Homer, The Iliad, and The Odyssey

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Homer, The Iliad, and The Odyssey
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• Homer is known for his two epics
• The Iliad Focuses on the Trojan War during the
  twelfth century B.C., in particular the actions
  of the Greek hero Achilles
• The Odyssey Takes place after the Greek victory
  in the Trojan War and recounts the homecoming
  Odysseus.
• Both were likely composed in the eighth century
  B.C.

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What do we know about Homer? (no, not that one ?)

• Almost nothing! But scholars like to
  hypothesize
• He was an Ionian Greek (probably from the coast
  of Asia Minor or one of the adjacent islands)
• He was born sometime before 700 B.C., and he
  lived in approximately the latter half of the
  eighth century B.C.
• He was a blind itinerant poet

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• A significant amount of scholarship has gone into
  determining whether Homer wrote these epics.
  There are three main theories of authorship
• The analytic
• The Unitarian
• The oral folk epic
• (that could be him, maybe ? )

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The Analytic

• For many years, most accepted that
• Homer was the author and writer of the
• poems.
• Friedrich Adolph Wolf published Prolegomena ad
  Homerum in 1795.
• In it, he argued
• Homer was illiterate, and he could not have
  composed lengthy poems.
• There are inconsistencies and errors in the
  texts.
• Therefore, The Iliad and The Odyssey were not the
  compositions of one poet, but the products of
  many different authors at work on various
  traditional poems and stories.
• Wolf's view was popular throughout the nineteenth
  and early twentieth centuries, but it was
  ultimately challenged by

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The Unitarian

• The Unitarians primary spokesperson was Andrew
  Lang.
• The Unitarians insisted that a single individual
  of genius composed the Homeric epics, and they
  supported that claim by citing a unified
  sensibility, original style, and consistent use
  of themes and imagery in the poems.
• These two points of view were reconciled somewhat
  with

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The Oral Folk Epic

• In the 1920s, Milman Parry argued the poems were
  composed orally.
• Parry established that Homeric verse is formulaic
  by nature, relying on generic epithets (such as
  "wine-dark sea"), repetition of stock lines and
  half-lines, and scenes and themes typical of
  traditional folk poetry.
• Parry deduced that Homer was most likely a
  rhapsode (traveling bard) who improvised stories
  to be sung at Greek festivals.
• Homer likely wove together standard epic story
  threads and descriptions in order to sustain his
  narrative, and relied on mnemonic devices and
  phrases to fill the natural metrical units of
  poetic lines.
• Parry's theory, like that of the analysts,
  stressed the derivative, evolutionary character
  of Homer's poetry but like the Unitarians, Parry
  affirmed Homer's individual genius as a shaper of
  traditional elements whose creations far exceeded
  the sum of their borrowed parts