The Odyssey, Books 1-12

INTRODUCTION

well established—far better established than is, for example, the text of Shakespeare William Shakespeare (1564–1616); the author suggests Homer’s text is more consistent than the early printed versions of Shakespeare’s plays, which often contain significant variations.. Secondly, this text seems to have been fixed as the result of a purging or pruning process. We know, for example, that the critical work of the Alexandrians Scholars at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt who, during the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., worked to standardize the Greek classics. was concerned largely with the rejection of lines held on one ground or another to be spurious Meaning false or fake; lines that scholars believed were added later by other performers rather than the original poet., that the text of the papyri papyri Ancient writing material made from the papyrus plant. Fragments of these ancient scrolls often show different versions of Homeric verses than those we use today. differs widely from our vulgate vulgate From the Latin vulgata, meaning "common" or "popular"; it refers to the standard version of a text that became most widely accepted. text, and that the quotations in ancient authors show many lines not found in our Homer.

From this evidence the conclusion has been drawn that in antiquity "Homer" meant the whole mass of epic poetry—for this there is definite evidence—and that our Iliad and Odyssey, both as regards text and content, were in a more or less fluid state until they gradually crystallized into the forms familiar to us. On this view it is impossible to speak of a poet, Homer, as the author either of the Iliad or Odyssey. It should be stated, however, that while much of modern Homeric criticism has been analytic The "Analytic" school of thought seeks to deconstruct the poems into smaller, independent lays or fragments written by different people. and destructive, in many important respects recent studies have shown that both the methods and the results of destructive criticism are misleading, and have given stronger and more convincing grounds for a belief in the essential integrity of both poems, each as the work of one supreme artist.