Open Questions
The Homeric Question
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Open 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.
OpenClassical philology and the study of oral-formulaic compositionThe Norton Anthology of World Literature
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