
Greek mythology is the soil and source of European art, which has played a great role in the development of European culture in later generations.
2. Homer epic
Homer's epics refer to two epics handed down by Homer. As a landmark work, it is the earliest literary masterpiece with literary records handed down in the history of European literature. Homer's epic is based on the tribal war between the Akaya people in the south of the Greek Peninsula and the Trojans in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor at the beginning of the 0/2nd century BC. It was originally written and sung by folk troubadours. Finally, it was collected, processed and sorted by the talented poet Homer, forming an epic with complete plot and unified style. It was recorded in writing in the 6th century BC and later became a literary work. Homer's epics include the Iliad and the Odyssey. The former describes what happened in 5 1 day in the last year of the Trojan War, while the latter describes the story of Odysseus, the designer of the Mumaji, who went home to reunite with his wife and children after ten years of sea adventure after the war.
The ideological content of Homer's epic;
① It broadly and richly reflects the social life during the transition from clan system to slavery, and the combination of historical factors and mythological factors has cognitive significance.
(2) eulogize the heroism, high sense of responsibility and honor of the ancient Greeks, eulogize the heroes of the ancient Greeks and create a series of heroic images.
③ It shows that the ancient Greek people loved life, affirmed human strength and wisdom, and were enterprising, but they also had obvious aristocratic views.
The artistic features of Homer's epic;
① The plot is concentrated and complete, vivid and rich, the structure is ingenious and rigorous, the layout is meticulous and appropriate, and it is ups and downs and dramatic.
(2) In terms of characterization, the epic puts the characters under certain conditions, exaggerates the description through people's words and deeds, or makes the characters appear in black and pink, in short, it puts the characters in contradictions and conflicts. The characters are outstanding, distinctive and multifaceted. In addition, the epic also uses the method of side contrast to shape the characters.
③ The narrative is clear and simple, the poem is beautiful and vivid, and the language is concise and vivid. Homer's epic is written in ancient Greek dialect.
Homer's epic, as a product of human childhood, has a permanent charm and still gives us artistic enjoyment until today.
3. Compare the similarities and differences of the three great tragic writers in ancient Greece.
The themes of their plays are basically the same, all of which are taken from ancient Greek myths and legends, and the reality is reflected through such theme creation.
However, their tragic styles have their own characteristics. Aeschylus' style is tragic, vigorous, proud and full of confidence; Sophocles' style is sadness, confusion and searching up and down; Euripides's style is sadness, hatred and finding a way out.
(2) Their works are all about the conflict between the protagonist's personal will and fate, and the theme is basically the same.
But their understanding and expression of this theme in their works are different. Aeschylus regards fate as a concrete god, thinks that fate dominates everything of human beings, and he also emphasizes human will; Sophocles questioned and challenged fate. He believes that fate is not a specific god, but an elusive mysterious force. It has the evil nature of playing tricks on people. He particularly emphasized the resistance of strong-willed people to fate; Euripides doesn't believe in fate. He believes that fate lies in people's own control, and emphasizes that everything depends on people's efforts.
(3) They all described specific images in their works, which impressed people deeply, which is the same.
However, the standards and methods they follow when describing characters and their image characteristics are different. The characters in Aeschylus' works are gods or deified characters directly explained in ancient Greek mythology; The characters in Sophocles' works are ideal heroes written according to the principle of "what kind of person should a person be"; The characters in euripides's works are realistic characters shaped according to the principle of "what is man".
4. The relationship between ancient Roman literature and ancient Greek literature and its position and significance in the history of European literature.
From the 4th century BC, it was a period of Rome's external expansion. In this process, the Romans came into contact with advanced Greek culture and were deeply influenced by it. Of course, Roman literature is also shrouded in this influence and developed directly under this influence. Ancient Greek literature has made great achievements, full of creativity, humanism and secular spirit, and exudes a healthy, positive and heroic atmosphere. These characteristics just adapted to the requirements of the Roman slave empire, which always attached importance to military martial arts and had a very weak cultural development. Therefore, ancient Roman literature has a deep imitation trace from the beginning. For example, Roman mythology is almost a direct copy of Greek mythology, and Roman comedy has also accepted the influence of Greek new comedy. Therefore, inheritance is an important feature of ancient Roman literature.
But ancient Roman literature is by no means a simple mouthpiece of ancient Greek literature, and its inheritance from the latter is based on fine processing. In fact, in the process of Roman conquest of Greece, Greek culture has gradually declined, including its literature. During this period, apart from the achievements of Minand's new comedy, the early cultural glory is gone forever. The Romans accepted the literary achievements of ancient Greece and inherited their comedies, epics and tragedies. , and created his own poetry, prose, satirical literature and literary theory. For a long time, Europeans have learned about ancient Greek literature through ancient Roman literature. This situation continued until the rise of European classical literature, and the ancient Greek culture gradually separated and attracted the attention of scholars again. Therefore, ancient Roman literature is the intermediary between ancient Greek literature and later European literature and plays a very important role in cultural inheritance.
Chapter II Medieval Literature
1, church literature
Christianity played a very important role in the political life of medieval Europe and had a great influence on culture. When foreigners invaded the Roman Empire, they destroyed the cities with concentrated ancient culture and caused great damage to ancient culture. Christianity must undertake the task of rebuilding culture from scratch. In the Middle Ages, the Christian church monopolized all fields of thought and culture. The church has brought all academic studies into the theological category, and literature and art have also been used to serve religion. Under the control of the church, a large number of clergy, namely monk writers, appeared, who wrote or adapted ancient literature in Latin and fabricated stories about Christ.
Write biographies of saints, prayers, hymns, etc. And publicize the Christian doctrine to people, asking people to convert to God and Savior, asking people to obey their fate, pinning their hopes on the future, and going to heaven after death, advocating the idea of afterlife and asceticism, and preaching the omnipotence of God. So monk literature came into being. Monk literature is also church literature. Church literature has a dreamy, hazy and romantic atmosphere in art, and it is more a sermon of exhortation and punishment.
2. Knight literature
12 and 13 centuries, under the cover of religious banners, the Pope, feudal lords and businessmen in western Europe launched eight crusades against the eastern Mediterranean countries in the name of recovering the holy land in Jerusalem, and the chivalry class, chivalry and chivalry creed gradually formed. With the prosperity of chivalry, this spirit and creed are reflected in literature, forming chivalry literature. The main content of knight literature is to describe knight's adventure experience and knight's elegant love, so as to show knight spirit. The main genres are knight lyric poetry and knight legend. Knight lyric poetry describes the scene and feelings of a knight and a lady after a tryst at night and before dawn, which has the effect of anti-religious asceticism. The Legend of the Knight is a narrative poem, the main content of which is to write that knights take risks everywhere for love, honor or religious belief, and fight monsters or pagans, showing the spirit of an adventurous ranger. Knight legend is different from heroic epic. It has no historical facts, but comes from the poet's fiction, some from folklore and some from the works of ancient Greece and Rome.
3. Urban literature
Urban literature is the product of industrial and commercial development in European cities from 10 to 1 1 century. With the development of the city, urban culture appeared, and non-church schools and anti-church "heresy" movements appeared. The formation of secular culture without church led to the emergence of urban literature. Urban literature is different from church literature, and the citizen class will be anti-church. Anti-feudal economy and culture require the expression of its ideology in the form of literature, with very realistic content and lively style, mainly using irony. In literary style, there are new genres such as verse stories and satirical story poems, which show the wit and cunning of the citizen class and satirize bossy nobles, greedy priests and cruel knights. France and Germany are developed countries in urban literature, and the story poem about Lena Fox is one of the most important achievements of medieval citizen literature. The appearance of urban literature is of great significance to the development of medieval culture.
4. Heroic epic
Heroic epic is a type of secular literature in medieval Europe. It mainly describes important historical events of the nation and praises heroes. According to the content reflected, it can be divided into two categories: one is a noble hero who belongs to the period of great national migration and describes the barbarian tribes at the end of clan society, and his masterpiece is Beowulf by Anglo-Saxons; The other is the product of the development of feudal system, which mostly describes patriotic heroes with national consciousness. The basic theme of the work is patriotism. The most famous ones are French Song of Roland, German Song of Nibelungen and Spanish poema de mio cid. Heroic epic is the product of folk literature, which reflects people's wishes to a great extent, so it has high literary value.
5. The significance, value and influence of Dante and His Divine Comedy.
Ideological connotation:
1, The Divine Comedy is a work full of metaphors and symbols, but also full of distinct reality and tendency. Dante's intention to create this work is twofold: one is to praise the love of his life, Beya Triezer; Secondly, I tried to create a work, which linked my personal experience with the destiny of the motherland and mankind, and linked the process of writing personal lost way, confession and rehabilitation with the historical mission of pointing out the road to political and moral rejuvenation for the Italian people. In other words, its ideological connotation is to reflect the reality, enlighten people's hearts, let the world stand the test, get rid of mistakes, achieve goodness and straightforwardness, and make Italy out of suffering and find the road to political and moral revival.
2. It has a distinct political tendency. It profoundly described the political and social reality at that time, severely exposed and criticized the church that tried to dominate the Christian world and the religious theology that monopolized all cultures in the Middle Ages.
3. Dante enthusiastically praised the meaning of real life and thought that real life has its own value. Praise reason and free will, summon interest in reality and struggle, and pursue the concept of honor, which is one of the characteristics of Dante as the first poet in the new period, that is, people-oriented and attach importance to the value of real life.
4. Revealed the new ideas of opposing the ignorant culture in the Middle Ages, advocating culture and respecting knowledge. Praise people's talent and wisdom, and praise the classical culture rejected and denied by the church. In his poems, he regards Homer as "the king of poets" and Aristotle as "the master of philosophers".
5. We also have a clear and profound understanding of the egoism and pursuit of money of the emerging citizen class and the evil of the emerging capitalist relationship, and severely condemn it.
Dante revealed the dawn of humanism in his works, but he also followed many old ideas of Christianity.
Artistic achievements:
1. The creative style is inspired and influenced by classical literature such as Virgil's Aeneas and medieval fantasy literature.
2. The structure is tight and distinct, and the poet's incisive and abstract philosophical and theological views are expressed by using multi-level and multi-tone images. He divided hell, prison practice and heaven into nine layers, which contained profound moral implications. Use different colors when depicting different realms. Hell is the realm of punishing evil and promoting good, with a gloomy tone; Purgatory is the realm of repentance and hope, and the color turns to calm and tranquility; Heaven is a state of perfection and beauty, shrouded in splendor and magnificence.
3. Created colorful and vivid characters, implicitly and fully portrayed the character and rich and complex spiritual realm of the protagonist Dante.
4. When writing portraits, make good use of popular metaphors.
5. Accurate structure and symmetrical layout. There are 33 songs in hell, 33 songs in purgatory and 33 songs in heaven, plus the overture of a long poem, *** 100, totaling 14233 lines. The structure of these three realms is also extremely symmetrical and rigorous, with 9 layers of * * *. The last line of each song rhymes with the word "star", echoing each other. This arrangement is based on the mysterious symbolic significance of the numbers 3 and 10 to medieval culture. 3 stands for "Trinity" and 10 stands for perfection and happiness.
6. The prosodic form of Divine Comedy is a popular metrical form in folk poetry-three-rhyme sentence, that is, the third line is a syllable, which rhymes alternately and runs through the whole poem.
Dante abandoned Latin commonly used in medieval literary works and wrote Divine Comedy in colloquial style, which played an important role in promoting the unification of Italian national language and enriching Italian literary language. Dante himself is therefore called the first national poet in Italy.
Chapter III Renaissance Literature
1, Renaissance
Renaissance is a large-scale anti-feudal and anti-church ideological and cultural innovation movement carried out by emerging thinkers in continental Europe from the beginning of14th century to the beginning of17th century. It first appeared in Italy and then developed in European countries. Although the feudal mode of production still dominated in this period, the capitalist relations of production have sprouted and the primitive accumulation of capital is proceeding rapidly and cruelly. The thought of the emerging bourgeoisie is mainly reflected in breaking through the shackles of feudal church cultural absolutism and forming an ideological system centered on the "people". They played the banner of restoring ancient Greek and Roman culture. The so-called "revival" actually does not mean the simple return of ancient Greek and Roman culture, but that these thinkers gained enlightenment from ancient Greek and Roman culture after experiencing the ideological imprisonment in the Middle Ages, and rediscovered the precious heritage of ancient Greek and Roman culture, such as people-oriented, caring about the value of human life, individual independence and freedom, and individual strength. This discovery awakened people from medieval feudalism and the spiritual oppression of the church, which made profound changes in the fields of thought and science. Renaissance talks about the "regeneration" of classical literature and art, but actually emphasizes the "regeneration" of "people", so it holds high the banner of humanism.
2. Humanitarian
The word humanitatis comes from Latin humanitatis, which originally refers to the classical disciplines of ancient Greece and Rome, such as grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, philosophy, etc., and is directly opposed to medieval theology. Historians call Renaissance scholars "humanists", which means that they are researchers and advocates of classical learning, and their ideas are also called "humanism". During the Renaissance, humanism became the ideological weapon of bourgeois anti-feudalism and anti-church struggle, which reflected the progressive requirements of the emerging bourgeoisie and also became the central idea of bourgeois progressive literature during the Renaissance. In addition, humanism is also the beginning of modern bourgeois literary thoughts.
The main content of humanism:
1, advocating the people-oriented spirit promoted in ancient Greek and Roman culture, affirming the lofty status of human beings and opposing the supremacy of theocracy; 2. Oppose asceticism and advocate personality liberation and ideological liberation; 3. Oppose obscurantism and mysticism and advocate rational spirit; 4. Oppose feudal relations and hierarchical concepts between people, and advocate equality, fraternity, fraternity and personal morality; 5. Support centralization and oppose feudal separatism. The basic feature of humanism is the pursuit of individualism and all-round development of individuals. It is under the guidance of this thought that a group of giants with "thinking ability, enthusiasm and personality, versatility and profound knowledge" (English) appeared during the Renaissance.
3, tramp novels
/kloc-In the middle of the 6th century, Spain's economy began to decline, people became increasingly poor, a large number of farmers and craftsmen went bankrupt and lost their jobs, and adventure prevailed in society. Vagrant novels are produced and developed under such social conditions. "Tramp novel" is a model of modern European novels. Its basic characteristics are as follows: ① In terms of ideological tendency, most of the protagonists in vagrant novels are unemployed. While describing their unfortunate fate, the works also describe the deception, theft and various pranks forced by life, showing the negative resistance of the unfortunate; (2) From the material point of view, it is basically based on real life, especially the life of urban civilians, and observes, evaluates and ridicules people and social phenomena of all social classes through the eyes of urban civilians; Structurally, tramp novels take the protagonist's activities as clues, arrange various life scenes according to the protagonist's activities and through the protagonist's personal experience and what he has seen and heard. The characters have outstanding personalities and have begun to take shape in modern novels. /kloc-The most famous tramp novel in Spain in the 6th century was Little Scorpion by Anonymous.
4. "Seven Star Poetry Society"
Seven-Star Poetry Society is the most outstanding humanistic literary group formed in the middle of16th century. It is a literary group composed of seven noble humanists, including Long Sha and Dubere, and is named after being known as the "Seven Stars" in French literature. Seven Star Poetry Society put forward the theory of establishing national language and national poetry in France, demanding the development of national culture and showing national consciousness, patriotism and humanism. But it also shows obvious aristocratic tendency. In the history of French literature, Seven-Star Poetry Society is a bridge between Renaissance literature and17th century classical literature.
5. "University School for Talented Persons"
/kloc-The greatest achievement of English literature in the 6th century was drama. 65438+In the 1980s, British drama entered a period of prosperity, and a large number of middle-class writers who had attended universities appeared. Most of them are influenced by humanism and rich in classical culture, so they are called "talented writers in universities". Among them, the main representative works are robert green's Ranger in wakefield, Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy and christopher marlowe's Timur.