Return To Our Spiritual Home Through Epics

Ancient Epics are one of the most propounding heritage for human beings.Not only are they the very origin of the narrative literature but also the inspiring warehouse for writers and artists afterwards. Numerous studies focusing on a single epic have been conducted in past centuries, helping us have a better understanding in some epics. All these isolating studies, however, inevitably fail to reveal the whole picture of the ancient epics. Do the ancient epics still mean something to the people in modern ages? And if yes, what literally are the impacts of those epics on literature and art afterwards? In this article, I would take a few steps backwards and attempt to appraise the ancient epics from a more comprehensive approach.By comparing epics from different regions and tribes, death-reborn was found to be the universal theme. Surprisingly, this theme occurs repeatedly in many kinds of literature works afterwards. This phenomena could potentially be explained by the archetype theory of Frye and his literature circulation theory, Because of the limitation of the Frye's theories, the involvement of human wills could not be well interpreted. Therefore, Jung.and his psychological analysis theories were employed to examine the psychological implication of the ancient epics. With the concepts of archetype and primitive image, theory on collective unconscious, Jung paved another way leading to solving the epic puzzle. Last but not the least, we shall not forget the vivid and colourful expressions in literature, which stem from the unique collective memories of every nation on their own..Based on this study, I concluded that the eternal theme of ancient epics implies where we come from, while the variable formats of the expressions inspire us where to go.