Question 6 - Practice 1

Question 6

Practice 1

Lecture

Listen to a lecture. Take notes on the information presented.

W: Today, we enjoy tales where an unexpected person becomes the hero of the story… but this isn’t true of Classical literature.

Classical is the period of Western literature that started during the time of the ancient Greeks and continued until about 1800 BCE.

All Western literature written during this time has one characteristic in common: the heroes of the tale are never common or unexpected like today’s hearers, but are always noble and of aristocratic birth.

We see the aristocratic hero portrayed again and again in classical literature.

Perhaps one of the first and foremost examples of the aristocratic hero in Western literature is Odysseus from Homer’s the Odyssey.

Odysseus is the perfect example of the aristocratic hero. He’s a legendary Greek king who spent ten years trying to get back home to reclaim his throne.

We can clearly see that despite the trials Odysseus undergoes, his noble nature is never questioned.

In fact, Odysseus is favored by the Greek gods, and the gods of Greek literature hardly ever favor anyone that is not of noble birth.

Only aristocratic people like Odysseus could become great Greek heroes.

Twenty-four centuries and several cultures later, we see the exact same type of aristocratic hero written about in plays by William Shakespeare.

The heroes of the plays that Shakespeare wrote about include people like Julius Caesar and the English kings Richard III Henry VI, but rarely is the main hero ever of common birth.

What I’m trying to say here is that even though the views of the world had changed drastically since Greek times, the view of the literary hero remained the same: he had to be of noble birth.

Even the heroes of Shakespeare’s light comedies were members of England’s high society.