Homer
Who is this
Guy?
• In point of fact is it
only one guy?
• Could it be a gal?
Homer is. . .
• Homer is the name given to the unitary
author of the early Greek poems the Iliad
and the Odyssey.
• It is now generally believed that they were
composed by illiterate aoidoi (rhapsodes)
in an oral tradition in the 8th or 7th century
BC.
• Homer's works begin the Western Canon
and are universally praised for their poetic
genius. By convention, the compositions
are also often taken to initiate the period of
Classical Antiquity.
What Do We Know?
• We don’t know much: The Emperor Hadrian
asked the Oracle at Delphi who Homer really was,
and she said that he was Ithacan, the son of
Epikaste and Telemachus, from the Odyssey.
• The Greeks themselves traditionally believed
there was a single poet of The Iliad and The
Odyssey.
• He was certainly an accomplished Greek bard,
and he probably lived in the late eighth and early
seventh centuries b.c.
• However, Greeks of the third and
second centuries b.c., already
questioned whether Homer existed
and whether the two epics were
even written by a single individual.
• There are a number of traditions
holding that he was blind (perhaps
because in the Aeolian dialect of
Cyme, homēros [on his name] bore
this meaning.).
• Another is that Homer was born on
the island of Chios or, elsewhere in
Ionia, where various cities vied in
claiming him as one of their native
sons.
Homer’s Raw Material
• Most modern scholars believe that even if a single
person wrote the epics, his work owes a
tremendous debt to a long tradition of unwritten,
oral poetry.
• Stories of a glorious expedition to the East and of
its leaders’ fateful journeys home had been
circulating in Greece for hundreds of years before
the Iliad and Odyssey were composed.
• Casual storytellers and semiprofessional minstrels
passed these stories down through generations,
with each artist developing and polishing the story
as he told it.
• Homer must have decided to elaborate his materials not
only in quality but also in length and complexity.
– All oral poetry is cumulative in essence; the verse is built up by
adding phrase upon phrase, the individual description by adding
verse upon verse.
– The whole plot of a song consists of the progressive
accumulation of minor motifs and major themes,
– from simple ideas (such as "the hero sets off on a journey" or
"addresses his enemy") through typical scenes (such as
assemblies ofmen or gods) to developed but standardized
thematic complexes (such as episodes of recognition or
reconciliation).
• According to this theory, one poet, multiple poets working
in collaboration, or perhaps even a series of poets handing
down their work in succession finally turned these stories
into written works, again with each adding his own touch
and expanding or contracting certain episodes in the
overall narrative to fit his taste.
• Many 21st century readers have noticed some gender-bending
scenes in "The Odyssey."
– The goddess Athena cross-dresses and calls every shot regarding the fate of
the hero,
– Odysseus, while other female characters, Kirke, Kalypso and Nausikaa,
each dally with the protagonist, then shuttle him off, like a toss-around boy,
to his next adventure.
• These subversions of gender roles don't tell us anything about the
gender of the author, but they have piqued some scholars'
curiosity.
• In 1897, Samuel Butler scandalized Victorian England by claiming
that a woman wrote "The Odyssey." (Homer’s Daughter)
• In Rediscovering Homer, Andrew Dalby goes further -- arguing
that a woman probably composed both The Odyssey and The Iliad.
– Dalby derives the idea that a woman wrote "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey"
from anthropological research into modern oral cultures. Nineteenth century
anthropologists overlooked female oral poets because they performed at
home for friends and family, while their male counterparts performed in
public. But more recent researchers have discovered that some of the best
oral poets are women.
Sites Cited
• Montanarelli, Lisa. “Who really wrote 'Odyssey,' 'Iliad'?
Evidence Points Not to Homer, Not to Any Man, but to a
Woman.” (Review of Rediscovering Homer By Andrew
Dalby). SFGgate.com 2 Oct.2007 <http://sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/23/RVG07JTU521.DTL&type=
books%3Cbr%3E%3C/a%3E>
• Reviewed by Lisa Phillips, Brian and Hunter, James.
SparkNote on The Odyssey. 2 Oct. 2007
<http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey/>.
• "Homer." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1996
<http://www.eb.com>