GREEK LITERATURE

Greeks created literature that inspired others

Language: Greek
There are 4 main periods of Greek literature :
1 preclassical
2 classical
3 Hellenistic
4 byzantine
PRECLASSICAL (800BC -500BC)
Greeks created poetry before writing existed.
Poems were meant to be recited or sung.
Most of the themes were myths or legends.
EPIC POEMS
Long narrative poems that talk about heroes.
IMPORTANT WORKS & AUTHORS
-Homer the iliad =tragedy
-The odyssey =tragedy comedy
-Hesiad works and days = poor country life

THEAGONY = the creation of goods

LYRIC POETRY
The name comes from the fact that was originally sung with an instrument called the lyre.
ARCHILOCHUS OF PAROS = first lyric poet,
SAPPHO=woman writer admired for the beauty of her poems, they were personal and
talked about friendship and dislike of women.
PIHDAR=consideres the best Greek lyricist, his poems celebrated athletics victories.
CLASSICAL (500BC-32BC )
TRAGEDY
The greeks invaded drama and made masterpieces
Performances were played in the theater of Dionysus in Athens
COMEDY
Arose from a ritual in honor of Dionysus but the plays were full of insults
Aristophanes= made fun of everyone and every institution
PHILOSOPHY
The greatest prose of the 4th century
Socrates wrote nothing, but his thought was written by Plato.
Plato= his style is matchless beauty. The best-known of his Dialogues
Aristotle= has no rivals. Called the father of those who knows. He was a platos student
HELLENISTIC(323BC-31BC)
Hellenism= spread the Greek language, literature, and culture throughout the
Mediterranean world.
Athens lost the leadership and got replaced by Alexandria
Educated Romans learned to speak & write in Greek
Roman writers produced very few works that were not based on Greek works
LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA
Alexandria was the main important center of Greeks literature
It attracted a large Jewish population
Later become a focal point for the development of the Christian thought
The museum or shrine to the muses.
Bizantine
Literature combined Greek and Christian civilizations , the roman political system
composed by 4 primarly
Greek
Christian
Roman
Oriental
Aside from peronal correspondence literature was primarly written in Greek style some
were also written in Latin some word of the Latin empire were written in French ,the
encyclopedia also flourishd in this period
Constatine the great moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium in
330adand renamed the city Constantinople. The eastern of Byzantine was destroyed by
the Ottoman Turks in 1453 the civilization was Greek in language and hentage but it was
Christian in religion .
In religion the crowding literary achivements were considerd to be new testaments of
the Christian Bible.
The literary creations of the period have ,therebefore ,bequeathed few memorable works
on the present
Much of the writing was necessarily religious: sermons ,hymns ,theological works ,and
descriptions of the lives of the martyrs and saints
In philosophy only Proclus he was the last major Greek philosopher the only literature that
showed originality was the written in the vernacular ,the language of the common people
.This literature including poems ,romances and epic poems were only written in the
12thcentury onward
After the capture of Constantinople by the Turks Greek national life and culture ended
for centuries as the literary production in was only rivaved when Greece became
independent in 1829