Homer and the Heroic Tradition

What has been done in recent times in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology, and comparative oral literature, not to mention literary criticism itself, has put the whole Homeric problem in so new a light that now above all else the interested reader of Homer, whether he reads translations or the original, looks earnestly for a synoptic view, a framework by which he can shape his critical reactions within the bounds of rational and historical probability. What follows in the succeeding chapters is an attempt to formulate such a synoptic view, to bring together—for the first time, I believe—the results of modern specialized disciplines relating to Homeric studies and the kind of criticism which, twenty years ago, was called “New,” but which no, in modified forms, has become simply this era’s characteristic way of approaching such problems as imagery, action, and the poetic consciousness. —Cedric H. Whitman, from the Preface