What literature and what literature does ancient western literature include?

Western ancient literature mainly includes ancient Greek and Roman literature.

1. Ancient Greek literature refers to the literature of the ancient Greek world. Ancient Greek literature in a broad sense covers literature from clan Greek society to Hellenistic era, which lasted nearly 1000 years. Ancient Greek literature is the source of the whole western literature and the first peak of European literature. Ancient Greek literature reflects the real life in Europe during the transition from clan society to slavery society, especially the people in the ancient world's thinking about the relationship between war and peace and between man and nature. The outstanding heroic behavior of ancient Greece and the great changes in social history are deeply reflected in literary works. These literary works not only laid the foundation for the development of the whole western literature, but also provided rich literature materials for people to study the history and society of the ancient Greek world.

Ancient Greek literature not only has the original nature in art, but also has the original function in spirit.

From the literary genre, there are myths, epics, lyric poems, Chongqing poems, tragedies, comedies, fables and so on. Among them, myth, epic and drama are extremely accomplished, which are called the three great achievements of ancient Greek literature.

From the perspective of creative methods, ancient Greek literature created two basic creative methods, realism and romanticism, and realized their wonderful unity. From the perspective of literary criticism, the literary theories of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have laid the most solid theoretical foundation for western literature.

Ideologically, the most prominent is the humanistic spirit of ancient Greek literature. Whether it is myth, epic or drama, they enthusiastically praise life, eulogize human courage, intelligence and wisdom, and examine the struggle between man and nature from the height of the universe, thus praising the tragedy and sublimity of human nature, reflecting the optimism of ancient Greeks who love life, put people first, persist in this world, ignore the afterlife, take the initiative and dare to pursue. This humanistic spirit became an important source of western thought during the Renaissance.

For thousands of years, Greek culture has become an inexhaustible source of inspiration for westerners to pursue beauty and wisdom, and has become the cornerstone of almost all western theories.

Greek civilization based on liberalism, optimism, secularism and rationalism is the perfect unity of body and mind, individual and collective, nation and human, religion and secularism, reason and belief.

Ancient Greek literature is one of the sources of European literature and European civilization.

Second, the city of Rome was founded in the 8th century BC. In the area south of Truglia and west of Tiber River where the ancient Romans lived, the establishment of the Latin Jupiter Festival, including literary and artistic activities, should be no later than the 7th century BC. Influenced by the Trullian civilization, Latin nations, including the Romans, gradually formed their own local culture.

The development of ancient Roman literature has roughly gone through three stages, namely, the golden and silver ages. It should be pointed out that "* * * and Times" is a political concept, while "Golden Age" and "Silver Age" are two names mainly characterized by the development and problems of Latin language. The era of * * * ended in 30 BC, actually including the golden age of 70 years. In addition, as a political concept, the era of * * * began in 5 10 BC, but as a name related to the development of literature, it began in the previous 240 years. Although the Western Roman Empire, with Rome as its capital, perished in 476 AD, academic circles are usually used to taking the middle of the 2nd century AD (130- 150) as the ending point of ancient Roman literature. Latin literature after the middle of the 2nd century was defined as "post-classical Latin literature", and Latin literature in this period began to transition to medieval Christian literature, which did not belong to ancient Roman literature in the traditional sense.

Roman culture mainly inherited Greek culture and gradually developed. During the Hellenistic period, Rome introduced many Greek works for translation and imitation. After Rome destroyed Greece in BC 146, it took all Greek myths, poems and dramas for its own, and found many slaves who were captured from Greece as tutors. They wrote poems and studied various sciences, which made ancient Roman literature dyed with a strong Greek color. Take myth as an example. After contact with Greek culture, many Roman gods only combined with Greek gods. For example, Jupiter, the main god believed by the Romans, is equivalent to Zeus in Greece, and his wife Juno is equivalent to Hera. As for Apollo, the sun god, and the muse, they went straight into Roman mythology, even without changing their names.

Roman literature is not all imitations of ancient Greek literature, because it is the product of Roman society after all, and its language is Latin. In western academic circles, ancient Roman literature is regarded as a part of Latin literature in a broad sense. Different from the maritime people in ancient Greece, ancient Rome belonged to an inland people, who lived mainly by farming and grazing, and had the characteristics of vulgarity, ignorance and simplicity of ancient farmers and herdsmen. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), ancient Rome advocated force and pursued the prosperity and perfection of society and state, law and centralization. Its literature has a stronger rational spirit and collective consciousness and a solemn and noble temperament, but it also lacks the vivid aura and unrestrained childlike innocence of Greek literature. Ancient Roman literature emphasized balance, preciseness and harmony in art, attached importance to rhetoric and syntax, and tended to be carved and pretentious in technique.