Homeric Technique

Abstract

There have appeared in recent years a number of books on Homer which encourage the hope that the spirit of Homeric criticism is undergoing a change. It is not that the controversy is settled, or that the Unitarians have won, but the realization seems to be creeping in that after all the Homeric Question has very little to do with the poems. Mr. Bowra puts the case thus: “Both sides have begun to agree on the opinion that, whatever the authorship of the Iliad may be, it is still in some sense a work of art and has undergone some formative influence from a single poet. This poet may have composed the whole poem or he may have transformed independent poems into a unity, but in either case the poem may, and indeed must, be considered as a single work of art.” And Professor Woodhouse more pointedly: “Nothing can alter the fact that the Odyssey stands in the world just as it is, and not otherwise. The function of criticism, here at any rate, is not to teach the poet a better way, but to endeavour to realize at full value just what he has chosen to give, in the way in which he chose to give it.”