The name ancient Greek tradition gives to the poet, or poets, credited with the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational epics of the Greek literary tradition and, through their enormous later influence, of the wider Western one. Ancient sources already disagreed about him: several cities claimed to be his birthplace, and ancient scholars debated whether both epics could be the work of one poet. Modern scholarship on oral-formulaic composition, chiefly the work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord in the twentieth century, showed that the poems' repeated epithets and formulas are the signature of a long oral performance tradition, which reopened rather than settled the question of what, if anything, 'Homer' names as a single historical individual. See the Homeric Question.
Facts
Classification
Original LanguageAncient Greek (to 1453) (grc, ISO 639-3) 1 Connections
Associated With
Epic, Genres Primary epics such as those of Homer are the genre's founding, oral-tradition examples.
Source Epic Poetry (Wikipedia)
In Genre
Epic, Genres Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Influenced
Virgil modelled the Aeneid on Homer's two epics: the first six books on the Odyssey, the last six on the Iliad.
Source Virgil (Wikipedia)
Open Questions
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Works Attributed
The Iliad, Works Why this is disputed. Attribution to a single poet named Homer is itself the Homeric Question; the poem is cited here under the traditional attribution, which remains the scholarly convention even though it is not treated as settled fact.
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
The Odyssey, Works Why this is disputed. Homeric authorship of the Odyssey is separately and more sharply debated than the Iliad's in modern Homeric scholarship; see The Homeric Question.
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Homer (Wikipedia)
WikipediaOriginal language statementQuote, Original language statement
8th century BC) was an ancient Greek poet who is traditionally credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature.
The Norton Anthology of World Literature
W. W. Norton & Company
Epic Poetry (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: EpicQuote, Associated With: Epic
Primary epics, such as those of Homer, were composed by bards who used complex rhetorical and metrical schemes.
Virgil (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationInfluenced: Virgil, Aeneid sectionQuote, Influenced: Virgil, Aeneid section
The work, modelled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, chronicles the journey of a warrior and refugee.
Open Questions (1 open question)
The Homeric Question
Whether Homer names a single historical poet, several poets, or is essentially a name attached after the fact to a long, collective oral tradition, cannot be settled from the evidence that survives: no contemporary biography exists, ancient sources already disagreed, and the internal evidence of oral-formulaic composition is consistent with more than one account of authorship.
What would resolve this No plausible new evidence is expected; the question is treated by classicists as a permanent interpretive one about how oral tradition, individual authorship and textual fixation relate to each other, rather than a fact-finding gap a future discovery would close.
Classical philology and the study of oral-formulaic compositionThe Norton Anthology of World Literature
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.