Thucydides’ Historical Narrative And Political Poetics

Thucydides is a founder of western classical history, a heavyweight in the history of western literature, and also an indispensable political philosopher in the history of political thought. His History of the Peloponnesian War not only supplies precious resources for people to know Greek life in the 5th century BC, but teaches us, as a mirror of political life, to deal with the healthy relationship between human and politics.Confronted by the argument over Thucydides’ identity from 20th century, this thesis studies History of the Peloponnesian War from three aspects of history theory, narrative art and political thought. Besides revealing his history theory and political thought by literally interpreting the narrative, it constructs a hermeneutic pattern of classical political poetics. Thucydides’historical narrative contains the principle of reality and objectivity, and also shows the extensive political thought. He calls this war, which is the landmark of collapse of Athenian democracy and decline of Greek civilization, "the great war in the great time", because it represents the summit of civilization and causes the supreme suffering of life. As for writing method, this thesis deeply and systematically examines the characters of Thucydides’ historical writing by analyzing orations and narrative skill. Justice, democracy, political leader and so forth constitute main content of his thought, and shows his reflection on the conflict between traditional custom and natural law. His rhetoric and narrative does have literary decorative effect; meanwhile, it is a vital means of expressing his political thought and reflecting the visage of political life. Although he observes political dilemmas, no specific and efficient resolution is offered.This thesis consists of five chapters, discussing the unique value of Thucydides’ work and its idea at four aspects, i.e. history theory, orations, literary narrative and political, and lastly ascribing to the necessity and importance of construction of political poetics.Chapter 1 firstly fixes the difference in history theory between ancient time and modern time, and through it indicates the historic character of historical thought and Thucydides’ contribution to the pattern of construction of historical rationality. Secondly, it restate Homer’s, Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ understanding of "reality", and reveals spiritual characters of their own thoughts, to manifest the richer meaning Thucydides’ theory of "reality" implies.Chapter 2 focuses on Thucydides’ text structure and narrative art. Specifically, it describes the tragedy structure of Thucydides’ text from macroscopic view, and takes the narrative of "Archidamus War" as an example to attain the character of its deep narrative structure. Then, Thucydides’ narrative skill is analyzed:key-spot and blind-spot, distinctive statistic, displacement and ring like character. And lastly it demonstrates the tension between Thucydides’ narrative and thought.Chapter 3 explores orations in Thucydides’ works. From two dimensions of "political oration" and "oratory politics", it argues the unique phenomenon of ancient Greek political life—union of oration and politics, indicates the importance of oration for political life, and reveals the political thought these orations mean to express.Chapter 4 pays attention to three aspects of Thucydides’ political expression: justice’s fragility, democracy’s weakness, and Athenian leaders’ change. Through perusing the text, Thucydides’ apprehension about justice, his comprehension of democracy, and his imagination of good leader are represented.Chapter 5 demonstrates the necessity and importance of constructing "political poetics". It illustrates the political dimension of poetics in Chinese and western classical writings, generalizes the basic meaning of political poetics, and shows the significant revelation that Thucydides’ political poetics owns.