Homer and the Origins of
Literature
Who was Homer and why and
how did his poems get written
down?
5 Key Points of Lecture
Who Was Homer?
What is the Homeric Question?
Homer and the Origins of Writing
The Man Who Overcame Death
Why Is This Important?
Who Was Homer?
We know nothing for
certain about Homer
His work shows a
knowledge of the
Greek World and
Near East
Later tradition has
him born in Asia
Minor
Stories circulate
about him in the
Greek world saying
he was blind and
told “all the best
stories.”
Homer is credited with having
composed two epic poems,
the Iliad and the Odyssey
The Iliad is set over the
course of several
weeks, during the ninth
year of the Trojan War.
Its principle theme is
“The Wrath of Achilles.”
But the texts are really
the culmination of a
long tradition going
back years before the
8th century.
The Odyssey
narrates the return
of Odysseus to his
home after 20 years.
It is filled with
folktales.
What was Homer’s world like?
Homer and oral
composers like him
probably sang their
songs to the social
elite at banquets
and athletic events.
His audiences were
probably mostly
male
We do not know
when or where
poems as long as
the Odyssey and
Iliad may have been
presented
Some Maps of the Ancient
World
The Near East
Greek Colonies
Why are these maps
significant?
The Greeks were
colonizing as early
as the 9th century
Trade and exchange
of ideas with other
cultures existed long
before Homer.
If Homer was from
Chios, the way
stories written about
him after his death
claim, then he lived
in a place that was
just a few miles
away from another
culture and
language
Most Scholars Now Agree on
the Following . . .
Homer did exist
He was an oral poet
He was illiterate
But how did Scholars Even
Come To Agree On These
Three Things?
It all begins with what
is known as the
“Homeric Question”.
How did the poems
originate?
Could a bunch of short
poems have been put
together to make a
longer poem?
Some scholars felt that
the work was too long
to have been composed
without writing. We
have 16,000 lines of the
Iliad and 12,000 lines of
the Odyssey
But Homer’s world does
not contain writing . . .
The Homeric Question
By the 1920’s, scholars
had come up with two
basic answers to the
Homeric Question
Option #1
Many “Homers” singing
tales which later
became a coherent
whole (Analysts)
Option #2
One single, very gifted
individual was
responsible for both
poems (Unitarians)
In the 1930’s a scholar
named Milman Parry
changed the debate by
studying oral poets in
what is now the former
Yugoslavia . . .
The Guslar and His Gusle
A guslar is essentially a
modern version of
Homer, who has been
trained in the traditional
themes and narratives
and in the use of
formulas, who can
compose an original
poem using a very
flexible poetic pattern
and sing the song in
accompaniment to his
gusle, a stringed
instrument.
The Song Is In A Constant
State of Change
Even when sung by the
same singer over and
over, the same poem
will have slightly
different elements
The art of singing does
not call just upon
memory, the poet
constantly shapes and
recreates traditional
stories
What did Parry prove by
looking at oral tradition?
It is possible for
illiterate, oral poets
to compose very
long poems without
the help of writing.
The poems
contained “essential
ideas” rather than
rigid plots.
He suggested that what
we are really looking at
is an oral Homeric
tradition, which
acknowledged a
generations oldtradition of versemaking that was the
collective inheritance of
many poets in Ancient
Greece.
What else can we learn from
Milman Parry?
The poems were not
pasted together
composites of
shorter poems like
the Analysts claimed
Nor were they the
long, free-standing
poems like the
Unitarians claimed
The stories can be
adapted to the time and
place of performance –
if the poet performs for
a famous king, then the
poem is about his
ancestors
The poem never is
performed exactly the
same – each
performance is different
Some things to know about
ancient Greek epic
Epos = song
Epic Distance = the
world the poet is
creating is distant,
or different from his
or her own
This is why heroes of
past times are
always better than
today’s humans
If you want to
understand what is
going on in Homer,
you need to lose
your reality
expectation -- rivers
and horses will
speak, so JUST
DEAL WITH IT!
Homer and the Origins of
Writing
The poems exist for us
today, but they come
from a largely oral
tradition and were
created by a system
that is hostile to writing
Writing is known to the
Greeks as “the drug of
forgetfulness, silent but
speaking”.
It seems as if writing
was invented around
800 BCE, the exact time
when Homer’s poems
were composed
Now the Greeks no
longer had to use their
minds to remember
words, but had a
system of symbols to
use which stood for
specific sounds in their
language.
The Man Who Overcame
Death
Homer’s story is part
of a larger epic
tradition, which
incorporates
elements from other
cultures in the Near
East along with
uniquely Greek
elements
In particular, the
themes of the
traveling sailor and
the struggle for
what it means to be
human and face
death.
Odysseus conquers death
The enemies of
Odysseus are allies of
death
Sleep, the brother of
death (Somnus)
Narcosis
Darkness
Forgetfulness
Eternal life = death (if it
means loss of new
experiences)
Look for scenes of
rebirth in the
Odyssey
“Never forget me, for I
gave you life.”
Nausicaa to Odysseus
Homer’s Other Questions and
Themes
Who am I?
How do I fit into
humankind?
What is my role in
life?
What is my
relationship to other
humans?
Life triumphs over
death
Ordered world wins
out over disordered
Simple revenge
Right over wrong
Why is this important?
What I hope you
have learned from
today’s lecture . . .
Homer’s appeal to
modern audiences is
that he creates
characters and
develops them to
the point where we
feel what they feel
As though we were
witnessing the lives
of real men and
women, the
complexity and
emotional
development of
Homer’s characters
touch us even today.