Odysseus Unbound - The Transmission of Texts

The Transmission of Texts

One of the great mysteries of Homeric scholarship, too, has been how Homer — whoever he was, or whoever "they" were — living in the Aegean in what now is western Turkey, where he/they are said to have lived, might have acquired such detailed knowledge of "Ithaca" / Paliki as appears in his Odyssey. The suggestion made in the study is that folk-tales of the "Ithacans" containing detailed references to the landscape were carried by them, during their Greek Dark Ages migrations during the time-of-troubles which followed the Mycenean / Trojan war period, to the Greek mainland and from there to western Anatolia. At that final resting place for the migration of the Ionians, then, roving bards of the type described by Milman Parry picked up the "Ithacan" tales, perhaps, and wove them together into the Odyssey: for the entertainment and edification of audiences who knew Paliki well, and initially were very homesick, and longed for it.