Homer and the Odyssey

We have researched about Homer and the odyssey in class.

Homer:

• Homer is best known as the author of the Odyssey.

• He was believed by the ancient Greeks to have been the first and greatest of the epic poets.

• Author of the first known literature of Europe, he is central to the Western canon.

• The Iliad and The Odyssey are the two most famous poems he wrote.

• Aristotle(a Greek philosopher) remarks in his Poetics that Homer was unique among the poets of his time, focusing on a single unified theme or action in the epic cycle.

Odyssey:

• Is a noun that means a long wandering and eventful journey

• Ever since Homer's epic poem The Odyssey told the story of warrior Odysseus' ten-year journey home from Troy, odyssey has meant any epic journey.

• Odyssey has both a literal meaning and a figurative one.

• The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer.

• It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second oldest extant work of Western literature, the Iliad being the oldest.

• Scholars believe it was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.