An Introduction to the Humanities and Homer's Iliad

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An Introduction to the Humanities  

 Humanities is the study of how humans "[create] meaning through their thoughts, their actions, and their creations" ( Handbook, Pan, pg 5). This definition , as you can see, is a by-the-book definition and when I first read it had little meaning for me. This was troublesome for me at the time since at this point in my collegiate career I was only a Criminology major and considering the addition of another  major (English) which fell under the School of Humanities. 

Soon afterwards, the Humanities was explained to me by discussion leader as "the study of qualitative date versus the compilation of quantitative data" ( Dickmeyer). In other words: the Humanities concerns itself less with compilation of numbers and instead focus the brunt of its powers to the interpretation of texts and artifacts that allows us to peer into a culture, or time period that is or has existed at a different time than ours and allows to extract what is relevant to our society, culture, time period.   

With this idea of the Humanities in mind, I knew had made a good choice for myself in signing up for the Humanities Core Course. 

An Introduction Into the Iliad 

Cover design above is credited

 to Gail Belenson.  This translation

of the Iliad is by Robert Fagles. 

The first work assigned in this Humanities course was Homer's The Iliad. Having read one of Homer's other works, The Odyssey, I was excited and had an idea of what to expect concerning language and form.  

For those of you who are not acquainted with Homer, his poems fall under the genre of the Epic.

Elements that identify an epic poem  include:

1. "a long narrative poem of heroic action
2. written with the use of elevated language 
3. has foundational significance for the culture in which it originates from " ( Izenberg). 

The Iliad is a text that is over three thousand years old. Its original language, Ancient Homeric Greek, is now identified as a "dead language." 

Homer's Iliad, as it has been handed down to us in its current form through many translations, is an epic about the ninth year of a ten year war between the Trojans and the Greeks. The spark that ignited such a costly war was the Trojan Prince Paris' abduction of a Greek woman named Helen. Helen was a lavishly beautiful woman who was the wife of Menelaus , "the younger king of Mycenaean Sparta" (Wikipedia). The main story of The Iliad, however, is not the start of the war but rather nearer to its finish and the conflict that arises between two Greeks, Achilles and Agamemnon, and how their actions or lack of action affect the war effort. 

My own thoughts into the work are as follows:

• How much content was lost or retained during all of the many translation there are for the Iliad?
• Why focus on the spat between two Greek warriors when the war is between the Greek and Trojan people?

Until next time, think like a Humanist! 

Works Cited

Fagles, Robert, trans. The Iliad. By Homer. Penguins Books: New York, 1990

Pan, David. "What are the Humanities?" Ed. Larisa Castillo. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014. 

Izenberg, Oren. "Humanities Core Lecture" The Iliad and the Meaning of the Humanities. Biological Sciences III, Lectural Hall 1200, University of California, Irvine. 28 September 2015.  

Dickmeyer, Laurie. "Humanities Core Seminar". Donald Bren Hall, Room 1429, University of California, Irvine. 28 September 2015.