HOMER AND HIS POETIC MEDIUM

The Iliad and Odyssey

According to ancient tradition, a poetic genius by the name of Homer from somewhere in the region of Ionia, and blind by many accounts, composed both the Iliad and Odyssey. Some sources assign his activity to the period of the fall of Troy (dated in antiquity to the twelfth century), others to some 500 years afterwards. The poet was credited with a variety of compositions, and Herodotus is the first extant author to mention either the Iliad or Odyssey by name. Modern scholars have variously rejected, altered and refined these heterogeneous ancient views. There is now reasonable consensus that the two poems are the products of a tradition of oral hexameter poetry developed over the course of the Dark Ages and reaching back to Mycenaean times. The Iliad and the Odyssey as we have them were composed in the period of the eighth to the early seventh century, quite plausibly in Smyrna or Chios, where the ancient biographical tradition records the poet's presence. ‘Homer’ himself and his authorship of two epic poems may be nothing more than a fiction that originated some time after the works' composition. According to one modern reconstruction, the corporation of rhapsodes from Chios, the Homeridae whose role it was to perform the Homeric epics and who are first visible in the second half of the sixth century, would retrospectively have created ‘Homer’ as putative ancestor to their ‘guild’.

Each helping verb is actually a two-part package. There's the helping verb itself, and then there's the effect that the helping verb has on the verb that follows it.

Look at the sentences below. In each of them, the helping verb is a form of progressive be (underlined). What effect does progressive be have on the verb that follows it?

1. The children were working hard.

2. I am considering a new job offer.

3. Nothing was limiting his development.

4. Many new advances are emerging.

5. Sam is watching his favorite TV show.

You can see that the verb after the form of be always has -ing added to its base. This -ing form of the verb is referred to as the present participle in traditional grammar.

Test yourself 36.1

Each of the following sentences has a form of the helping verb be. Underline the be verb and the -ing ending of the following verb.

What are some sentences with helping (auxiliary) verbs? Here are a few examples, with the helping verb underlined:

1. She should study.

2. She has studied.

3. She is studying.

In these sentences, the main verb is a form of study, and the helping verb is helping to give us additional information that we can't get from just the main verb. (See Unit 2 to remind yourself about main verbs.)

There aren't that many helping verbs; the basic ones are listed in Quick tip 31.1.

Now take another look at sentences 1–3, which have both a helping verb and a main verb. Which comes first? You can see that the main verb always comes after the helping verb.

Does every sentence of English have a helping verb? Here are examples of sentences that do not have a helping verb. Each only has a main verb, which is underlined.

1. 4. She studies every day.

2. 5. She studied every day.

3. 6. He leaves at 9 in the morning.

4. 7. He left at 9 in the morning.

The following are all positive sentences:

1. 1. I will think about it.

2. 2. Timothy has called her.

3. 3. The teacher was listening.

Can you turn them into negative sentences, using the word not? The related negative sentences are:

1. 4. I will not think about it.

2. 5. Timothy has not called her.

3. 6. The teacher was not listening.

(Of course, native speakers often put not in contractions, saying, for example, I won't think about it instead of I will not think about it; we will not be focusing on the contractions in our discussion here.)

No native speaker of English would make the negative sentence something like, *I will think about not it. That's because there's a systematic relationship between positive and negative sentences, even though they don't have the same meaning. We're not usually consciously thinking about how to make a sentence negative, but we know how to do it, and we do it in a consistent way.

Can you figure out exactly where you put not in a sentence when you make it negative?

Here are some negative sentences, with not underlined and the helping verb in bold. (See Lesson 31 for a reminder about helping verbs.)

Do you shudder when you hear the words noun or verb? Don't worry — you already know all about word categories, also known as parts of speech, though you may not think you do. You know, for example, that you can say the idea and the boy but not *the about or *happy the. (As stated in the How to use this book section, an asterisk [*] is used to indicate that something is ungrammatical.) That is, you know that some words can go in some places in a sentence and others can't. A word category, or part of speech, is just a name given to a group of words that have something in common, such as where they can go in a sentence. Part I gives you a quick and easy guide to basic word categories.

Test yourself 43.1

1. They had walked for miles and miles.

2. Henry felt guilt and shame for what he had done.

3. Vermont has lots of old houses and rustic barns.

4. The young bride is going shopping with her mother or mother-in-law.

5. Paying for gas and electricity costs a lot more this year than last.

Test yourself 44.1

1. They often call each other and talk all afternoon.

2. Adam wrote letters to the company and spoke to their representatives.

3. He invented the product but lost money in the process.

4. Stephen flew to Europe and visited his childhood friend.

5. I received your message yesterday but couldn't respond to it immediately.

Test yourself 44.2

1. The horse stepped back and rolled its eyes.

2. Amanda is wearing long sleeves but carrying a parasol.

3. When Kathy and her daughter travel to Boston, they always visit Harvard and MIT.

4. On Sundays Mr. Adams and his neighbor play golf and have lunch in the clubhouse.

5. He loves to cook and entertain.

Remember the sentence, The little boy laughed? As we talked about earlier, The little boy is a noun phrase (see Lesson 28) and laughed is a verb phrase. There are different kinds of verb phrases, and we can begin to discover them by seeing what we can substitute for the verb phrase, laughed, in this sentence. The underlined portions of the sentences below are all verb phrases, and any one of them can replace laughed in the sentence, The little boy laughed.

1. The little boy left.

2. The little boy chased the ball.

3. The little boy chased the red ball.

4. The little boy chased it.

5. The little boy chased Henry.

Of course, there are lots of things that cannot replace laughed in this sentence, for example:

1. 6. *The little boy his extremely.

2. 7. *The little boy near from.

3. 8. *The little boy they.

You're probably not surprised to learn that his extremely, near from, and they are not verb phrases.

Have you noticed anything that all the underlined verb phrases in sentences 1–5 have in common? Each verb phrase has a verb. In fact, in sentence 1, the verb phrase has nothing in it but a verb, left. A verb phrase may also have other words, as you can see in sentences 2–5, but the least that every verb phrase has to have is a verb. (See Unit 2 to remind yourself about verbs.)