Orality

About the lecture

In this module, we think about the Iliad and Odyssey as oral poems and how (if at all) the origins of the Homeric poems should impact how we read them. In particular, we think about: (i) the range of questions that make up the so-called ‘Homeric Question’ – who was Homer? Did he even exist? If so, did he write both the Iliad and the Odyssey or just one of them?, etc.; (ii) the stylistic features of the Homeric poems that suggest that they were originally composed and transmitted orally; (iii) the research of Milman Parry and Albert Lord; (iv) the three major ‘schools’ of thought in relation to the ‘Homeric Question’ – analysts, unitarians and oralists; (v) the transmission of Homeric poems – how did they survive the 2,500 year journey from when they were first written down to now?; and (vi) the extent to which the way we interpret the Homeric poems depends on how the poem was composed.

About the lecturer

Dr Emily Hauser is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, and the author of an acclaimed trilogy of novels reworking the women of Greek myth, including For the Most Beautiful (2016, Penguin Random House). She has written articles on gender in Homer, women poets in antiquity and their reception in contemporary women’s writing; she also co-edited Reading Poetry, Writing Genre: English Poetry and Literary Criticism in Dialogue with Classical Scholarship (2018, Bloomsbury). Her latest books are Ancient Love Stories (2023, Bonnier) and How Women Became Poets: A Gender History of Greek Literature (2023, Princeton).