Guest Author - Jordan McCollum
Homer, the accredited author of the Illiad and the Odyssey, is one of the best known poets of all time. However, there’s almost nothing known about the poet behind them—not even whether he actually lived or not.
The Traditional View
Tradition maintains (or at least a lot of middle school teachers do) that Homer was a highly skilled, blind, minstrel/poet who crafted his epics over many years. He was probably born in the area of Ionia during the eight century BC. His works were passed down through oral traditions. His works are considered the beginning of the Western canon, the collection of literature in the Western world, as well as the beginning of the Classical Antiquity period.
The Modern View
Today, many question whether the epic works, homeric hymns and dozens of other works attributed to Homer could be written by a single person. Certainly, many of the works in the Homeric canon have been dated as much younger than the Illiad and the Odyssey. Some modern scholars even assert that the Odyssey (but not the Illiad) was written by a woman.
Other Traditional Views
The idea that the works of Homer were not composed by a single man is far from new. The “Homeric question” was purported to be asked by the second century (AD) Roman Emperor Hadrian. The Oracle at Delphi informed him that the works of Homer had been written by Telemachus (the son of Odysseus, protagonist of the Odyssey) and Ithican.
Sources: Wikipedia.org
Whoever wrote them, read the epic works of Homer: The Odyssey and
The Illiad to see why these works have held up over nearly 3000 years.
