CLAS 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Omen, Best Fighter Espy Award, Odysseus
25 Jan 2018
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Document Summary
Homer is the most famous author of antiquity, if not in all of western literature. He is the first poet of the western cultural area of whose works and major scope are complete. It is between the late 8th century and the early 7th that someone composed the iliad and the odyssey. Works that would be revered by generations of greeks and romans afterwards. It is likely that both texts originated as oral stories passed from bars to bars. Before it was written down, it was prone to being interpreted by those telling it. It was prone to reinterpretation until it was written down. We lack any detail about the life of homer; it is unlikely that it is one person who single-handlely composed both the iliad and the odyssey. We should not understand it as one person but rather a name given to a collection of tales preserved by oral literary tradition.
