SOURCE: "The Odyssey and Change," in Homer and the Heroic Tradition, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. 285-309.

An American classics scholar specializing in Greek literature, Whitman is highly esteemed as a Homer critic. In the following essay, he explores some societal and artistic changes that took place between the time of the Iliad and that of the Odyssey, and notes how these changes are reflected in the latter work.

A study of Homer oriented … through the Iliad is bound to differ widely from one whose focus is primarily the Odyssey. For all their identity of style, the contrast between the two poems is vast and obvious, and it is unnecessary to recall the numerous statements of their difference, from Aristotle's "passionate" versus "ethical," to more recent formulations such as "tragic" versus "comic," or "Aeolic" versus "Ionic." As to the last, there is certainly nothing Aeolic about the...