Longman
in 1897. Butler incorporated a good deal of "The Humour of Homer"
into The Authoress of the "Odyssey," but the section relating to the
Iliad naturally found no place in the later work. For the sake of
this alone "The Humour of Homer" deserves to be better known.
Written as it was for an artisan audience and professing to deal
only with one side of Homer's genius, "The Humour of Homer" must
not, of course, be taken as an exhaustive statement of Butler's
views upon Homeric questions. It touches but lightly on important
points, particularly regarding the origin and authorship of the
Odyssey, which are treated at much greater length in The Authoress
of the "Odyssey."
Nevertheless, "The Humour of Homer" appears to me to have a special
value as a kind of general introduction to Butler's more detailed
study of the Odyssey. His attitude towards the Homeric poems is
here expressed with extraordinary freshness and force. What that
attitude was is best explained by his own words: "If a person would
understand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he must
never look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at the
living without thinking of the dead.
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