Beowulf on the Beach
What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits
Homer
(c. 900 b.c.)
The Iliad
Because the gods of irony still rule the firmament, Homer happens to be the name of both the pater familias Simpson, cartoon mainstay of the living room box, and the acknowledged father of Western literature, oft called greatest writer of all time. Origins are a funny thing, of course, and while we point all our literature back to Homer, we neither know the exact time when he wrote (most modern scholars think between the 10th and 8th century b.c.) nor even whether the same person necessarily wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey (the latter of which is sometimes argued to have been written by a woman). Then there's the fact that this other guy named Hesiod might be even older than Homer and wrote a book called the Theogony where, among other things, the world is created and the gods come to be--one from hacked-off genitals floating in the ocean. You can see why most people prefer to leave him out of the conversation... .
But somehow or other, Western literature got itself going, whether by Homer, Hesiod, or someone else ...
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