Talk:Homeric Question

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[edit] Errors

Paragraph 7: "The debate begins with the Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf." -- This statement is false: the debate began with Xenon and the other chorizontes, in antiquity. Wolf kicked the problem off for 19th-century German classical scholars, which is what is normally understood by "the Homeric question", but the article gives no hint as to its ancient roots. Petrouchka 04:47, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Egyptian theory

I'm removing this text again:

The eighteenth century English writer Bryant claims the poems were written by Penthelia, a priestess of Phtha, and stolen from the archives of the temple of Phtha with the aid of "a suborned priest". Matilda Joslyn Gage finds support for this in Diodorus Siculus, Vol I, Chap. 7, based on the potion Helen gave Telemachus and that potion's use in historic Thebes, Egypt.^[1]. Scholars after Gage have mostly ignored this theory, however.

This text doesn't belong in the article. The theory is not notable. Gage was neither an Egyptologist nor a classicist, and whoever this Bryant character was, he was writing before the decipherment of hieroglyphic, so there's no way he could have had knowledge of Egyptian literature. More importantly, as the removed text says, the theory has been "mostly ignored" by scholarship; in fact, that should read "completely ignored." Bryant/Gage's theory of Egyptian authorship has left no trace on Homeric scholarship, and therefore does not belong in an article that concerns a specific controversy within Homeric scholarship. --Akhilleus (talk) 16:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

"Other scholars, however, maintain their belief in the reality of an actual Homer. So little is known or even guessed of his actual life, that a common joke has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name," and the classical scholar Richmond Lattimore, author of well regarded poetic translations to English of both epics, once wrote a paper entitled "Homer: Who Was She?" Samuel Butler was more specific, theorizing a young Sicilian woman as author of the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further speculated on by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter."

This passage doesn't seem to contain enough information to make it notable. Is it notable simply because the scholars are more recentl? How ould they have obtained such information. I realize an encyclopedia can't be exhaustive, but this is dictionary-short and probably needs some elaboration if it is going to be included. Scottandrewhutchins 15:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)Scottandrewhutchins

I'm not a big fan of the paragraph that you quote. I'm not sure where the joke comes from--seems to be based on a more popular saying about Shakespeare. Lattimore is notable because his translation of the Iliad is widely read (in the U.S., at least), and is used in many college and university courses. His supposed paper is not notable, in my opinion, and I'm not even sure it exists--I can't find it through google, and it's not in any bibliography I've consulted. Samuel Butler's Homer's Daughter is notable, because many classical scholars refer to it in just the way this article does--as an illustration of how much opinion about Homer has varied. No one takes Butler's theory seriously, however. --Akhilleus (talk) 15:29, 29 June 2006 (UTC)