Abstract

This book is the result of Martin L. West's life-long study of Homer's poetry, leading to what he presents as definitive answers to the "Homeric question" and to a detailed mapping of the composition of the Iliad. West brings back the specters of eighteenth-century Analyst scholars, pitched in battle against the Oralists, who have dominated Homeric scholarship of the twentieth century, following the Parry-Lord approach to oral poetry. West's hypothesis is "that the poet progressively amplified his work, not just by adding more at the end but by making insertions in parts already composed," and that he did this in writing, which allowed him to undertake a composition of such unprecedented length. The competing Oralists, according to him, postulate "that, being an oral poet and not on close terms with the art of writing, he must be supposed to have produced the whole Iliad sequentially in the order in which we have it." West's hypothesis "wins", because it accounts for the "numerous anomalies and discontinuities in the narrative," which the other hypothesis, in his opinion, does not. West's approach revives the analytical reading of the poem, dissecting it into allusions, parallels, insertions, and expansions of various types, while defending the single authorship of the Iliad, though without denying the contribution of oral tradition to the repertoire of the poet, the kernels of which lie in the Late Bronze Age and in some cases even earlier, in the Indo-European milieu. Furthermore, West emphasizes the need to consider the contemporary poetry that Homer might have drawn from, especially but not only that related to the Epic Cycle, to which he adds the influence of Near-Eastern literature. In other words, West appropriates the best of every modern theory in order to fashion a balanced proposal of how the Homeric poems took the shape they have.