Iliad vs. Odyssey

So, I just finished the Odyssey for the first time. I enjoyed the Iliad, a ton, but the Odyssey for me was just something else. In my opinion it was much more "humane". I almost cried like a bitch in a few parts ( for some reason I found the blind poet (which I assume Homer inspired on himself) a very happly-sad character, the guy who took care of the pig and his story was also incredible, and the dog, the fucking dog ) but I also found the pacing to be better. Odysseus is also an amazing character.
So, which one do you prefer and why Veeky Forums?

The Aeneid

why?

iliad

Odyssey. I fucking hated Aquiles being a bitch all the time

The Odyssey probably has higher highs, but I think the Iliad is more consistent as far as quality goes.
About half of the parts before Odysseus gets home are super dope, but the other half are shit tier. It goes back and forth between good and boring so fast that it's hard to single out one specific part.
Most of his story of before he was trapped on the island is pretty monotonous.

Yes, I understand how it could seem monotonous. I was having a hard time reading it until I started listening to some lectures and I began to understand the reasons behind the "repetition". I think it is done in order to show the diferent ways and contrasts in which hospitality given.

Definitely, but it drags so hard. Fighting monsters and shitloads of people dying at sea and in other ways shouldn't be the most boring part of anything.

The Odyssey has a much more enthralling story and is singular character driven, while the Iliad is follows probably about 20 main characters and mentions about 300 different names.

I disagree user, but I understand. For me the most boring part in the two epics was in the Iliad. After Hector dies everything becomes really slow.

>the one that's not about reckless slaughter and people being made into things by force is much more "humane"
Whew lad you publishing your analysis soon?

I prefer the Odyssey because it's more about human wisdom and it even looks like a more mature poem. But the Iliad has some pretty cool parts like that one where Diomedes literally kills everyone

The Odyssey. Not a single part of the story was boring for me.

>implying humane means morally good

>but I also found the pacing to be better.

This seems insane to me, the pacing after he arrives at Ithake is a catastrophe.

Well, I can understand how someone could see it like that. But, unlike the last part of the iliad, in the odyssey I was so engaged with the character's story's that the last parts where, for me, the some of the most emotional and interesting

This

I think the Iliad is far better. Also there's no way they're by the same poet. The Iliad has this universal perspective, like Homer is sitting on a second Olympus looking down on the Gods. I don't see any of that in the Odyssey.

The most noble and sympathetic character is Hector, the enemy of the Greeks! Can you imagine if the most sympathetic character in War & Peace was a Frenchman? Tolstoy was completely incapable of looking at the world from that kind of perspective. Homer is the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. The fires on the beach look like stars to him because that's the perspective he sees them from.

The themes are similarly weighty and universal: mortality, the cycles of nature and our part in them, the relation of individuals to the morality of their society. The Odyssey is lightweight in comparison.

And despite this "detached" perspective there are powerful human, psychological moments: the meeting on the wall before going out to combat, Priam supplicating himself to the man who killed his son, etc.

I could go on about the structure, the speeches, the raw brutality of the combat...

The Odyssey OTOH is whiny, moralistic, obsessed with Zeus' justice and making men subservient to it. The suitors are thin types lacking real characterization. There are some great moments (my favorite is Odysseus waking up on the island of the Phaeacians) but overall it's weak. The climax of the slaughter of the suitors is particularly disappointing, as it fails to live up even to a routine aristeia from the Iliad.

I think it's still very interesting after he dies, but I get what you mean.

>The fires on the beach look like stars to him because that's the perspective he sees them from.
I fucking love this

Don't get me wrong, I think the Iliad is incredible, and I like your idea of Homer's perspective. I think that the the epics where made by the same guy and that you missed some of the subtleties that are sprinkled trough the Odyssey. My favorite is the fact that when greeks give one another "hospitality" (I don't remember the greek word for it), the quality should be mirrored by your "rank" (so a begger would get a begger's hospitality, a king a king's one, and so on). This makes the guy who takes care of the pig's part extra special; on the surface ita a slave giving a begger hospitality, but when we learn the pig caretaker's past, everything changes; it becomes a king's son (he was kidnapped and sold) giving a king (Odysseus in disguise) hospitality. There are many thing like this on the Odyssey. This is why I loved it.

But why would the change of perspective have anything to do eith the autorship. I think it was made that way because otherwise a war story with hundreds of characters would be harder to tell and also the narrative of the Odyssey lends itself to be more personal

this

However, many philologists agree that Homer never existed as a single poet who composed the whole poems. They sustain that both the Iliad and the Odyssey were a collection of various parts composed by different poets.

Like War and peace and Anna Karenina.

Nobody thinks that any more.

Oh? How? Why? What do people think now?

The whole unitarian vs analyst debate was killed by Parry who showed how oral composition of epic poetry works.

In middle school we had some dude come in and recite the Illiad over the course of several days. The Illiad is so much better as a spoken story

That didn't end the argument either way, has their been any reason developments in the Homer debate or have you just read the introduction to Robert Fagle's translation?

That sounds amazing, I've never tought of going to see it recited. Tell us about the experience. I wish my school did that.

recent developments*

not him but Ong expands upon it briefly in Orality and Literacy and creates a very convincing picture of the oral poet and his psychodynamics. It is much more likely, as shown by Parry among others, that the poems were orally recited -having been composed from a long tradition of oral recitations - and simply transposed into the written form.

literally a propaganda piece ripped off from the odyssey

although the carthage bit is pretty good