Historical and Cultural Connotation of Chinese and Western National Heroes’ Loyalism: Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Greek Mythology

Abstract

Romance of the Three Kingdoms has given shape to a group of loyal and brave heroes of the Three Kingdoms, such as Zhuge Liang, Guan Yun etc. in Shu Kingdom, who take Confucian philosophy as the norm of their behavior. Greek Mythology has depicted twelve ancient Greek preeminent gods under Zeus’ lead, who view “beauty”, “wisdom”, “competition” and “individual freedom” as their main philosophic values. This paper compares and analyzes the similarities and differences of “national heroes’ loyalism” in Chinese and western history and culture from the perspective of philosophy, taking the historical images, literary images and folk images of the loyal national heroes in Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Greek Mythology as examples.