Greek Literature Reviews Samples For Students

Presentation of a Greek Literary Work that resonates with epic themes and reflects ethics and principles of the Ancient Greek Mentality – Reflections on the impact of Ancient Greek Mentality on Literature on a worldwide basis
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Abstract

This paper will present you with a literary work which has been chosen among others as a way to depict the influence which can exist on literary production of a civilization rich in ethics and principles, characterized by a long term historical presence and evolution. The work which has been chosen is a Greek poem written by a Greek poet, Constantinos Cavafy, which has been acknowledged within ...

Odyssey involves a number of mesmerizing events. There are several internal conflicts that affect while at the same time contribute to the plot and future of Odyssey. The first character in Odysseus, Eurylochus, experiences conflict. After Odysseus dispatches his men with Eurylochus as the leader, they wonder of into the Island of Aeaea. After a short period, Eurylochus discover goddess Circle’s palace. He falls into an internal conflict of whether to enter the goddess palace or not. Eurylochus wonders whther the decision he makes will benefit him, his men, both not. After wrestling with herself. Eurylochus, decides to enter into ...

Introduction

For all practicable approaches, Western authorship conceives with the Iliad. The Epic of Gilgamesh while at least 1,000 decades older, exist neither as distinguished nor as arrogant as Homer’s act. We moderate conduct advertisements adapt “Achilles’ backslider,” Trojan horse,” or “The brave that bumped a billion battleship,” all with compulsions in the Iliad for the myth duration on which it exist based, adjacently 3,000 centuries consequent the poem continued composed. Along with at least in articles of the allotment of clones to dwell from antiquity, the poems of Homer are accompaniment odd to the Bible in preeminence. ...

Classical English literature studies

Comedy – a professional entertainment consisting of jokes and satirical sketches, intended to make an audience laugh. Late Middle English (as a genre of drama, also denoting a narrative poem with a happy ending, as in Dante’s Divine Comedy): from Old French comedie, via Latin from Greek kōmōidia, from kōmōidos 'comic poet', from kōmos 'revel' + aoidos 'singer'. ("Comedy: Definition Of Comedy in Oxford Dictionary (American English)").
Aristotle defines comedy as an imitation of men, who is worse than the average, but not in their perversities, but in hilarious sense. Comedy, as a genre ...

Just like anyone else, all characters in a story have their own historical background and information regarding their pasts. This information is usually very important in understanding their traits and their current lives. Therefore such information assist readers understand a specific story. This is what is referred to as exposition. Generally it can be defined as the historical background touching on the characters and setting in a given story usually at the beginning of the story. The major information is usually occurrences that took place before the story was initiated. Therefore it is usually the initial part of the plot. Therefore, in ...

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Classic English Literature

Hospitality has played a great role in the ancient Greek society, and this is highly evident in most of the classics written during those times. Homer’s Odyssey is a classic example of this fact. The Odyssey is one of the greatest masterpieces of Greek Literature. It is dated written between 750 and 650 B.C.E. (Notes, 1968) According to Fagles and Knox hospitality is understood to be a major part of the moral code. One of the most important factors that can be heavily noticed in this work of Homer is hospitality, with ...

Religions have been a part of every nation’s history and tradition since the start of civilizations. They have played key roles in creating tradition and belief, even influencing the creation of suitable government and laws for people to follow. These religions try to satisfy the question of the existence of life, the idea of what is God and the concept of spirituality and human responsibility. While some of them have considered that there is only one God or a Supreme Being that watches the existence of man and the presence of life and death, they still differ in understanding the ...

Changes in Belief System in Europe.

The earliest inhabitants arrived from Africa about 700,000 years ago. This group of people mainly depended on hunting and food gathering. They used hand tools such as axe made of stones. They also made fire to protect themselves from cold weather. History has it that the Neathernals who lived in caves were the first to bury their dead and displayed good social -organizational skills. They also performed rituals and organized themselves into strong social groups.
It was not until 35,000 years later that some technological changes started to sweep through Europe. First was the pressure-flaking technique. This ...

“They were the first Westerns; the spirit of the West, the modern spirit, is a Greek discovery and the place of the Greeks is in the modern world” (Hamilton 19). In the first chapter of her book the author suggests that ancient Greeks created a basis for the modern Western civilization. Hamilton admitted people can have access to the limited part of this cultural heritage, but they still reap its benefits. She highlighted that the Greek civilization significantly differed from its contemporaries with the words: “a new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before” (Hamilton ...

Antigone is a tragedy written by Greek playwright Sophocles in the year 442 BCE. The play carries on in a series of plays such as Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus as well as Seven Against Thebes, which tell the tale of social classes, family feuds, and civil law in ancient times. The play tells about the reversal of fortunes between people in the high social class who are forced to live very lowly lives and to suffer emotionally and physically due to the operation of the constitution. The play deals with the burial of Antigone’s brother ...

Staring with the story of Odyssey by Homer, Lord has intervened in various circumstances. Odysseus went for a Trojan War where they left with victory. Like many other Greek warriors, Odysseus consulted a goddess who told him that he will win the war. Mysteriously Odysseus won the war of Trojan where many other warriors fell. The Trojan War was a war of treachery and in many cases the warriors didn’t have any clue of their fate. Odysseus however, through the intervention of goddess was able to survive from that Great War. At this point, the reader can observe ...

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by Joanne K. Rowling is the first book in a series of novels about Harry Potter, a young magician. The book is commonly referred to as children’s literature, though a deeper insight into its plot and symbols used by the author reveals much more essential, even encyclopedic, knowledge about British history and folklore as well as ancient mythology. Something that may initially seem to be just products of Rowling’s imagination turns out to be real things rooted in history and traditions, fairy tales and myth.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’ ...

The Epic of Gilgamesh is probably one of the oldest written poems in literature that is still surviving to the present day in its original form. The protagonist of this poem is Gilgamesh – a warrior who is actually part man and part God. The poem eulogizes and praises Gilgamesh while also describing his exploits and adventures. This paper will examine if Gilgamesh fits into the mold of an epic hero.

An Epic Hero – Definition

In order to understand if Gilgamesh fits the mold of an epic hero, it becomes imperative for this paper to define an epic hero and then compare and contrast ...

Although both were written in Greece in the same century, Seferis’ poem “Denial” and Ritsos’ poem “Eyewitness Testimony” bear many differences. They vary in point of view, subject matter and style. However, there are some similarities. Both poets, for example, use imagery to enhance the themes of their poems. Furthermore, both rely on symbolism as a technical aid in portraying the desired meaning and tone of the poems to the reader.

Giorgos Seferis was the writing pseudonym of Geōrgios Seferiádēs. He was born in 1900 and died in 1971. He was a significant figure in Greek poetry throughout ...

Three poems, which have been chosen for this paper: “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg, and “Sailing to Byzantium” by W. B. Yeats, are all very different and belong to different literary trends. However, they all are focused on the subject of death, which they depict from different standpoints, systems of beliefs, and values.
In the first poem, “Because I could not stop for Death”, Emily Dickinson describes death using the image of a gentleman, who takes her into his carriage: “He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage” ( ...

Abstract

Three types of examples from the genres of world literature are integral to the strength of investigating the works of different periods and cultures. Different eras represented sweeping views of war, the sacred, the secular, and expressions of stories that culminated in philosophical lessons or important pieces in historical sagas. This essay develops a critique based upon the prompt which looks at the literary works of: (a) Homer’s “The Iliad”, (b) Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy – Inferno”, and (c) Elphinstone Dayrell’s “Nigerian Folk Stories”. The richly contrasting nuances of the literary comparisons provide a marvelous rubric and background from which ...

Thesis: The theme of disguise as brought out in THEODYSSEY, its significance, purpose, context and effectiveness.

1. Reasons why gods and mortal men use disguises.
2. Effectiveness and context of these disguises.
3. ATHENA disguised as a young boy. Reasons for this particular disguise and its effectiveness
4. ATHENA disguised as MENTES. The context in which she uses this disguise and its measure of success towards achieving her goals.
5. ATHENA disguised as TELEMACHUS. The reasons that inspired this disguise, its relevance and context in which it is used.
6. ATHNA disguised as MENTOR. Her prediction of what this disguise would have, its relevance towards a greater enlightenment if Greek society and ...

Paper #2 - Draft

Life’s Journey
The poem ‘Ithaca’ by Constantine Cavafy written in Greek in 1910 and first published in its original language in 1911, is a dramatic monologue written in five stanzas and characterized by its lyricism, rhyme in its original language version, and symbolic meaning. The poet addresses his audience in second person, thus making the poem easily accessible to and individually adopted by his readers, talking immediately to their souls. The thematic core of the poem is the journey that every individual is to fulfill in his / her own life, having chosen or drawn his/her own path. ...

Part 1

Euripides’ Medea puts up a very strange and ambiguous idea of morality and justice. Even though Medea commits horrendous crimes we are made to question who exactly is the villain in the play. It makes us question the set patterns of justice. She is a witch who to some may only have lured her husband to herself through witchcraft, however because of the dramatic action that is taking place one is continuously forced to think about the other side of the story. Isn’t Medea being driven to do what she does? Wouldn’t most people simply collapse if they were ...

Each nation has own myth about world’s creation and team of gods, spirits or other powers that control it. Some of them can sound really weird. For example, Scandinavian myths say the world was created from the body of a dead giant. More common mythologies have show less bloody ideas with own features. They depend not only up the culture and country, but up the author. This essay will compare Greek and Roman poet’s Hesiod and Ovid points of view. These cultures had similar pantheons of Gods, which differed mostly by names, like Venus and Aphrodite. However, ...

The European renaissance was a time for people to rediscover philosophies from the Greek and Roman culture. These influences changed aspects to the English literature for the better. During the medieval times, dramas consisted of focusing on religious themes but with the rebirth the renaissance brought tragedies and comedies became the norm for stories and plays. Authors, such as William Shakespeare and Chaucer, began creating works that the held their beliefs on what the world and life were like. This paved the way for many other authors to base their literary works off of what they believed instead of ...

Classic English Literature

The classical mythological stories and beliefs of religions, great heroes, Gods, monsters, sins, right and wrong doings, souls, among others have been an inspiration for many poets and authors. Many books have been written on how God would like to have his children live in a holy fashion, virtuous all their lives and enter the gates of heaven. The fear of being thrown in hell and being cleansed for unholy, immoral and sinful acts are also described in many books.
Dante’s Divine Comedy written when he was exactly half way through life, at the age of 35 is ...

Sophocles was an ancient Greek writer, who along with Aeschylus and Euripides had a great influence on the development of the dramaturgy in general and became the forefather of the tragedy in particular. Those several dramas that remained till nowadays (“Ajax”, “Antigone”, “Electra”, “Philoctetes”) are the masterpieces of ancient Greek literature, and “Oedipus the King” is recognized as one of the peaks of the world drama and the crown of a tragic theater. On the first stages of Athenian tragedy’s formation and development Aristotle was one of the first philosophers who determined the features of this form of dramaturgy. Sophocles ...

The daughter of a King, Andromache was married to Hector of Troy and Achilles slew not only her beloved husband, but her seven brothers shortly after her nuptials. A classic figure in Greek mythology and a key character of any epic of the Trojan War, Andromache is certainly portrayed in various publications, including the Illiad, the Aeneid, The Trojan Women, and Ars Amatoria. Obviously each poet, writer, playwright or screenwriter has all viewed Andromache through their own lens. For the purpose of this paper, however, we will focus on Euripides’ perspective in The Trojan Women and Virgil’s view in the ...

Question 1

Several epic characteristics are there in Homer's "The Odyssey" which unmistakably defines the poem as epic. The poem is epic since it is lengthy, elevated in style and has heroic figures present that experience many problems during the course of history. Homer shows out these personalities clearly in the brave figure of Odysseus, a guy struggling to come back to his domicile in Ithaca after achieving victory in the Trojan fight. Odysseus is the chief personality of the sonnet and is distinctive of an ambitious brave man. He is a war champion, deeply admired, he is even known as "Odysseus, master ...

Introduction

Oedipus Rex (c. 430 BC) of Sophocles is the story of the supremacy of the gods who command the fate of men, no matter their station in life. Oedipus, son of King Laios, who was abandoned by his father after having his feet nailed hearing a prophecy that he would die from his son, returns too Thebes to rule in the land which had just lost its King. He had killed an old man while on his way and manages to outwit the Sphinx with her cryptic riddles to enter the Theban walls where he is hailed King and ...

Analysis of the Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

THESIS: In this paper, I am going to analyze the impact of fate and human behavior and actions in the development of action in the tragedy. I assume that, in spite of the fact that in the classical ancient Greek tragedy, everything must obey the will of the gods and the evil rock, in the tragedy of Sophocles' Oedipus the King, it can be observed a big role of free human will, which leads to a tragic end. The human factor influences to the unfolding of the plot of this tragedy and all the vicissitudes of fate are not ...

Craig Arnold’s “The Singers” is a contemporary poem which addresses a very poignant topic, namely the destruction of the environment caused by human activities. The poet chooses to focus on a specific aspect of this broad topic, namely the rapid extinction of bird species which is accentuated by the destruction of their environment. The speaker laments the fact that many species of birds are on the verge of extinction, and expresses concern over the disappearance of creativity together with the death of the natural world. The speaker dramatizes this environmental problem by illustrating the loss that humans face ...

Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley was first published in 1818 . It was updated and published again in 1831. It is the story of a genius who tried to create life and suffered as he had brought to life evil in the world.
It is a typical gothic novel that gained popularity during the 1800s. The period was referred to as the age of enlightenment or the age of reason. It was the time when many great philosophers arose. The period came after the Renaissance and the Reformation. There was greater freedom for philosophers to write about anything ...

Throughout Sappho’s poetry, one can hear a vibrant, yet somewhat melancholic voice that brings out sentiments of love and affection correlated with powerful natural imagery. The verses reflect a certain communion between love, reflection, natural symbolism and the act of communicating with the gods. It is both spiritually soothing and enlightening to read Sappho’s poetry, even though the bittersweet feeling of yearning is persistent in her lyrics. At the same time, Sappho’s verses are sensual and daring – no bashful tone resides in her expression of true and powerful emotions. Moreover, a nice feeling of intimacy is established between the ...

Question 1

First of all, I’d like to describe each character first. Odysseus was known as a legendary (take note of this word) Greek king and the kingdom or dominion he has reigned over is Ithaca. He was also known for his participation on Homer’s great epic poem or should I say story Odyssey. Gilgamesh on the other hand is the king of a kingdom somewhere in Iraq. Both of these 2 characters are kings and that is their first similarity.
If I am to ask what their similarities with their stories are, I’d say that they are both ...

The Odyssey the Greek hero and his return journey after the Trojan War. Odysseus’s Voyage covers extensively the Greek world. All the way through the adventures of Odyssey, gods play an immensely significant role, with many of the gods liking him. His whole journey filled with arguments amongst gods. This story is said to be historically accurate and exceptionally significant to the ancient Greeks. Ulysses is illustrated to be a skilled warrior, athlete, masterful, articulate and courageous. In his trial to return home, he meets numerous adventures like the one-eyed Cyclops and the furious; god Poseidon who try to ...