Abstract

Abstract:This article interprets the abbé d’Aubignac’s 1715 Conjectures académiques, ou, Dissertation sur l’Iliade—the first text to posit the non-existence of Homer—in light of the Parisian literary underground of the mid-seventeenth century. It shows that the city’s nascent street culture influenced regimes of authorship and, ultimately, classical scholarship on Homer. In general, it argues for a history of scholarship in dialogue with the architecture of the cities where it took place.