Homer

Homer (Greek Ὅμηρος, Hómēros) was a Greek epic writer (8th century BC). With the exception of a few Hellenistic philologists, the entire antiquity held Homer as the author of the oldest texts of Greek literature, the epics Iliad and Odyssey. From numerous late biographies it is impossible to extract a reliable historical core; modern criticism on the basis of archaeological, cultural and linguistic indications with a high degree of agreement dates the epics to the second half of the 8th century. BC BC: Iliad around 750, Odyssey around 725. Considering that the Ionian dialect prevails in the songs, it is assumed that Homer was originally from Ionia; in the speculation about his birthplace, Smyrna in Asia Minor and the nearby island of Hij enjoy a certain advantage.

Doubts about the historicity of Homer's person and his authorship of two songs arose in the 17th century. century (François d'Aubignac), and strengthened in the XVIII. century (Giambattista Vico, Ignjat Đurđević), when it culminated in the work of Friedrich August Wolf (Introduction to Homer – Prolegomena ad Homerum, 1795). Since then, Homeric philology has been involved in a fierce debate about the so-called analysts, who denied the possibility that any of the epics was the work of one author, and unitarians, who defended the unique authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, or assumed a separate author for each epic. In the 1930s, the American philologist Milman Parry's discovery of the oral significance of Homer's poetry brought new light to this debate, which provided convincing answers to some of the analysts' objections, such as the repetition of parts of verses, whole verses or fragments.

By all accounts, Homer was one of the aeds who, like the South Slavic fiddlers studied by Parry, built his repertoire by taking songs from older singers. His innovation must have been that instead of songs of the usual length, intended for a one-time performance, he managed to create stories that captured the attention of the listeners even when they were performed in continuations (the performance of the Iliad takes about twenty hours - four or five long evenings ). At the same time, like all oral poets, he combined memory and improvisation: he shaped what he heard from other singers using the acquired stock of formulas, typical scenes or themes.

Created at the threshold of Greek and overall European literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey are certainly the most read non-sacred texts of Western civilization. But their enormous influence is not only a consequence of chronological priority, but also of unique aesthetic value. The Greeks saw in them unattainable literary works, but also a source of the most diverse knowledge: mythological, theological, ethical, linguistic, historical, geographical, natural science, so they assigned them a central position in the teaching system.

Roman literature begins with the translation of the Odyssey, and until the very end of pagan antiquity, Homer is the most permanent landmark in it. In the West, the medieval reception of Homer was hindered by a language barrier, and in the early modern period, influential poets, such as Scaliger, assumed Virgil for him. Homer was rediscovered as a canonical author in the 18th century. century, primarily in England (Alexander Pope, Robert Wood) and Germany (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Joachim Winckelmann). Among the Croats, the Iliad was sung in Latin by Dubrovnik's Rajmund Kunić (1776), the Odyssey by his younger contemporary and fellow citizen Bernard Zamanja (1777), and both sung in Croatian by Tomo Maretić (1882–83).