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I deliberatley chose a controversial statement to draw people in, and it worked!
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it read that giant post.
I deliberatley chose a controversial statement to draw people in, and it worked!
Considering how these stories flourish independently of each other, then and now, I agree it's difficult to say when literature "began". Even pinpointing such a nebulous concept of "modern" literature is tenuous, at best.I think this opinion takes a narrow view of the world origins of story telling. Ancient Homeric texts influenced WESTERN story tellers, most certainly, but what about ancient stories from China and Japan. There are ancient stories all over the world that arose independent of European influenced stories. What about the stories of the tribes of Africa, or the Maori, the Cree?
Literature begins and ends with humans having stories to tell to each other. That is all.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it read that giant post.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it read that giant post.
.
Western literature certainly began with Homer
Gee, I would say that literature began long before Homer and hasn't ended yet.
The oldest complete ms. of the Illiad dates from the tenth century (Venetus A or Marciano Gr. Z. 454 [= 822); that's the same as the date for the ms. of Beowulf, and a number of Irish texts, too.
Medieval monks had a knack for butchering the pagan texts to fit in with their own beliefs, and the Iliads sex and paganist overtones are still pretty overt.
I thought that was Ben Franklin
in some ways, though, even if Homer had been an atrocious author literature would've still begun and ended with him for the simple fact that he was "the first." Life is rich in detail, but short in substance, ultimately leaving very little to be said about it.