The Origin of Western Fiction

Western literature originated in the ancient Greek era, and the Homeric Hymns were an inexhaustible source of inspiration for later poets and writers, leading to the birth of countless masterpieces.

The Homeric epics, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, were written by a blind poet named Homer around the ninth century BC. The content of Homer's epics is very rich, it widely reflects the economic, political, military, cultural and other aspects of the ancient Greek era, as well as people's lives, struggles and thoughts and feelings at that time, which can be called the "encyclopedia" of human society in childhood. It has always occupied the highest position in Western classical literature, and has been recognized as a model for literary works since the eighth century BC. For more than two thousand years, Westerners have regarded it as the greatest epic of antiquity. Marx also gave it high praise, saying that it has a "permanent charm" and is a "normative and unattainable model".