Homeric Scholarship - Recent Developments

Recent Developments

The dating of the Homeric epics continues to be a controversial topic. The most influential work in this area in the last few decades is that of Richard Janko, whose 1982 study Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns uses statistics based on a range of dialectal pointers to argue that the text of both epics became fixed in the latter half of the 8th century, though he has since argued for an even earlier date. There is no shortage of alternative datings, however, based on other kinds of evidence (literary, philological, archaeological, and artistic), ranging from the 9th century to as late as 550 BCE (Nagy suggests in a 1992 paper that the text's "formative" period lasted until 550). At present most Homeric scholars opt for the late 8th or early 7th century, and a date of 730 BCE is often quoted for the Iliad.

Since the 1970s, Homeric interpretation has been increasingly influenced by literary theory, especially in literary readings of the Odyssey. Post-structuralist semiotic approaches have been represented in the work of Pietro Pucci (Odysseus Polytropos, 1987) and Marylin Katz (Penelope's Renown, 1991), for example.

Perhaps the most significant developments have been in narratology, the study of how storytelling works, since this combines empirical linguistic study with literary criticism. Irene de Jong's 1987 Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad draws on the work of the theorist Mieke Bal, and de Jong followed this up in 2001 with her Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey; Bakker has published several linguistic-narratological studies, especially his 1997 Poetry as Speech; and Elizabeth Minchin's 2001 Homer and the Resources of Memory draws on several forms of narratology and cognitive science, such as the script theory developed in the 1970s by Roger Schank and Robert Abelson.