Michael Smith wrote:
>
> The Odyssey is a whole 'nother can of worms, of course, but there
> the argument for unitary authorship seems even stronger than it
> is for the Iliad. Quite likely there was an oral "Odysseus cycle"
> too, but if so, in the Odyssey the redactor/author has taken
> matters even more firmly in hand than he or his colleague was able
> or inclined to do in the case of the Iliad.
Someone back in the '50s (perhaps Douglas Bush) observed that in western literature there was a steady tendency for the "matter" and the "subjec" of poems to grow further and further apart, and this seems to have begun almost with the distance between Odyssey and Iliad. The "wrath of Achilles" is both the matter AND the real subject of the Iliad. But the "homecoming of Odysseus" seems somehow more of a vehicle for other concerns. Athena's interest in aiding Odysseus is really quite different from the interest of the various gods, including her, to aid their favorites in the Iliad.
Incidentally, someplace or other Conrad, speaking of his own writing, said that he tried to give readers NOT new things to see but new eyes to see with. He's never been all that important a writer for me, but I'm pretty sure his intention in Heart had nothing to do with getting the truth of Leopold in Africa. Whatever else is riht or wrong in Michael's analysis, he's wrong on that.
Carrol