IXe century before J. - C. (?)
Imaginary portrait of Homère
Homère in Homêros Greek. The Old ones allotted the writing of Iliade and the Odyssey to a Greek of Asia Mineure named Homère, which would have been expressed in Ionian dialect. According to Hérodote, he would have lived in IXe century before J. - C., and seven cities (Tap-hole, Smyrna, Colophon, in particular) were glorified to have seen it being born.
One can regard as a symbol the tradition which makes of him a blind man: to deprive isn't the father of the poetry of the external glance, to equip it with the interior glance, turned towards the world of the spirit and the beauty?
The Homeric question
Iliade would be an early work, the Odyssey a work of the ripe age. But one knows neither where nor when was born and died Homère. It seems only that the world of Iliade is older still than the world evoked by the Odyssey, the VIII E century and the beginning of the VII E century before J. - C. being the periods respectively appointed for the composition of the two poems. But the modern ones dispute that their author could be single and hold Homère for a aède: halfway between recitation and creation, it would have combined preexistent topics.
Homeric matter
Transmitted orally, the “Homeric matter” would thus constitute the memory of four or five centuries. In the formulas, the repetitions of worms, whole groups of worms testify which return each time the same situation arises: challenge, preparation of a hero to the combat, meal, daybreak, fallen the night. Epithets of quality, recurring expressions weave the text, of “Achilles to the light feet” and of “Ulysses to the thousand turns” with “Nausicaa with the white arms” and “the goddess with the sea-green eyes”, Athéna.
As many means to memorize thousands of worms, while adapting and even while inventing, undoubtedly starting from a former epic tradition: in other words, Iliade and the Odyssey did not leave the only imagination of Homère, even if their composition and their unit made it possible to suppose that a single author had built them. Thus the “Homeric question” divided “unit” the, in favor ones of the assumption of only one creator, and the “analysts”, who support on the contrary that the two poems carry many traces of a development prolonged over several years. Today, it is admitted that, even if the Homeric epopee has a multiple past, there were well assimilation and lucid development of only one aède.