The subject of the research essay is the 2400 years of interest in The Iliad by Homer. The Iliad by Homer is regarded as foundational in literature. Plato’s critique that everything proceeding from Homer is but the crumbs of Homer continues, echoed by the modern intelligentsia.
Homer has been a gateway to Greek Literature for centuries. Due to the high placement of Homer historically, and the Classical education movement, a knowledge of Greek, Homer, and Latin has become considered the epitome of education. The Iliad’s adoption into the institution of education has placed it into tradition. In his book on the history of Western education, Edward J. Power stated that Hellenistic education followed a familiar cultural doctrine, prioritising …show more content…
In Professor Victor Davis Hanson and Professor John Heath’s joint essay: Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, The Professors lament that; "the Greeks who started it all are so little known in modern America" (Hanson and Heath, 1998). However, as Belsky pointed out in his essay; The Poet Who Sings Through Us: Homer's Influence in Contemporary Western Culture, the criticism of Hanson and Heath mainly concern the method used to teach …show more content…
As such, Alice Oswald’s, 2011, commentary on The Iliad; Memories, which focused on much the same aspect, was likely (in part) inspired by Weil. Memories is a rewritten Iliad; it doesn’t include many of the main characters, instead, it acts to memorialise the 200 soldiers who died in The Iliad – Oswald remembers the footsoldiers as heroes. Oswald said in an interview with the Guardian that she found the representation of war in The Iliad frightening in its realism: it transfixed her, kept her up at night, filled her with a melancholy – a sticking point of The Iliad (Crown, 2011). Alice Oswald lamented that The Iliad has been turned into a public-school poem that glamorises war, she only takes refuge in the beautiful, poignant similes and imagery (Crown, 2011). The imagery in The Iliad is the most aesthetically pleasing element of the text. Their unique beauty could account for the ongoing interest in The Iliad; their pleasing juxtaposition of the brutality of war and domestic, natural scenes. The following are excerpts from The Iliad, demonstrating this key feature of The
Homer has been a gateway to Greek Literature for centuries. Due to the high placement of Homer historically, and the Classical education movement, a knowledge of Greek, Homer, and Latin has become considered the epitome of education. The Iliad’s adoption into the institution of education has placed it into tradition. In his book on the history of Western education, Edward J. Power stated that Hellenistic education followed a familiar cultural doctrine, prioritising …show more content…
In Professor Victor Davis Hanson and Professor John Heath’s joint essay: Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, The Professors lament that; "the Greeks who started it all are so little known in modern America" (Hanson and Heath, 1998). However, as Belsky pointed out in his essay; The Poet Who Sings Through Us: Homer's Influence in Contemporary Western Culture, the criticism of Hanson and Heath mainly concern the method used to teach …show more content…
As such, Alice Oswald’s, 2011, commentary on The Iliad; Memories, which focused on much the same aspect, was likely (in part) inspired by Weil. Memories is a rewritten Iliad; it doesn’t include many of the main characters, instead, it acts to memorialise the 200 soldiers who died in The Iliad – Oswald remembers the footsoldiers as heroes. Oswald said in an interview with the Guardian that she found the representation of war in The Iliad frightening in its realism: it transfixed her, kept her up at night, filled her with a melancholy – a sticking point of The Iliad (Crown, 2011). Alice Oswald lamented that The Iliad has been turned into a public-school poem that glamorises war, she only takes refuge in the beautiful, poignant similes and imagery (Crown, 2011). The imagery in The Iliad is the most aesthetically pleasing element of the text. Their unique beauty could account for the ongoing interest in The Iliad; their pleasing juxtaposition of the brutality of war and domestic, natural scenes. The following are excerpts from The Iliad, demonstrating this key feature of The