#trifunctionalismus

(If you'd prefer not to answer publicly, please ignore this!)

I never said I wasn't going to answer publicly.

It's an interesting question, although I have a "lapsed rationalist" bias that makes me feel like I shouldn't get into it, except I really really really like thinking about it and I keep coming back to it. I don't have any expertise or background on the matter, so I'm definitely not going to say anything that seems very plausible to me but wrong to someone else with a background in this field, or vice versa (even though "plausible and wrong" covers a very wide spectrum).

I have a bit about how the history of ancient Greek poetry, written or not, is probably best understood as a history of oral performances (of sorts) which people in the community kept coming up with new versions of. That, coupled with the fragmentary nature of our knowledge, is the story I want to tell, anyway.

I'd also like to draw a distinction here between the ancient, "historical" Homer (if that's a useful concept) and the Homer (or Homer-like figures) of various traditions/libraries. It's the latter, not the former, that was written down. And it's the former that had the kind of influence on the way we conceive of the latter today that makes it possible to call it "the Homer we know."