books17's review
3.0
Oh I forgot to review this.
Interesting book. I gather Finley was a life-long skeptic, and so World of Odysseus runs off the assumption that the Iliad and the Odyssey are for the most part myth, or at the very least so warped and elaborated by years upon years of oral storytelling that the historicity of the actual events is negligible.
There's an interesting example in the foreword of this edition where a few years after World War II, one of the few remaining true oral skalds in Crete was asked to tell the story of how the island was liberated - and the story told by the skald (a lot of it made up on the fly by the man, whole-cloth) was already inaccurate, 10 years from the events. What chance did Homer have, writing 500 years after the 'events'?
Regardless, the World of Odysseus focuses not on the plot of the poems, but on the world that they are set in - the society of an ancient Greece so long ago that there exists essentially no records of it. He explores what is believable in the poems by comparing to other societies in a similar time (i.e. gift-giving as a form of trade rather than benevolence). Interesting stuff, though a bit dry.
Finley himself seemed more than a little bit of a snippy wanker, to be honest. There are a couple of appendices in this edition, one of which is spent snarkily responding to a paper written disagreeing with the original publishing of World of Odysseus, and another explaining away the discoveries of the various Troy's as not being proof of the historicity of at least parts of the Iliad.
I enjoyed it, and I feel that I appreciate the poems more as a result of it - but I doubt I'll read it again.
Interesting book. I gather Finley was a life-long skeptic, and so World of Odysseus runs off the assumption that the Iliad and the Odyssey are for the most part myth, or at the very least so warped and elaborated by years upon years of oral storytelling that the historicity of the actual events is negligible.
There's an interesting example in the foreword of this edition where a few years after World War II, one of the few remaining true oral skalds in Crete was asked to tell the story of how the island was liberated - and the story told by the skald (a lot of it made up on the fly by the man, whole-cloth) was already inaccurate, 10 years from the events. What chance did Homer have, writing 500 years after the 'events'?
Regardless, the World of Odysseus focuses not on the plot of the poems, but on the world that they are set in - the society of an ancient Greece so long ago that there exists essentially no records of it. He explores what is believable in the poems by comparing to other societies in a similar time (i.e. gift-giving as a form of trade rather than benevolence). Interesting stuff, though a bit dry.
Finley himself seemed more than a little bit of a snippy wanker, to be honest. There are a couple of appendices in this edition, one of which is spent snarkily responding to a paper written disagreeing with the original publishing of World of Odysseus, and another explaining away the discoveries of the various Troy's as not being proof of the historicity of at least parts of the Iliad.
I enjoyed it, and I feel that I appreciate the poems more as a result of it - but I doubt I'll read it again.
kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review
3.0
Quite frankly, I don't know why anyone would see Homer as a good study of what was, but Finley's quasi rebuttal is packed full of data and insight.
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