Why is homers existence questioned by scholars

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Publishing contacts. Social Media Overview. Terms and Conditions. Privacy Statement. Countless attempts to recreate the life and personality of the author from the content of his epic poems have occupied writers for centuries. Homer's two epic poems have become archetypal road maps in world mythology. The stories provide an important insight into early human society, and illustrate, in some aspects, how little has changed.

Some scholars insist that Homer was personally familiar with the plain of Troy, due to the geographical accuracy in the poem. The Odyssey picks up after the fall of Troy. Further controversy about authorship springs from the differing styles of the two long narrative poems, indicating they were composed a century apart, while other historians claim only decades —the more formal structure of The Iliad is attributed to a poet at the height of his powers, whereas the more colloquial, novelistic approach in The Odyssey is attributed to an elderly Homer.

Homer enriched his descriptive story with the liberal use of simile and metaphor, which has inspired a long path of writers behind him.

His structuring device was to start in the middle— in medias res — and then fill in the missing information via remembrances. Tolkien 's The Fall of Gondolin. Other works have been attributed to Homer over the centuries, most notably the Homeric Hymns , but in the end, only the two epic works remain enduringly his. He was right. The Iliad and The Odyssey have provided not only seeds but fertilizer for almost all the other arts and sciences in Western culture.

For the Greeks, Homer was a godfather of their national culture, chronicling its mythology and collective memory in rich rhythmic tales that have permeated the collective imagination. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, together with Socrates and Plato, laid much of the groundwork for western philosophy.

I will present the theories concerning his place of origin and those concerning the century he was likely to have lived in. I will also discus the artifacts …show more content… Also, he would have had to be close to Ithaca to describe it as well as he did. Evidence of Homers followers living in the Ionic Island of Chios is documented. Britannica They were a group of oral poets called the Homeridae. They attempted to carry on The Homeric tradition of oral poetry. They claimed to be Homers descendants and it would seem reasonable that both the Homeridae and Homer came from the same place.

Homer is thought to have lived sometime between BC and BC. Britannica Most scholars feel the poems were written in BC. Griffin p. Evidence as to any exact dates is non-existent. In The Odyssey, the Phoenicians are referred to as traders.

This would date the poem between BC and BC. After BC, the Phoenicians were no longer traders. Britannica The language in the epics indicates that they were written later than the first Ionian settlements in Asia Minor, which was about BC. Encarta The language also indicates that they were earlier than the Hesiodic poems that were from the same region and dated after BC.