The Authoress of the Odyssey - Where and When She Wrote, Who She Was, the Use She Made of the Illiad, and How the Poem Grew Under her Hands

Samuel Butler

Forgotten Books

2008

285 páginas

9h 30m

ISBN-10: 1606201638

Today it is obvious to all but the most tradition-bound that women can achieve anything that men can. This was not so obvious in the last decade of the 19th century when Samuel Butler, a maverick classicist, proposed this unique theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman. This was, to say the least, a shocking proposal for his contemporaries. Aside from the perceived diminution of the role of 'Homer,' this was too far outside the box for most scholars. At the time Butler wrote, women couldn't vote or own property in many industrialized countries, and some female authors adopted male pseudonyms to get published. Biology was considered a limiting factor for the female sex, and historic contributions of women were ignored.