The Ancient Greek Literature: from Aesop’s Fables to Greek Tragedies by Homer and Sophocles

1
The Ancient Greek Literature from Aesops Fables
to Greek Tragedies by Homer and Sophocles
HIST1002 Tradition and Transformation in Western
History
2
Aesops Fables

• Fables of Aesop
• Penguin Classic
•  
• Aesop, The Complete Fables
• Penguin Classic
• Other Chinese books (for reference)
• ????????(????,1957?)
• ????????(??????,1955?)
• ??????????????
• ?????????????
• ??????????????????????????1997?8?
• ??????????(????,1980?)

3
Aesop

• Aesop (??) was born in 6th century B.C.
• A handicapped slave
• Killed in Delphi
• Author of the Fables, but some scholars believe
  that there was no such person at all.

4
Aesops Fables characteristics

• Simple stories
• Using animals and human beings as characters
• Same hidden wisdom moral ideas in each chapter.

5
Aesops fables characteristics

• For example
• ? Sour grapes ???????????
• ? Look before you leap???????
• ? Slow but sure??????
• ? A bird in hand (is worth two in the
  bush)????????????
• ? Unity is strength??????????
• ? Crying wolf too often?????
• ? A friend in need is a friend indeed???????

6
Aesops fables characteristics

• Reflect lives
• Friendship
• Kindness righteousness
• Humility pride
• Diligence laziness
• The Deer by the pond and the Lion

7
Ancient Greek Drama

• Tragedy
• Comedy
• Aristotle the origin of drama human beings
  have the instinct of imitating others and the
  liking of watching others imitation which is
  also a way to understand different environments.
•  
• reflected the collective social, political,
  religious history of the Greek people, included
  many profound searching tales about the
  problems of human life the nature of the gods

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Ancient Greek Tragedy

• Dionysus (??)
• The cycle of life birth, growing up, ageing,
  death, and resurrection
• Festival competitions
• 3 great tragedians
• 1. Aeschylus, 525-455B.C.
• 2. Sophocles, 497-405B.C.
• 3. Euripides, 480-406B.C.

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the three writers on ancient Greek tragedy

• 1. Aeschylus, 525-455B.C.
• traditional impersonal values, polis,
  religious heritage, majestic dignity between man
  his gods aristocratic
•  
• 2. Sophocles
• 3. Euripides, 480-406B.C.
• Deep, sympathetic understanding of hopes fears,
  the unpredictability, irrationality,
  individuality
• Yet, logic skepticism e.g. The are no gods in
  heaven, no, not one

10
Sophocles

• Sophocles product of the time
• ???????
• all-roundedness
• ?????????
•  
• Sophocles
• great tragedian
• once a priest, skilled athlete too (??????)

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Sophocles

• Sophocles received the traditional Greek
  education in music, poetry, dancing, gymnastics
• Sophocles, 497-405B.C.
• 490-479B.C. Persian Wars
• 478B.C. Delian League
• Athenian Imperialism Democracy (Age of
  Pericles)
• 430B.C. plagues in Athens 1/4 died of
  plague,including Pericles d.429B.C

12
Sophocles

• ?the terrible lives of famines, plagues, etc.
• ?.Sophocles plays have strong sense of
  fatalism
• Sophocles,
• Aeschylus, 525-455B.C. Euripides, 480-406B.C.
• Sophocles Oedipus, Antigone (Thebes)
• Sophocles witnessed painful lives and the
  decline of Athens, ? full of fatalism, painful
  lives were inevitable everything was Gods
  arrangement, No deed is shameful which the gods
  direct

13
Sophocles, Oedipus the King

• Clever and ignorant
• Uncertainty in life
• Fate above everything
• Heroes were brave to challenge fate

14
Oedipus Rex (King)

• Oedipus was too confident and ignorant, finally,
  understood that he has killed his father and
  married his mother
• fate
• Life is basically tragic, and full of suffering,
  even the innocent suffers.

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Oedipus

• Full of conflicts and contradictions
• Oedipus dramatic
• Tried to avoid omens
• Fate
•  
• Irony dramatic
• Tragic mystery,
• fate

16
Oedipus

• Oedipus The blind prophet knew fates
  arrangement
• Oedipus ignorant
• Until blinding himself

17
Oedipus

• Oedipus was clever enough to answer sphinxs
  riddle
• Sophocles believed that life was full of riddles

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The balance of Greek Tragedy

• Greek Tragedy balance
• balanced, nothing in excess
• Sophocless tragedies
• fully achieved by Sophocles,
• Never have passions been so intense yet under
  such masterly control
• unerring sense of plot structure
  characterization
• emotional yet restraint
• ?perfect classical equilibrium fully achieved

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The aim of Greek Tragedy

• The aim of Greek Tragedy is to arouse in the
  spectators sensations of pity and fear, purge
  them of these emotions so that they leave the
  theater feeling cleansed and uplifted, with a
  heightening understanding of the ways of gods
  men, brought about by witnessing some disastrous
  moving change in the fortune of the dramas
  main character.

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Greek tragedy

• Hegel (???) thought highly of Greek tragedies
• Full of conflicts contradictions
• Producing harmony
• Ending with harmony

21
Greek tragedy

• Walter Scott (1771-1832)
• The death of heroes were great and touching
• Tragedies ? entertaining,
• ? moving,
• ? challenges

22
Ancient Greek Tragedy

• The audience
• 1.happy to see others terrible happenings, or
• 2.Pitiful sympathetic, or
• 3.Psychological involvement