Homer and the Origins of Literature

Who was Homer and why and how did his poems get written down?

5 Key Points of LectureWho 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 HomerHis work shows a knowledge of the Greek World and Near East

Later tradition has him born in Asia MinorStories 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 maleWe 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 centuryTrade 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 OdysseyBut 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 QuestionOption #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 elementsThe 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 old-tradition of verse-making 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 claimedNor 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 ancestorsThe poem never is performed exactly the same – each performance is different

Some things to know about ancient Greek epic

Epos = songEpic 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 deathSleep, the brother of death (Somnus)NarcosisDarknessForgetfulnessEternal 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 deathOrdered world wins out over disorderedSimple revengeRight 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.