欧洲文化简介（英文）

1、European Culture: An Introduction Chapter One Greek Culture and Roman CultureGreek CultureThe Historical ContextAround 1200 B.C., a war was fought between Greece and Troy,ending in the destruction of Troy.In the 5th century B.C., Greek culture reached its high pointestablishment of democracy and flo

2、urishing of science, philosophy, literature,art and historical writing.3. At the end of the century, a civil war broke out between Athens and Sparta.4. In the second half of the 4th century B.C., all Greece was brought under the rule of Alexander, king of Macedon.5. In 146 B.C., the Romans conquered

3、 Greece.Social and Political StructureAthens was a democracy. Democracy means “exercise of power by the whole people” ,but the whole people only refer to male adults.The economy of Athens rested on an immense amount of slave labour.The Greeks love sports. Once four years, they had a big festival on

4、Olympus Mount,which became the Olympic Games in 1896.Homer Homerthe author of their epics. He lived in around 700 B.C.His two epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey,which are about great men and wars of a remoter age in 1200-1100 B.C.The Iliad deals with the alliance of the states of the southern mainland

5、 of Greece, led by Agamemnon in their war against the city of Troy. The heroes are: HectorTrojan side Achilles and OdysseusGreek side In the end, Hector was killed and Troy was sacked and burned by the GreeksThe Odyssey deals with the return of Odysseus after Trojan war to his home island of Ithaca.

6、It describes many adventures he ran into on his long sea voyage and how he finally reunited with his faithful wife Penelope.Lyric PoetrySappho, woman poet of Lebos, is noted for her love poems of passionate intensity, some of which are addressed to women.She was considered the most important lyric p

7、oet of ancient Greece.Pindar is best known for his odes celebrating the victories at the athletic games, such as the 14 Olympian odes.They are marked by an elevated tone and stirring sound effects.Pindar had imitators such as the 17th century English poet John Dryden.DramaThe Greeks started to perfo

8、rm plays at religious festivals. Out of these origins a powerful drama developed in the 5th century B.C.Performances were given in open-air theatres.Arschylus wrote such plays as Prometheus Bound, Persians and Agamemnon. He is noted for his vivid character portrayal and majestic poetry.In these play

9、s there are only two actors and a chorus. They are written in verse.Sophocles the author of plays like Oedipus the King , Electra, and Antigone. He has a strong impact on European literature. The Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freuds term “the Oedipus complex” was also derived from Sophocless play.Oe

10、dipus the King has a perfect plot. It is a story of a man who unknowingly committed terrible sin.An oracle said that the child Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. His parents asked a shepherd to leave him on a hillside, but he was rescued and brought up as the son of the k

11、ing of Corinth. On hearing the oracle, he ran away from Corinth. While travelling, he met and killed his real father. After ridding Thebes of Sphinx, he married the queen of the country, who was his own mother.Thus, knowing that, he killed himself and her mother hanged herself.Antigone is about what

12、 happened to a girl by that name, who was the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. It is a play with an important theme about the difficult choice one has to make between public duty and private feeling.Euripides wrote mainly about women in such plays as Andromache, Medea, and Trojan Women.He was a more

13、 realist than Aeschylus and Sophocles.His heros are less heroic, more like ordinary people.He may be called the first writer of “problem plays”ComedyComedy flourished in the 5th century B.C. Its best writer was Aristophane who has left eleven plays including: Frogs, Clouds, Wasps and Birds.These pla

14、ys are loose in plot and satirical in tone, full of clever parody and acute criticism.Coarse language is a striking feature of Aristophanes. Swift says of him: As for comic Aristophanes, The dog too witty and too profane is.HistoryHerodotus is called “Father of History”, wrote about the wars between

15、 Greeks and Persians. His history is full of anecdotes and digressions and lively dialogue.His object in writing was “that the great and wonderful deeds done by Greeks and Persians should not lack renown”Thucydides is more acute than an historian. He told about the wars between Athens and Sparta and

16、 between Athens and Syracuse. He traced events to their causes and brought out their effects. His writing is full of imagination and power.Macaulay,an eminent historian called him “the greatest historian that ever lived” Philosophy and SciencePythagoras was a bold thinker who had the idea that all t

17、hings were numbers. He was the founder of scientific mathematics.Heracleitus believed fire to be the primary element of the universe.To him, “all is flux, nothing is stationary.” Two quatations:- You can not step twice into the same river; for fresh water are ever flowing in upon you.- The sun is ne

18、w everyday.He held the theory of mingling of oppositesDemocritus speculated about the atomic structure of matter.He was one of the earliest exponents of the atomic theory.He was one of the earliest philosophical materialsts.Socrates is the teacher of Plato, who is the teacher of Aristotle.We know So

19、crates through what Plato recorded of him in the famous Dialogue .His method of argument has been known as the dialectical method.Plato is the writer of Dialogue in which 27 have survived.He built up a comprhensive system of philosophy. He believed that ideas are completely real, while the physical

20、world is only relatively real. For this reason, Platos philosophy is called Idealism.Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander and the great humanist and great man of science. Dante called him “the master of those who know”.His works: Ethics, Politics, Poetics, and Rhetoric.What are the differences betwe

21、en Aristotle and Plato.Aristotle emphasized direct observation of nature and insisted that theory should follow fact. This is different from Platos subjective thinking.2. He thought that form and matter together make up concrete individual realities. He differed from Plato who held that ideas had a

22、higher reality than the physical world.Contending Schools of ThoughtSophists his leading figure was Protagoras, Who wrote a book On the Gods. His noted doctrine was that “man is the measure of all things.”In the 4th century B.C. four schools of philosophers argued with each other. They were the Cyni

23、cs, the Sceptics, the Epicureans and the Stoics.Cynics Diogenes decided to live like a dog, and advocated self-sufficiency and extreme simplicity in life.The Sceptics followed Pyrrhon who held that not all knowledge was attainable. So he doubted the truth of what others accept as true.The Epicureans

24、 Epicurus who believed pleasure to be the highest good in life . Pleasure means freedom from pain and emtional upheavalHe was a materialist and believed that the world consisted of atoms.StoicsZeno who believed that the most important thing in life was not pleasure, but duty.This developed into the

25、theory that one should endure hardship and misfortune with courage.ScienceEuclid is well-known for his Elements , a textbook of geometry, perhaps the most successful textbook Archimedes did important work not only in geometry, but also in arithmetic, mechanics.His famous quotation is “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.”ArchitectureGreek architecture can be grouped into three styles: the Doric m