Homer, is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey,
the two major epics of Greek antiquity. Nothing is known of Homer the individual,
and in fact the question of whether a single person can be said to be responsible
for the creation of the two epics is highly controversial. Linguistic and
historical evidence, however, allows the supposition that the poems were
composed in the Greek settlements on the west coast of Asia Minor sometime
in the 9th century BC.
The Iliad
Both epics deal with legendary events that were believed
to have occurred many centuries before their composition. The Iliad is
set in the final year of the Trojan War, which forms the background for
its central plot, the story of the wrath of the Greek hero Achilles. Insulted
by his commander in chief Agamemnon, the young warrior Achilles withdraws
from the war, leaving his fellow Greeks to suffer terrible defeats at the
hands of the Trojans. Achilles rejects the Greeks' attempts at reconciliation,
but he finally relents to some extent, allowing his companion Patroclus
to lead his troops in his place. Patroclus is slain, and Achilles, filled
with fury and remorse, turns his wrath against the Trojans, whose leader,
Hector (son of King Priam), he kills in single combat. The poem closes
as Achilles surrenders the corpse of Hector to Priam for burial, recognizing
a certain kinship with the Trojan king as they both face the tragedies
of mortality and bereavement.
The Odyssey
The Odyssey describes the return of the Greek hero
Odysseus from the Trojan War. The opening scenes depict the disorder that
has arisen in Odysseus' household during his long absence: A band of suitors
is devouring his property as they woo his wife Penelope. The focus then
shifts to Odysseus himself. The epic tells of his ten years of travelling,
during which he has to face such dangers as the man-eating giant Polyphemus
and such subtler threats as the goddess Calypso, who offers him immortality
if he will abandon his quest for home. The second half of the poem begins
with Odysseus' arrival at his home island of Ithaca. Here, exercising infinite
patience and self-control, Odysseus tests the loyalty of his servants,
plots and carries out a bloody revenge on Penelope's suitors, and is reunited
with his son, his wife, and his aged father.
Epic Style
Both epics are written in impersonal, elevated,
formal verse, employing language that was never used for ordinary discourse;
the metrical form is dactylic hexameter (see Versification). Stylistically
no real distinction can be made between the two works. It is easy, however,
to see why, since antiquity, many readers have believed that they come
from different hands. The Iliad deals with passions, with insoluble dilemmas.
It has no real villains; Achilles, Agamemnon, Priam, and the rest are caught
up, as actors and victims, in a cruel and ultimately tragic universe. In
the Odyssey, on the other hand, the wicked are destroyed, right prevails,
and the family is reunited-with rational intellect, Odysseus in particular,
acting as the guiding force throughout the story.
The Homeric Hymns
Besides the Iliad and the Odyssey, the so-called
Homeric Hymns, a series of relatively short poems celebrating the various
gods and composed in a style similar to that of the epics, have also traditionally
been attributed to Homer.
The "Homeric Question".
The modern text of the Homeric poems was transmitted
through medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, themselves copies of now-lost
ancient manuscripts of the epics. Despite doubts about tales of Homer's
identity (some described him as a blind beggar bard of Chios) or his authorship
of pieces of text, such as the concluding scenes of the Odyssey, most of
his readers, from classical antiquity until recently, believed that Homer
was a poet (or, at most, a pair of poets) much like the poets they knew
from their own experience. They believed, in short, that the Iliad and
the Odyssey, although of course based on traditional materials, were independent,
original, and largely fictional.
In the last 200 years, however, this view has
changed radically, following the emergence and endless discussion of the
"Homeric question": By whom, how, and when were the Iliad and Odyssey composed?
A generally accepted answer has never been found. In the 19th and 20th
centuries "analysts" argued that internal inconsistencies proved that the
poems were collections, or accretions, of short, independently composed
lyric poems (lays); "unitarians", on the other hand, countered that these
inconsistencies were insignificant or imaginary, and that the overall unity
of the epics proved that each was the artistic product of a single mind.
More recently, scholarly discussion has centred on the theory of "oral-formulaic
composition", according to which an elaborate system of traditional poetic
diction (for example, such noun-epithet combinations as "swift-footed Achilles")-a
system that can only be the product of the combined efforts of generations
of heroic bards-is the principal constituent element in the poems now existing.
No one view on this issue has prevailed, but
it is fair to say that practically all commentators would agree, on the
one hand, that tradition had a great deal to do with the poems' composition,
and, on the other, that in the main each epic bears the strong impression
of a single creator. Meanwhile, archaeological discoveries of the last
125 years, especially those of Heinrich Schliemann, have shown that much
of the civilization Homer described was not fictional. The epics are therefore,
to a certain extent, historical documents, and discussion of this facet
of them has constantly been intertwined with the debate on the question
of their creation.
Influence
In a direct way Homer was the parent of all succeeding
Greek literature; drama, historiography, and even philosophy all show the
mark of the issues, comic and tragic, raised in the epics and the techniques
Homer used to approach them. For the later epic poets of Western literature,
Homer was of course always the master (even when, like Dante, they did
not know the works directly); but for his most successful followers, curiously
enough, his work was as much a target as a model. Virgil's Aeneid, for
instance, is a refutation of the individualistic value system of the Homeric
epic; and the most Homeric scenes in Paradise Lost, by the English poet
John Milton-those stanzas describing the battle in heaven-are essentially
comic. As for novels, such as Don Quixote (1605), by the Spanish writer
Miguel de Cervantes, or Ulysses (1922), by James Joyce, the more Homeric
they are, the more they lean towards parody and mock epic. Since Homer's
time, in fact, an unabashed heroic ethos and the erudition necessary to
appreciate Homer have never been combined in a serious author, and it seems
unlikely that they ever will be.
Among English translations of Homer, the earlier
versions of George Chapman (1616) and Alexander Pope (Iliad, 1715-1720;
Odyssey, 1725-1726) stand out as permanent classics. In contemporary English
verse, the reader can choose between the highly literal renditions (1951,
1967) of the American poet Richmond Lattimore and the versions (1961, 1974)
of Robert Fitzgerald, another American poet, which tend to be freer and
are often considered more readable.
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