Homer and the Epic

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Homer and the Epic
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Oral Tradition

• Before written language, knowledge passed down
  orally through generations
• Artists with a gift memory for storytelling
• Musical accompaniment
• Greatest storyteller Homer

Lyre
Homer with Lyre
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Homer

• 2,700 years ago, 700 BCE
• Hear literature instead of reading it
• Developing Greek alphabet
• Like most people of this time, he probably could
  not read or write
• Legend is that he was blind
• Created 2 of the earliest epic poem
• Iliad- set during the Trojan War
• The Odyssey- Odysseuss trip home after war

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Subjects Sources

• Events from history, legends, myths, folk tales
• Homer added imagination, insight into human
  condition, experience in storytelling

Poseidon
Polyphemus (Cyclopes)
Warfare
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Subjects Sources

• Heroes won lost, but tale always
• uplifted the human spirit
• Audiences believed stories

The Trojan War
Polyphemus (Cyclopes)
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How Composed

• Like a musician
• To a steady rhythm
• Alternating long and short
• syllables
• Recycle long passages, routine
• actions (like a chorus), audience looked forward
  to
• Verbal formulas
• gray-eyed Athena
• fingertips of rose
• Somewhat different every time

Lyre