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How Humanism Impacted The Development Of Literature
Greek humanism is where human experience is placed at the centre of events. The idea of humanisms greatly influenced a lot of writings and pieces of art in the ancient Greek. When we try to relate humanism to literature works we bring in the idea of the experiences that humans have been through considering psychological and moral complexity of these people. Humanism impacted literature in Greek where writers wrote their works revolving around human emotions and other life events. In this paper I will discuss how various authors in Greek were influenced by humanism in doing their work
Humanism influenced literature whereby authors and poets could use humanistic emotions such as sympathy, pity and justice in writing. Humor and tone would be lost if these writers could have not included a sense of humanity and human experiences. In ancient Greek writers and poets used various aspects in human life such as men in power to write their work (Peterson, Amy T, and David J.pg 84) Also, literature in form of art was done in relation to humanism where most photos draw adhered to human stereotypes and culture. On the side of poetry and plays includes stories we also see how humanism shapes them.
Starting with Lysistrata, the writer challenges the power of men. In the historical years, men were in power and women were supposed to be submissive to their rules. The women in Lysistrata decide to go on a sex strike in order to challenge power. This shows that the author’s idea is shaped by humanism in writing his points. The women had nothing to bring the war to an end but they could do something to make those in power rethink about the war “”But if the women gather together here—the Boeotian women, the Peloponnesian women, and ourselves—together we’ll be able to rescue Greece.” (Thomas and Aristophanes). This shows humanism from the women where they feel they can do it and rescue Greece which came true.
Humanism played an important role in development of literature since it gave writers and poets on ideas on what to write on. There were a lot of human experiences taking place in Greek that writers could pick on one to help support their arguments. For example, the Aristophanes of Lysistrata uses women to prove his point since, in the society women were looked at as unintelligent and they were the lowest of the rank in Greek society. In this play Aristophanes places the pact that women are less intelligent that men thus use them to stop the war.
Humanism impacted literature in a positive way where writers saw the need to express their views and ideologies through writing. A good example is Sappho who was a lesbian and the only way to express this was through writing poems. Perhaps Sappho is considered as a great humanist during the ancient Greek. Her work was shaped by human ideas that sex should ne of opposite sex. Her being a lesbian made her right her poems with a sad mood relating to the human expectations of having no gays in the community. In her poetry Sappho explains to us human experiences such as love which becomes her main theme in her work. She
Humanism provided literature writers with a basis for their arguments and a reference to form their arguments. Through manuscripts and arts work created by the ancient Romans and Greeks to show human experiences the writers were able to obtain their logic there (Peterson, Amy T, and David J. pg 98). Humanism also made teaching literature easy where students could relate to real life events of human experiences when learning. Also the art paintings and statutes that were as a result of humanism could be used in explaining different aspects of literature as a reference material. We know of Francesco Patriarch a humanist who traveled the world collecting manuscripts and was a did a recovery of knowledge from Greek and Roman writers.
In conclusion humanisms played an important role in literature where it provided the basics towards writing story or a poem. We can say it shaped literature since it provided the early writers with different forms of human experience that they would use to explain to us how they felt, how their characters behaved and how Greek and Roman sociopolitical systems looked like. For example, in Lysistrata, “The worst of luck to you! You’re natural sweet-talkers, and that ancient adage is right on the mark and no mistake: ‘Can’t live with the pests or without the pests either.” (Thomas and Aristophanes). The statement shows how women were talking and the idea of pests also comes in. Humanism was very important in early literature and today we still use humanism in our literature works. I would encourage writers to include features of humanism such as feminism and gender in their work so as to make readers conversant with their experiences. We should all use humanism in our works to help explain our views and bring out good literature work.
Works cited
Peterson, Amy T, and David J. Dunworth. Mythology in Our Midst: A Guide to Cultural References. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2004. Print
Thomas, James, and Aristophanes. Lysistrata. , 2015. Internet resource
Wilhelm, James J. Gay and Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology from Sappho to Michelangelo. , 2013. Internet resource.
