精品英语文档：aeschylus(525-456bc).doc

European Culture: An IntroductionIntroduction to the courseI. Arrangement of contents The teaching materials are sequentially arranged. There are ten divisions altogether. In the first division, we talk about Greek Culture and Roman Culture; in division two, the Bible and Christianity; in the third division, the Middle Ages; in the fourth one, Renaissance and Reformation; in the fifth division, the 17th Century; and then the rest divisions are the Age of Enlightenment, Romanticism, Marxism and Darwinism, Realism and Modernism and Other Trends.II. Two Major Elements in European Culture Two of the elements which have gone through changes over the centuries are considered to be more enduring and they are: the Greco-Roman element and the Judeo-Christian element.Division One Greek Culture and Roman CultureI Greek Culture1. The historical context a. Trojan War: 1200B.C. b. Persian invasion: 5th century B.C. c. Civil War between Athens and Sparta: at the end of the 5th century B.C.d. Spread of Greek Culture: Alexander, King of Macedon, the second half of the 4th century.e. Roman conquering Greece: in 146 B.C. 2. Social and political structure Athens was a democracy which means “exercise of power by the whole people.” By “the whole people” the Greeks meant only the adult male citizens, and citizenship was a set of rights which a man inherited from his father. Women, children, foreigners and slaves had no rights. The economy of Athens rested on an immense amount of labor of slaves who worked on farms and in workshops and mines. The Olympic Games were held every four years on Olympus Mount. It was later revived in 1896.3. Literature a. Homer’s epics: the Iliad & the OdysseyThe Iliad deals with the alliance of the states of the southern mainland of Greece, led by Agamemnon in their war against the city of Troy.The Odyssey deals with the return of Odysseys after the Trojan war to his home island of Ithaca. It describes many adventures he ran into on his long sea voyage and how finally he was reunited with his faithful wife Penelope. b. Lyric poetry: Sappho & Pindar Sappho is noted for her love poems of passionate intensity. Pindar is best known for his odes celebrating the victories at eh athletic games, such as the 14 Olympian odes. John Dryden, a 17th century English poet, imitated Pindar. c. Drama: 1) TragedyAeschylus(525-456B.C.): Prometheus Bound, Persians, and Agamemnon were written in verse. Aeschylus is noted for his vivid character portrayal and majestic poetry.Sophocles(496-406B.C.): Oedipus the King, Electra and Antigone contributed greatly to tragic art. He added a third actor and decreased the size of the chorus.Euripides(484-406B.C.): Andromache, Medea, and Trojan Women in which characters are less heroic, more like ordinary people. 2) Comedy Aristophanes (about 450-380B.C.): Frogs, Clouds, Wasps, and Birds are loose in plot and satirical in tone, full of clever parody and acute criticism. Coarse language is a striking feature of Aristophanes.4. History a. Herodotus (484-430 B.C.): “Father of History”, wrote about the wars between Greeks and Persians. His history is full of anecdotes and digressions and lively dialogue, but not always accurate. b. Thucydides (about 460-404B.C.): more accurate as an historian who told about the war between Athens and Sparta and between Athens and Syracuse, a Greek state on the island of Sicily. He wrote with imagination and power. 5. Philosophy a. Pythagoras (about 580-500B.C.): the founder of scientific mathematics, believing all things were numbers. He put forward the abstract conceptions underlying mathematics—point, line, magnitude, surface, body—and the first theory of proportion. b. Heracleitue (about 540-480B.C.): the early exponent of materialism, believing fire to be the primary element of the universe, out of which everything else had arisen, putting forward the theory of the mingling of opposites, and believing it was the strife between the opposites that produced harmony. “All is flux, nothing is stationery.” c. Democritus (about 460-370B.C.): one of the earliest exponents of the atomic theory and philosophical materialists, believing the atomic structure of matter. d. Socrates(about 470-399B.C.): known through the famous Dialogues compiled by his student Plato, ready to discuss anything in heaven and earth, specializing in exposing fallacies, using the method of argument which, by questions and answers, has come to be known as the dialectical method. e. Plato(about 428-348B.C.): Dialogues, a brilliant stylist writing with wit and grace. Shelley said: “Plato was essentially a poet—the truth and splendor of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive.” After Socrates was put to death, he went traveling abroad for 12 years, returning to Athens and buying a house and garden in a public park called the Academy wh。