The Iliad , the Odyssey and their audiences

Bibliographic Data

ID9403655
AuthorsAndrew Dalby (0000-0003-3527-8320, Goodenough College, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume45
Issue2
Pages269-279
Publication date1995-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Classical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-8388 • E-ISSN: 1471-6844
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0009838800043391
OpenAlexW2152840063
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

It has been easy to take the apparently detached viewpoint of the two early Greek epics as actually objective, a window on a ‘Heroic Age’, on a ‘Homeric society’ and its values. We used to ask whether ‘Homeric society’ belongs to the poets' own time or to some earlier one. We still ask how to characterize and explain the ways in which the ‘Homeric world’ differs from any world that we can accept as having existed: we answer with phrases such as ‘poetic exaggeration’ and ‘epic distance’. We have constructed ‘Homeric society’, but it remains an isolate. It can tell us nothing in return of the poets' intentions, or of the society of their time, unless we have a working hypothesis as to the place in that society that was held by the poets and their audiences

Art · EPIC · Epistemology · Exaggeration · Literature · Nothing · Poetry · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Media, Communication, and Education · Philosophy · Psychology · Study and Philosophy of Religion

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