The Comparison Of Homeric Epic And The Narrative Poems In The Book Of Poetry

Homeric epic which includes Iliad and Odyssey is the source of European literature. Iliad narrated what happened in 50 days when Trojan War was in its tenth year, Using Achilles's anger as its clue and by the sequence of Achilles's anger, the results of Achilles's anger and the disappear of Achilles's anger. Odyssey narrated odysseus's experience on his way home. The Book of Poetry is the first Chinese poetry collection containing over 300 poems. Analysis shows that there are poems in The Book of Poetry such as Shengmin Gongliu Mian Huangyi and Daming,which described magnificent historical wars just like Iliad did. There are also poems narrating personal experience in The Book of Poetry such as Meng, which is similar to Odyssey. Both of them are narrations, however, Homeric epic and The Book of Poetry are different in many aspects.In this paper, Homeric epic was analyzed and demonstrated based on poetics and Imitation, the narrative poem in the book of poetry was analyzed and demonstrated based on the prologue of The Book of Poetry and expression. It mainly analyzed plots and personal characters; the ambition expressed by narrative poems in The Book of Poetry ; we can see the difference between the Chinese culture and the western culture in expression and imitation. Although the theme is familiar, some narrative poems in The Book of Poetry have magnificent historical scene description but are lack of description of concrete personal characters or narration of personal experience, such as Daming, Mian, Huangyi, Shengmin and Gongliu;In the opposite, some others have description of concrete personal characters and narration of personal experience, but are lack of magnificent scene description, such as Meng. Homeric epic has both these two kinds of description. In other words, in the aesthetical idea difference of expression and imitation, Homeric epic and The Book of Poetry are still having differences in dealing with concrete narrative theme. As a result, we can compare these two pieces of work in order to discuss the aesthetical idea difference between the east and the west.This paper was composed by four parts. In the first part, current study situation of Homeric epic and narrative poems in The Book of Poetry, the definition of narrative poems in The Book of Poetry and current situation of comparative study on Homeric epic and narrative poems in The Book of Poetry were discussed. In the second part, the difference of Iliad and Odyssey in the arrangement of personal characters and plots was discussed, hence, the two models expressed by the source of western imitative literature can be seen. In the third part, Daming, Mian, Huangyi, Shengmin, Gongliu and Meng were discussed respectively on differences in the area of magnificent scene description, personal experience narration and personal characters description.It also disscussed the similarity in the aspect of expression. The fourth part is conclusion.In this part, the differece of chinese expression aesthetics and the style of western narrative aesthetics was generally discussed .The study of Homeric epic in our nation is introduced and translated in 1920th ,and there were studies just for Homeric epic after 1980th. But the paper about the Homeric epic is not so much, not about through the aspect of〝poetics〞. While the study about The Book of Poetry is so much, but the study of the narrative poems in The Book of Poetry is not so much. And I had not find the paper about the comparison between Homeric epic and the narrative poems in The Book of Poetry. So my paper can influence the study about the comparison between Homeric epic and The Book of Poetry.