Emily Wilson: evaluation

Transcript context

…What’s your view on who Homer was? How much oral tradition? How much a single mastermind, a group of editors, one final finisher? What do you think? They’re written poems, so obviously the puzzle is, how did these written poems come into being? I feel that the writing must have been involved in the composition, not just in the recording of something which was already present entire in one genius’s mind, because I think having something present entire without any use of writing that’s as monumental as these poems are seems to me implausible. Beyond that, I don’t really have a clear view about, was it a pair of people? Was it a single person? Did the same person do the Iliad and the Odyssey? I don’t see how we could possibly know that. I think they’re very different poems, but I also think the chances are that the Odyssey seems to be composed with some kind of awareness of the Iliad, but to what extent can that fully be proved? I’m not sure. Can’t software tell us if it’s the same author?…

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