The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia 1997/The_Epic_Interactive_Encyclopedia_97.iso/g/greek_literature/infotext

Text File | 1992-09-03 | 3KB | 83 lines

The literature of Greece. ancient The
earliest known works are those of Homer,
reputed author of the epic poems the Iliad
and the Odyssey, and Hesiod, whose long poem
Works and Days deals with agricultural life.
The lyric poet Pindar and the historians
Herodotus and Thucydides belong to the 6th
and 5th centuries BC. The 5th century BC saw
the development of Athenian drama through the
works of the tragic dramatists Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, and the comedies of
Aristophanes. After the fall of Athens came a
period of prose with the historian Xenophon,
the idealist philosopher Plato, the orators
Isocrates and Demosthenes, and the scientific
teacher Aristotle. After 323 BC Athens lost
its political importance, but was still a
university town with teachers such as
Epicurus, Zeno, and Theophrastus, and the
comic dramatist Menander. Meanwhile
Alexandria was becoming the centre of Greek
culture: at the court of Philadelphus were
scientists such as Euclid and the poets
Callimachus, Apollonius, and Theocritus.
During the 2nd century BC Rome became the new
centre for Greek literature, and Polybius, a
historian, spent most of his life there; in
the 1st century BC Rome also sheltered the
poets Archias, Antipater of Sidon, Philodemus
the Epicurean, and Meleager of Gadara, who
compiled the first Greek Anthology. In the
1st century AD Latin writers overshadowed the
Greek, but there were still the geographer
Strabo, the critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus
(active around 10 BC), the Jewish writers
Philo Judaeus and Josephus, the New Testament
writers, and the biographer Plutarch. A
revival came in the 2nd century with Lucian.
To the 3rd century belong the historians
Cassius Dio and Herodian, the Christian
fathers Clement and Origen, and the
Neo-Platonists. For medieval Greek
literature, see Byzantine literature. modern
After the fall of Constantinople, the
Byzantine tradition was perpetuated in the
Classical Greek writing of, for example, the
15th-century chronicles of Cyprus, various
historical works in the 16th and 17th
centuries, and educational and theological
works in the 18th century. The 17th and 18th
centuries saw much controversy over whether
to write in the Greek vernacular (demotic),
the classical language (Katharevousa), or the
language of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Adamantios Korais (1748-1833), the first
great modern writer, produced a compromise
language; he was followed by the prose and
drama writer and poet Aleksandros Rhangavis
(`Rangabe') (1810-92), and many others. The
10th-century epic of Digenis Akritas is
usually considered to mark the beginnings of
modern Greek vernacular literature, and the
demotic was kept alive in the flourishing
Cretan literature of the 16th and 17th
centuries, in numerous popular songs, and in
the Klephtic ballads of the 18th century.
With independence in the 19th century the
popular movement became prominent with the
Ionian poet Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857),
Andreas Kalvos (1796-1869), and others, and
later with Iannis Psichari (1854-1929),
short-story writer and dramatist, and the
prose writer Alexandros Papadiamandis
(1851-1911), who influenced many younger
writers, for example Konstantinos Hatzopoulos
(1868-1921), poet and essayist. After the
1920s, the novel began to emerge with Stratis
Myrivilis (1892-1969) and Nikos Kazantzakis
(1885-1957), author of Zorba the Greek 1946
and also a poet. There were also the Nobel
prizewinning poets George Seferis and
Odysseus Elytis.