Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics

Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics is Rhys Carpenter’s classic exploration of the oral traditions behind the Iliad and the Odyssey. Delivered as part of the Sather Classical Lectures, this work interrogates the relationship between saga, folklore, and literary invention in Homeric poetry. Carpenter argues that the epics are not merely records of historical events, nor pure fabrications, but rather complex compositions where oral traditions—heroic saga, folk tales, fairy motif...