What type of literature is The Iliad and The Odyssey?

Answer 1

The Iliad and The Odyssey are both Epics.

Other examples of Epic poetry include the Aeneid, the Thebais, Tasso's Gierusallemme Liberata, and Milton's Paradise Lost.

Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King are also probably epics - but there is some debate around those poems.

Answer 2

One definition of literature is: "written material such as poetry, novels, essays, etc, especially works of imagination characterized by excellence of style and expression and by themes of general or enduring interest". The Iliad conforms to this definition in many ways.

The Iliad is first of all a poem, and a very great one too. It introduced figures of style that still are being used today, like the 'Homeric simile'. When read out loud (as I and my classmates were made to do during three years of ancient Greek lessons at school) the beautiful rhythm of the poem is one of its striking features. It is a 'work of imagination' as well: whatever Troy 'discoverer' Heinrich Schliemann and the Turkish Tourist Board may say, the story of the ten-year siege of a city called Troy and the doings of all the Greek heroes gathered there is - if not completely - at least for 99% made up. That it has a high level of excellence is doubted by no-one and it is one of the extremely rare cases of an epic poem that is still widely read, translated and admired some 2,900 years after it was written.

Answer 3

The Iliad is an epic poem. More specifically, it is a Primary Epic which means it stems from oral tradition.

Answer 4

The Iliad is an epic poem, probably by Homer, that describes the events of the Trojan war.

Answer 5

a book