Canonising and Decanonising Homer: Reception of the Homeric Poems in Antiquity and Modernity

Abstract

The Iliad and the Odyssey functioned in antiquity not merely as literary texts, but as literary texts that were highly privileged in the civilisation to which they belonged - in this respect, their status was closer to the status of the Bible and similar ancient corpora than to that of other works of literature produced in ancient Greece. This chapter argues that why this attitude did not last into the modern period is that, in the case of Homer. Although it is generally taken for granted that in antiquity the Homeric poems enjoyed the status of canonical texts, their canonicity is usually approached in terms of the Greek literary canon. The chapter outlines the reasons why the author believes that it would be more profitable to approach Homer's status in antiquity against the background of canonical texts of other civilisations rather than that of the ancient Greek literary canon. Keywords:Bible; canonical text; civilisations; Greek literary canon; Homeric poems

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