Homer's Original Genius: Eighteenth-Century Notions of the Early Greek Epic (1688-1798)

The querelle des anciens et des modernes - the question whether writers should imitate the classics or use literary forms which seemed more suited to their own era - had been debated in Europe since the earliest days of the Renaissance. In seventeenth-century France, the modernist faction, led by Perrault, argued that a literary work owed its essential character to the prevailing social and cultural conditions; the more advanced the culture, the better its literature was likely to be. This reflected badly on classical writers since antiquity in this sense was manifestly inferior to contemporary France. It reflected particularly badly on Homer, since the great Homeric epics were seen as products of a primitive age. This book analyses the development of the querelle following the adoption of this theory, and also touches on a number of important incidental issues. Throughout, Dr Simonsuuri relates the development of ideas about Homer to developments in the fields of aesthetics, social theory and anthropology.