British Romantic Homer: Oral Tradition, "Primitive Poetry" and the Emergence of Comparative Poetics in Britain, 1760-1830

Abstract

This essay explores how Homer was newly good to think with in Britain, c. 1760-1830, and hopes to offer an account of the first oralization of Homer. In eighteenth-century Britain, as the very notions of culture and society were themselves undergoing transformation, "Homer" emerged as a significant figure in many modes of cultural enquiry—offering a ground-note for discourses on early society, primitive poetry, oral tradition, and the culture of the heroic. Topics discussed include Ossian, Robert Wood, stadial history, and media theory. We hope to suggest how the subtleties and agons of eighteenth-century poetics might help us refine our own.