ulysse-le-trajet-atlantique-de-l-odyssee

The Iliad and the Odyssey

Reminder of the origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey

The Iliad recounts the end of the Trojan War, which was triggered by a news item:

(The musician Offenbach commemorated the event with music).

Helen, wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, was kidnapped by Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy; suddenly, Menelaus went to Troy to recover his wife, with the help of the Achaean kings (the current Greeks). The war lasted ten years.

Odysseus, one of the Achaeans, allows the capture of the city thanks to the famous "Trojan Horse", then, the war over, undertakes to return to his homes.

He will be prevented from doing so by the gods for ten years. This wandering is told in the Odyssey.

The study of the Iliad by Schliemann, a German archaeologist, has led to the discovery of the site of Troy.

... Let's take a closer look at the Odyssey of Ulysses

It is not known whether Homer actually existed. But he is credited with writing the poems of the Illiad and the Odyssey, which have previously been sung by the Aèdes for centuries.

Literary interpretation of the Odyssey

According to the literary ones, the Odyssey would have no real basis.

They speak of the fabulation proper to the epic composition. They study the texts to identify "poetically effective" combinations.

"Homer has picked up everywhere", says Pierre Vidal-Naquet (In "Les collections de l'histoire" N° 24, July-September 2004)

Luc Ferry, the philosopher and former minister, speaks of the Odyssey as a "dreamed geography" in the journal Science et Avenir of July/August 2017)

According to them, it would therefore be a totally artificial creation.

L’Odyssée

If we think, unlike the literary ones, that the Odyssey tells more or less a concrete reality, as Schliemann did for the Illiad, it is interesting to try to find the places where the action took place.