Homer,

The Iliad

, and

The Odyssey

 Homer is known for his two epics:   The Iliad: Focuses on the Trojan War during the twelfth century B.C., in particular the actions of the Greek hero Achilles The Odyssey: Takes place after the Greek victory in the Trojan War and recounts the homecoming Odysseus.  Both were likely composed in the eighth century B.C.

What do we know about Homer?

(no, not that one  )  Almost nothing! But scholars like to hypothesize:    He was an Ionian Greek (probably from the coast of Asia Minor or one of the adjacent islands) He was born sometime before 700 B.C., and he lived in approximately the latter half of the eighth century B.C. He was a blind itinerant poet

 A significant amount of scholarship has gone into determining whether Homer wrote these epics. There are three main theories of authorship:    The analytic The Unitarian The oral folk epic (that could be him, maybe  )

   

The Analytic

For many years, most accepted that Homer was the author and writer of the poems.

Friedrich Adolph Wolf published Homerum in 1795.

Prolegomena ad In it, he argued:    Homer was illiterate, and he could not have composed lengthy poems.

There are inconsistencies and errors in the texts.

Therefore, The Iliad and The Odyssey were not the compositions of one poet, but the products of many different authors at work on various traditional poems and stories. Wolf's view was popular throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it was ultimately challenged by…

The Unitarian

   The Unitarian’s primary spokesperson was Andrew Lang. The Unitarians insisted that a single individual of genius composed the Homeric epics, and they supported that claim by citing a unified sensibility, original style, and consistent use of themes and imagery in the poems. These two points of view were reconciled somewhat with…

    

The Oral Folk Epic

In the 1920s, Milman Parry argued the poems were composed orally. Parry established that Homeric verse is formulaic by nature, relying on generic epithets (such as "wine-dark sea"), repetition of stock lines and half-lines, and scenes and themes typical of traditional folk poetry.

Parry deduced that Homer was most likely a rhapsode (traveling bard) who improvised stories to be sung at Greek festivals. Homer likely wove together standard epic story threads and descriptions in order to sustain his narrative, and relied on mnemonic devices and phrases to fill the natural metrical units of poetic lines.

Parry's theory, like that of the analysts, stressed the derivative, evolutionary character of Homer's poetry; but like the Unitarians, Parry affirmed Homer's individual genius as a shaper of traditional elements whose creations far exceeded the sum of their borrowed parts