The Authoress of the Odyssey
Review of the book by Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler (1835–1902), author of The Way of All Flesh and translator (to prose) of The Iliad and The Odyssey, believed that The Odyssey was written by a young woman. This is his argument in defense of that theory.
This book feels like the books that try to prove that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays.
He points out many anomalies and unexpected details in The Odyssey. But his “evidence” is a matter of speculating that a man wouldn’t have described a certain scene that way or wouldn’t have repeatedly given precedence to women rather than men.
The discussion is amusing, but not convincing.
He then makes the far weaker claim that the woman author lived in a particular town in Sicily (Tapani), and that the descriptions of both Scheria (Phaeacia) and Ithaca are based on her knowledge of Trapani, and that she wrote before 1000 BC.
Only a true lover of Homers’ work would read this entire book. But such a person would enjoy it, as I did.
