Lecture 1
The Stories Behind the Stories 1 Greece and Rome


Literature and literary criticism in Western cultures cannot be understood without understanding its relationship to classical antiquity – Greek and RomanWhy?


لا يمكن فهم الادب والنقد الادبي في الثقافات الغربية دون فهم علاقته بالعصور
الرومانية واليونانية القديمة


Because European and Western literature and cultures were
produced as a recreation, a revival of the classical cultures of
Greece and Rome
لان الثقافة والادب الاوروبي والغربي كان ينتج وكانه إعادة خلق او إحياء
للحضارة اليونانية والرومانية القديمة
............

From the 16th to the 20th centuries Western cultures considered
Greece and Rome the most perfect civilizations


From the 16th to the 20th centuries Western drama, poetry, literary criticism were all produced in imitation of classical antiquity (Greece and Rome).

the West’s relationship with antiquity is not simple It is
full of contradictions and ambivalence

علاقة الغرب بالعصور القديمة ليست بتلك السهولة .انها مليئة بالتناقضات
والازدواجية

Roman poet Horace writes


“Captive Greece took its wild conqueror captive”
this line considered as ......
the famous line in the Western cultures
هذا العباره تعتبر ......
عباره الشهير في الثقافات الغربية
وهي من

“A Letter to Augustus,”



Horace expresses a sense of inferiority and ambivalence because Rome
conquered Greece politically and militarily

.........................

We find this sense of ambivalence and inferiority everywhere in
Roman (Latin) literaturein Horace, Quintilian, Seneca, etc


The Romans conquered Greece militarily, But they always felt that the culture of
Greece remained infinitely more sophisticated and refined in poetry, in philosophy, in
rhetoric, in medicine, in architecture, in painting, in manners and in refinement. Hence
the sense of inferiority.

Seneca writes...

“No past life has been lived to lend us glory, and that which has existed
before us is not ours.”

لا توجد حياة ماضيه ممكن ان تعطينا المجد , وتلك التي كانت موجوده قبلنا لم تكن لنا

وكذلك من اقوله ,,

“[A] man who follows another not only finds nothing; he is not even
looking.”
الرجل الذي يكون تابع لشخص اخر ليس فقط لايجد شيئا بل لايكون يبحث عن شئ

Source Seneca:
كتابه
Epistulae Morales


.................

education in Rome
consisted simply in IMITATING
Greek


التعليم في روما كان بالتقليد اليونان


The Romans so desperately wanted to imitate the Greeks and so
constantly failed to match them

مالسبب ..

The reason is simple. Imitation cannot produce originality.
السبب بسيط جدا التقليد لايمكن ان يجلب التميز أو الأصالة

لذلك قال
Seneca
As Seneca puts it with bitterness, “a man who follows another not only
finds nothing; he is not even looking

,,,,,,,,,,,,

حياة الرومان شعب ريفي وغير مثقف .. لاكنهم ناجحين في المجال العسكري فلهم
أكبر إمبراطورية في العالم، ولكنهم ما زالوا يشعرون بأنهم أقل شأنا
ثقافيا
The Romans were a simple rural and uncultivated
people who became
successful warriors, and at the height of their success when they ruled
the biggest empire in the world, they still felt that they were inferior
culturally to their small province Greece.

طبعا هذا الوضع يؤثر على الإنتاج الثقافي في روما وبشكل كبير في اوربا والغرب

This situation strongly affected how culture was produced in Rome and Europe
and the West.