Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T19:11:25.464Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

In Defence of Homer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

In his two talks on Homer today Professor Dodds has given an excellent report on the Homeric question as it now is and presented his own moderate and pacific view with candour and persuasiveness. I am delighted to find myself in agreement with him in many questions, most of all in his appreciation of the work of Milman Parry. Milman Parry's proof that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed in an oral tradition is the most important and original contribution to the Homeric question in this century, and its importance is only gradually being seen. But Milman Parry's work does not seem to me to remove the creative poet from the Iliad and Odyssey, as some scholars, including Professor Dodds, seem to think. It shows only that their originality does not consist in their language, but in the use they put it to, and in the creation of plot and character.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1956

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 118 note 1 This essay consists of two B.B.C. Third Programme talks in answer to two by ProfessorDodds, E. R., whose argument is now in print in Fifty Years of Classical Scholarship (Blackwell, Oxford, 1954), pp. 117.Google Scholar

page 126 note 1 Cf. Johannes The Kakrides, Homeric Researches (Gleerup, Lund, 1949).Google Scholar

page 128 note 1 Since this was spoken, Professor D. L. Page's book on the Homeric Odyssey has come out. But I am not much more moved by his arguments, than he may be by my fancies.