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[return to "The Odyssey by Homer, Translated by Samuel Butler"]
1. CalChr+Y8[view] [source] 2023-07-17 14:34:35
>>agomez+(OP)
The Homeric Question [1] generally centers on whether the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by primarily one person (Unitarian) or by different people (Analytic). Butler has another theory, that the Odyssey was written by one person, a woman in Sicily, which he published in the The Authoress of the Odyssey [2]. Basically, Butler was describing the Odyssey as fan fiction, as a Mary Sue [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeric_Question

[2] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Authoress_of_the_Odyssey

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

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2. mrangl+Cj[view] [source] 2023-07-17 15:26:00
>>CalChr+Y8
I wouldn't be surprised.

Devil's advocacy:

Even if the Odyssey is arguably a relatively paler reflection of the Iliad in terms of mythological weight across the western corpus (ie: centrally important myths reflected within other myths), while still being a monster in its own right, it would be a monumental lifetime feat for one woman to acquire the deepest mythological and even religious (apocalyptic) knowledge it would have taken to write the Odyssey. It's still an incalculably skilled work.

In all, I'd lean against the one woman theory. But it wouldn't surprise me either. Authors and artists often had advisors on classical subject matter that would have been mostly mastered by those with expensive educations.

Homeric Question and historicity:

No one who is a serious student of mythology thinks that there is a real controversy over whether or not works such as the Iliad fall into dichotomous categories of true or false. What these myths are meant to describe are archetypal repeating events. That is, they are both true and myth. As is the case for most long persevering myths. No one should allow a little bit of allegory to fool them.

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