Rediscovering Homer: Inside the Origins of the Epic

by Andrew Dalby

Book Overview

Scholar Andrew Dalby delves into the world that first heard the Odyssey and the Iliad, and asks new questions about the poet named Homer. Dalby follows the growth of the legend of Troy from its kernel of historical truth, and retraces the succession of singers who re-created the unforgettable story for generations of audiences. He asks why the two great epics at last crossed the frontier from song to writing, and how this astonishing transformation...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393057887
• ISBN13: 9780393057881
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.0" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Perfect for the Quad

I initially had trouble with this book: I don't know if was the author's style of writing or my lack of familiarity with the subject matter. Had the subtitle dealt with "oral poetry" rather than "inside the origins of the epic" perhaps I might have attacked the book differently and it might have been clearer the first time through. I became familiar with the subject by reading the book quickly the first time, and then I re-read the denouement, as it were, chapters 8 and 9. This is fascinating. This is very much like a detective novel so I won't give away the ending. I have always wondered how a poet, in this case, a Homer, could recite a poem as long as the Iliad or the Odyssey. Andrew Dalby has answered that question. That alone would be worth the price of the book. But he also provides a history of how Homer rose to fame in such a short period of time, who Homer might have been, and whether Homer wrote the epics or just sang them. Along the way, Dalby provides us enough trivia about poet-singers, rhapsodic singers, and Homeridic poets to last several cocktail parties on the Quad. His research took him to Serbia / Bosnia, and it is almost too good to be true that songs of Christian-Muslim conflicts four hundred years ago led Dalby and his predecessors to their fascinating theories. The subject matter deserves a larger opus. The book is relatively short with only 204 pages of context preceded by 27 pages of introduction. It seems like the type of book that will go to soft cover relatively soon to be sold in airport bookstores. It is possible the author had a longer book in him but the publisher knew that the small audience would grow inversely proportional with the size of the book. The bibliography is very good, and the index appears to be excellent. [I think "Publisher's Weekly" did a disservice by highlighting the gender issue in the opening line of its review. In fact, Mr Dalby's discussion of gender occupies a very small piece of the book -- less than 18 pages of the 231 pages of text/introduction. Mr Dalby would have been remiss not mentioning it once he considered that possibility; like the rest of the points in his book, he lays his theories out in the open for others to discuss, but is not fanatic about them. If it bothers anyone that much that a woman might have written down these epics, throw that part of the book out. It won't detract from the rest of the fine points. And just to be clear here; Homer was male but he did not write the epics; he merely sang them. Someone else wrote them down. That's the whole point of the book.] I heartily recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in "Homer's" two epics, those interested in philology and literature of the Western canon, or as I noted earlier, simply want more trivia for a cocktail party on the Quad than one could ever imagine.

Why you might want to read this study

This is no book of an afternoon. It challenges even a hell educated reader, indeed its roots are such that they are deeper than many PhD's in literature are capable of delving.Three clearly different segments, notes, a guide to other readings, and a bibliography constitute a scholarly treatise. While other reviewers write of the premise that "Homer" was a woman as a difficult stretch, I am inclined to ignore the idea under the conclusion that it has little relevancy for my readings of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and a suspicion that such a claim may be an illustration of the fashionable readings of the two works that Dalby discusses throughout. His discussion of historic parallels and potential geographical place identifications relating to the Trojan War is a substantial part of the work. So if you are interested in linguistic Schliemannism, this is a good source. The discussion of the major changes that took place in twentieth century understanding of the nature of oral poetry, the role of Milman Parry, Lord, and Murko - while employed for proof of the female Homer premise- is both a concise history of scholarship and reveals much about lengthy oral poetry. Again a good reason to read this book. Needless to say, the vast discussion about "Oral" poetry is of serious merit. The relationship of performance to text opens up the entire author/text/audience question of modern critical theory. Since oral poetry is always changing from performance to performance, what happens when it is written down. Modern critics need to consider the ideas. But what about the Phaedo? We remember that bit about the orphan word, written and without its "fathering mind" to defend it. Dalby looks extensively at practice, concepts, pronunciation and other matters of ancient Greek poetry. This is a motherlode of valuable data.

What he said. . .

Brickbat70's response to Dalby's book is a good one. With my five-star rating, however, I am more forgiving of the author's few less-convincing arguments. Certainly his discussion of the Paris-Alexandros question is a stretch--one that covers too much ground to satisify. The female authorship issue notwithstanding (an idea that has been around at least since Butler), Dalby's broader discussion of gender relations and conflict in the epics is sensible and at times enlightening. This book is a very useful and informed contemporary discussion of the conversion of oral composition to written text. Unlike so many others, Dalby avoids the "we-can't-really-know-anything-about-Homer" refrain whenever possible, preferring instead to make reasonable assertions based on history, language, and close reading. I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in the field.