Week 6
Who was Homer?
Where did he live?
When did he live? (c. 780-700 BC?)
Was he a real person?
Was the author Homer really a committee?
Several authors combined?
Did he write both the Iliad and the Odyssey?
Here below is part of the article on Homer in the Wikipedia:
Homer is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. The Homeric Question—concerning by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed—continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and (according to some) the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the result of a process of working and re-working by many contributors, and that "Homer" is best seen as a label for an entire tradition. It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around 800 BC-750 BC. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. From antiquity until the present day, the influence of the Homeric epics on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film.
REQUIRED READING
RECOMMENDED READING
Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind,
W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (June 16, 2014),
ISBN 0393239985