Talk:Homeric Question

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Contents 1 Errors 2 Egyptian theory 3 Gender of the author 4 Stored text

[edit] Errors

In the final paragraph about Lachmann, it says that he identified 16 different lays, however when you link to the Lachmann article, it says he identified 18 lays. Which is correct?

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)

[edit] Gender of the author

I am no Homeric expert, but I studied Classical Greek for O-level GCE in about 1967-1968. For that examination, we studied book 2 of the Odyssey; the famed reception of Odysseus by the Phaecians. My teacher often remarked that it was his opinion that only a woman could have written the passage describing Nausicaa's expedition to do the laundry! He felt that it betrayed too detailed a knowledge of the world of women (strictly segregated in respectable society in Classical times) to have been written by a man. He also felt that some of the sentiments expressed by Nausicaa were ones that again a man might not have arrived at. In fact, his opinion was that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by different authors; a man having written the Iliad and a woman the Odyssey. My teacher, the late Mr Max Line of Wheelwright Grammar School for Boys, Dewsbury, was an examiner in both Latin and Greek for the Northern Universities Joint Matriculation Board. He was a good enough teacher that I and a few other boys studied Greek for O-level after school; I myself was at best a mediocre scholar of classical languages, but was attracted to the subject by a charismatic and interesting teacher. I am a scientist these days! --APRCooper (talk) 17:41, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stored text

Please store this here for the time being:

Most scholars maintain a 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 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. Historian Andrew Dalby (in his book entitled Rediscovering Homer) recently has claimed that the true author of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" was a woman; he argues that the books were most likely written down by a woman after years of being preserved in an oral tradition because women are more likely to preserve such traditions over long periods of time. ^[2]

My main concern right now is for the organization and this text has nothing to do with the topic of oral poetry under which it is found. I am not saying it will not have a place elsewhere but according to the article's current setup it does not belong in the subsection. It should go under single-author theories, female.Dave (talk) 16:10, 20 February 2008 (UTC)