Posted on 01/05/2015 1:09:44 PM PST by SunkenCiv
In Why Homer Matters, historian and award-winning author Adam Nicolson suggests that Homer be thought of not as a person but as a tradition and that the works attributed to him go back a thousand years earlier than generally believed.
Speaking from his home in England, Nicolson describes how being caught in a storm at sea inspired his passion for Homer, how the oral bards of the Scottish Hebrides may hold the key to understanding Homer's works, and why smartphones are connecting us to ancient oral traditions in new and surprising ways...
About ten years ago, I set off sailing with a friend of mine. We wanted a big adventure, so we decided to sail up the west coast of the British Isles, the exposed Atlantic coast, visiting various remote islands along the way. I had thrown into my luggage a copy of The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles, having never really looked at Homer for about 25 years.
We had a rough time. Our instruments broke, and it had been a big hike from Cornwall. Lying in my bunk tied up next to a quay in southwest Ireland, I opened this book and found myself confronted with what felt like the truth -- like somebody was telling me what it was like to be alive on Earth, in the figure of Odysseus.
Odysseus is the great metaphor for all of our lives: struggling with storms, coming across incredibly seductive nymphs, finding himself trapped between impossible choices. I suddenly thought, This is talking to me in a way I would never have guessed before.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
I’ve studied this question for a while, and I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no one “Adam Nicolson”. It’s just a pseudonym used by a whole series of authors and editors, perhaps an entire culture, who contributed to the work ascribed to that name.
“It’s a shame that most of Homer’s works were probably lost when the religion of peace burned down the Library of Alexandria and murdered its librarian.”
That library burned down long before Muhammed was born.
Your saying it doesn't make it true, either. If "most folks" believe it, that doesn't make it true, either.
I agree that Homer matters, as least as much as any literature can.
Oh. I guess I’ve been mistaken all this time. Damn. Well then, nevermind.
A little book i’ve got here ,dated 1757, Believes Homer to be a very well travel individual of high status in Greece society.
“An excellent well travelled Geographer with access to the accounts of his countrymen”.
“Collecting the Stories of those around ,and editing them into an accurate account of proceedings “.
(Thomas Blackwell)
Sounds plausible. (?)
I’m not saying it to make it true, I’m pointing out that through most of history since the Iliad and Odyssey became known works it has been generally accepted that there probably was no Homer, that in fact he was just as much a legend as the characters “he” “wrote” about.
Unless he was.
It’s a debate that’s gone on for a long time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeric_Question
And by “a long time” I mean even Herodotus, who was solidly in the Homer camp, doubted all the works attributed to Homer were actually by him.
It’s actually a very complex question that will never be answered. Which makes it much much more interesting that the bland way you’re trying to make it certain.
Of course that means he didn’t really write them. Kind of like how the Grimm brothers didn’t really write those fairy tales, they just put existing tales to paper. It’s a quite entertaining academic debate, he might or might not have existed and if he did exist he might or might not have actually created those stories.
Revisionist Codswallop. Balderdash. Gallimaufery. Pope-Jammery, Tripe, Will'o'the-wisp,etc. ad nauseam.
Nausea is what inspired this meretricious pedant. Stay offa sailboats you addlepated landlubber! He gets seasick and we have to throw the Blind Bard overboard? Not bloody likely.
The sea cruel? Not bloody cruel enough in this wimp's case.
I wouldn't say it was "written by a whole culture" any more than Shakespeare's or Tolstoy's works were written by a whole culture, but it's not like one person thought the whole thing up on his or her own without making use of earlier oral versions.
What may be more interesting is that there were other epic poems in the same Trojan war cycle that didn't survive. They filled out the story of the war, but have been lost to us.
At some point people decided that they weren't worth copying and recopying. So whoever this Homer was, he or she (one theory is that the Odyssey was composed by a woman) had something that other epic poets didn't.
Did you actually read it in the ancient Greek? If you did I applaud you (no really, that’s an awesome thing to have learned and done), if not then writing style is about the translator not the writer. Of course even in the ancient Greek the stuff had been handed down and passed around for a long time, which could have caused changes in the text. Remember the window for when he lived even among those that are sure he did is almost 500 years.
I personally don’t think he existed. I think he was created by a group of performers that wanted to do a certain set of stories a certain way and created a legend around how these versions of these stories were “handed down” to them.
‘Modern scholars have determined that The Iliad and The Odyssey were not, in fact, written by Homer, but rather by another ancient Greek who had the same name.”
I see what you did there.
I suspect that Homer was a real person but probably just gathered various stories into a single epic or epics.
Although the places in both the Iliad and Odyssey were based on actual geographical places, the ones in the Iliad tend to be more accurately described.
Not sure what that means tho.
Homer did not compose the majority of either work. However, he likely composed the core stories within. But then, as the stories were passed along as an oral tradition, they were enhanced, in a way like a theater troupe would add bits about the lineage of the local king and how his ancestors were critical to the events. Over time, this became the bulk of the works.
The Trojan War took place between 1260 and 1240 BC. Homer likely lived about 150 years later. But the two epic poems were only written down in their entirety sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. So between 400 and 700 years after the events, and between 250 and 550 years after Homer.
In related news, Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays.
The well-known “Romeo and Juliet” was based on “Tragic Tale of Two Lovers” by Arthur Brooke, which was based on previous works by Masuccio Salernitano, Luigi da Porto, Mateo Bandello, and others.
“Hamlet” was based on work by Saxo Grammaticus, as revised by Thomas Kyd and possibly by Francois de Belleforest.
“Othello” may have been based on work by Giovanni Giraldi Cinthio.
Besides, we all know that Shakespeare was really written http://www.sirbacon.org/links/evidence.htm by Sir Francis Bacon and/or Kevin Bacon.
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More realistically, I wish scholars who don’t have anything worth saying would simply read instead of publishing nonsense.
My favorite old books.
THE ILIAD
THE ODYSSEY
THE AENEID by VIRGIL. Glad Augustus did not carry out Virgil’s last request.
The Odyssey has so many other tales in it, such as Telemachus’ search for his father,
The epic voyage of Menelaus and Helen from Troy back to Sparta.
***That said, whoever did finally commit them to script was an artist of the highest order.***
I have read that the Greeks developed their alphabet just so these epic stories would not fade away.
LOL
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