Thursday, February 9, 2012

response post

via braden: My question is, what if Homer's Iliad and Odyssey had been written not thousands of years ago, but in this day and age? Disregarding that literature would be very different because of it, and assuming they were written as exactly the same pieces, how would we react? How would we react according to Hume's logic?
 If we're being completely literal here, I doubt the Odyssey would make it past the publishing desk. When we look at classic literature, we have to take its age into account. The era it was written in counts for a lot. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn has been criticized for containing racist language and ideas, but it was very progressive for its time and overturned some of the popular ideas about blacks. If someone brought the manuscript to a publisher today, the racism of Huck would probably slide, but Jim as the wise Negro might not go over. By a similar token, Homer's writing would probably not be accepted as-is. There's a reason we don't see many novels written in Elizabethan english on the market. It's not to say that some writers don't enjoy writing that way, but it's not publishable because the development of modern writing and language are part and parcel with the finished work. Conceptually, it is an excellent adventure story, but in a modern publishing house, Homer would probably be asked to submit a second draft. I don't think he would mind. The Odyssey was written to be memorized and shared, accessed by anyone. What that would mean in our time is language that is clear to us as a culture. Conventions have changed for some pretty good reasons. 
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)