Andrew Lang
Homer and His Age
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664603630
Table of Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this file)
HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS
HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION
THE LEGEND OF THE MAKING OF THE "ILIAD" UNDER PISISTRATOS
LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.
AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD". BURIAL AND CREMATION
NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"
LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS
HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS
PREFACE
In Homer and the Epic, ten or twelve years ago, I examined the literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based on alleged discrepancies in the narrative, of which no one poet, it is supposed, could have been guilty. The critics repose, I venture to think, mainly on a fallacy. We may style it the fallacy of "the analytical reader." The poet is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address. Nor are "contradictory instances" examined—that is, as Blass has recently reminded his countrymen, Homer is put to a test which Goethe could not endure. No long fictitious narrative can satisfy "the analytical reader."
The fallacy is that of disregarding the Homeric poet's audience. He did not sing for Aristotle or