Tragic Consciousness,Objective Inevitability And Free Will:on The Conception Of Fate In Homeric Epics

Fate is the subject that people through the ages have been paying attention to,it is not only an abstruse philosophy conception,but also the motif of the Western literature.Homeric Epics,with its rustic and heroic characters,have described fate in many levels,and the fate is intertwined with the elements of battle,death and prophecy,which form the core of Homeric Epics.Based on the comparison between the Chinese version of Homeric Epics and that of ancient Greek,it is clearly that the fate in Homeric Epics has three core traits:the tragic consciousness produced by misfortune and death,the objective inevitability produced by the constraint of the fatal portion,and the free will embodied by humankind's choice and revolt to the inevitable fate.As a blind poet,Homer had deep understanding of the sadness in life.Although Homer asserted that the fate was determined by fate's power itself,instead of being determined by the gods,he was not a thorough fatalist,and he attached importance to the description of heroes' free will.From a macroscopic perspective,the fate in Homeric Epics is a vague zone between "fatalism" and "disobedience",and a mixture between "fate" and "freedom".This thesis consists of six parts.The introduction analyses the triple meaning(Misfortune,Death and Deserved Share)of the word "fate"(?????,????,?????,????)in Homeric Epics,which is the starting point of the entire research.The first chapter analyses the tragic consciousness embodied in the description of misfortune and death.The second chapter analyses the objective inevitability embodied in the fatal portion as an order which is independent and irreversible.The third chapter analyses the free will embodied by heroes' choice and struggle when facing fate.The fourth chapter analyses the influence of the fate in Homeric Epics on ancient Greek culture.The conclusion expounds the vital part the conception of fate in Homeric Epics has exerted in fate's development as an "universal historical problem"(by Max Webber)in Western world.It is no doubt that the accurate understanding of the fate in Homeric Epics has a significant meaning for the research of ancient Greek thought and literature,then we can also have a deeper understanding of ourselves and humankind,and achieve the ancient Greek maxim "know yourself".