The Rebel's Tragic And Forbear Optimism

Mnemosume, an ancient item from Greek, which means memory and gods aswell, reveals the old thoughts of ancient Greek who believed that the character ofgods contained the nature of human-beings, and as a result, the myth was the verymaterial carrier of national memory. "Archetype" (or "prototype"), as an abstractsummary of myth images, derives from myths and gives it a series of grammaticallydeep mode. At the same time, it goes through the whole literature history, includingits source myth, by the means of symbol and metaphor. Therefore, there is a dualfunction to interpret the characters from myth by the angle of myth-archetype. It cannot only excavate the character's deep meaning, but also grasp the clue of itsdevelopment.Fire, as the foundation stone of the whole culture, reveals the ways how humanmaster nature and world in an aesthetic way. There are fairy tales of fire in bothancient Chinese and Greek myth systems, and there protrudes two ideal heroes ofChina and Greece: Prometheus who revolted tragically and Sui-Ren Shi whoforborne optimistically. This dissertation intends to inquire into the two charactersfrom the view of the archetype criticism and excavate their respective developmentin their own literature customs.Chapter I: Have a general knowledge of the archetype criticism and use thetheoretical pattern of Frye, emphasizing the coordinate relationship of myth andarchetype. On one side, myth is the source of archetype, and the other side,archetype is the aesthetic condense of myth. The nature of myth exists in the wholeliterature by the forms of archetype. To some degree, archetype criticism gives adeep mode to myth as the grammatical function to language. The dissertationborrows this theory in order to achieve a dual sense. One is to make a thoroughexplanation of Prometheus and Sui-Ren Shi in themselves and the other is, followingthis clue, to find the archetype roles in their respective culture customs.Chapter II: Choose Aeschylus' famous tragedy "Prometheus" and the narrationof Sui-Ren Shi in "Chinese myth (I)" as the text, and define the Character ofPrometheus as active, conflictive, tragic and lofty. And as a mirror which contrastwith Prometheus, take the kernel element of Sui-Ren Shi and define his character asa kind of comic one: carefree, calm, peaceful and being getting alone well with godsand men. Of course, it is a focal point of their colorful characters. Then, the scopewill turn to the whole literature and find the characters of Prometheus and Sui-RenShi exist in the main stream of the text in their respective culture, by the disguise of"displacement", and it is a unify of variation and inheritance.Chapter III: Make a further interpretation of the philosophy and culture behindtheir respective literature and how the same theme of fire myth brings forth twodifferent roles in different collective unconsciousness. In the myth of Prometheus,Prometheus and his opposite Zeus form a classic dual structure, which incarnates themain idea of relationship between western human-beings and nature, others andthemselves, containing a tragic element of revolt. But the fairy heroes, such as Gun,Gong-Gong, Chi-You, who revolt as Prometheus, become the negative textbook inChinese myth system.Chapter IV: These two heroes, with total different characters, are able to becompared with each other is because they are both the symbol of their respectiveliterary and cultural context. Two sides make a coin, and as well, the two differentoptimistic and tragic characters make a intact human-being, so Prometheus andSui-Ren Shi is a consult and mutual mirror of each other.