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"Homer's Daughter is Robert Graves' novel of the girl, Nausicaa, a character in the Odyssey, who Graves believed was a its true author (not the blind and bearded Homer, whose Iliad was composed at least 150 years before.... ). That Homer did not write the Odyssey continues to be a bold historical and literary claim. Add to it Graves's protofeminist heroine, and a radical modern classic is born. In his Historical Note, Graves says the novel "re-creates, from internal and external evidence, the circumstances which induced Nausicaa to write the Odyssey, and suggest how, as an honorary Daughter of Homer, she managed to get it included in the official canon. "Here is the story of a high-spirited and religious-minded Sicilian girl who saves her father's throne from usurpation, herself from a distasteful marriage, and her two younger brothers from butchery by boldly making things happen, instead of sitting still and hoping for the best." Seven Stories' Robert Graves Project spans 14 titles, and includes fiction and nonfiction, adult, young adult and children's books, in a striking new uniform design, with new introductions and afterwords. Homer's Daughter joins our recent re-publication of The Reader Over Your Shoulder and Ann at Highwood Hall on our Triangle Square Books for Young Readers list. Among the works still to come are Count Belisarius, Hebrew Myths, and Lawrence and the Arabs. The online partner for the Robert Graves Project is RosettaBooks"--… (more)
User reviews
The idea was not a new one. Samuel Butler, a noted translator of both epics, wrote The Authoress of The Odyssey in 1897
The tale is told in the first person by a young Sicilian Princess who is unusually literate and who tells of a family episode which will seem very familiar to readers of The Odyssey. She is Homer's daughter only in the literary sense as the bards of ancient times called themselves "Sons of Homer" to identify themselves as members of an exclusive brotherhood. Since women were barred from any such undertaking as singing the lays of Homer — much less writing them — a certain amount of subterfuge was required to get the local minstrel to sing her epic poem at the palace, around Sicily and then convey it to Delos, the home of Homeric bards.
If you haven't actually read Homer, the pleasures of this novel may not be fully appreciated. They pretty much went sailing right over my own head the first time I read it without benefit of having the two epics under my belt. In effect, Homer's Daughter purports to give an inside look at how the adventures of Odysseus might have been created out of a few rather dramatic palace intrigues that found their way into the new poem about the return of Odysseus.
The mists of time have clouded our real understanding of who, when and where Homer was, so the basis for this novel may be criticized but cannot be absolutely refuted. The differences between the two Homeric epics are so striking that one can easily believe they came from different sources. And it would not be surprising if The Odyssey had indeed been written by a woman.
Homer's Daughter is a very clever novel by one of the prominent Greek scholars of the mid twentieth century. Readers who have enjoyed the ancient classics will also enjoy Graves' novel.