Homer's Literary Legacy Reading Answers
Homer's Literary Legacy Reading Answers contains 13 questions, that have to be answered in 20 minutes. Homer's Literary Legacy IELTS Reading Answers comprises two types of questions, namely- choose the correct answer, two words, and one-word answer. For choosing the correct answer, candidates need to skim the passage for keywords, understand the concept and choose the appropriate answer. For two words and one-word answers, candidates must read the IELTS reading passage, identify keywords, and recognize synonyms to answer the question.
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Section 1
Read the Passage to Answer the Following Questions
Homer's Literary Legacy Reading Answers
Why was the work of Homer, famous author of ancient Greece, so full of clichés?
- Until the last tick of history’s clock, cultural transmission meant oral transmission, and poetry, passed from mouth to ear, was the principal medium of moving information across space and from one generation to the next. Oral poetry was not simply a way of telling lovely or important stories, or of flexing the imagination. It was, argues the classicist Eric Havelock, a ‘massive repository of useful knowledge, a sort of encyclopedia of ethics, politics, history and technology which the effective citizen was required to learn as the core of his educational equipment’. The great oral works transmitted a shared cultural heritage, held in common not on bookshelves, but in brains. In India, an entire class of priests was charged with memorizing the Vedas with perfect fidelity. In pre-Islamic Arabia, people known as Rawis were often attached to poets as official memorizers. The Buddha’s teachings were passed down in an unbroken chain of oral tradition for four centuries until they were committed to writing in Sri Lanka in the first century B.C.
- The most famous of the Western tradition’s oral works, and the first to have been systematically studied, were Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad. These two poems – possibly the first to have been written down in the Greek alphabet – had long been held up as literary archetypes. However, even as they were celebrated as the models to which all literature should aspire, Homer’s masterworks had also long been the source of scholarly unease. The earliest modern critics sensed that they were somehow qualitatively different from everything that came after – even a little strange. For one thing, both poems were oddly repetitive in the way they referred to characters. Odysseus was always ’clever Odysseus’. Dawn was always ‘rosy-fingered’. Why would someone write that? Sometimes the epithets seemed completely off-key. Why call the murderer of Agamemnon ‘blameless Aegisthos’? Why refer to ‘swift-footed Achilles’ even when he was sitting down? Or to ‘laughing Aphrodite’ even when she was in tears? In terms of both structure and theme, the Odyssey and Iliad were also oddly formulaic, to the point of predictability. The same narrative units – gathering armies, heroic shields, challenges between rivals – pop up again and again, only with different characters and different circumstances. In the context of such finely spun, deliberate masterpieces, these quirks seemed hard to explain.
- At the heart of the unease about these earliest works of literature were two fundamental questions: first, how could Greek literature have been born out of nothing with two masterpieces? Surely a few less perfect stories must have come before, and yet these two were among the first on record. And second, who exactly was their author? Or was it authors? There were no historical records of Homer, and no trustworthy biography of the man exists beyond a few self-referential hints embedded in the texts themselves.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the first modern critics to suggest that Homer might not have been an author in the contemporary sense of a single person who sat down and wrote a story and then published it for others to read. In his 1781 Essay on the Origin of Languages, the Swiss philosopher suggested that the Odyssey and Iliad might have been ‘written only in men’s memories. Somewhat later they were laboriously collected in writing’ – though that was about as far as his enquiry into the matter went.
- In 1795, the German philologist Friedrich August Wolf argued for the first time that not only were Homer’s works not written down by Homer, but they weren’t even by Homer. They were, rather, a loose collection of songs transmitted by generations of Greek bards, and only redacted in their present form at some later date. In 1920, an eighteen-year-old scholar named Milman Parry took up the question of Homeric authorship as his Master’s thesis at the University of California, Berkeley. He suggested that the reason Homer’s epics seemed unlike other literature was because they were unlike other literature. Parry had discovered what Wood and Wolf had missed: the evidence that the poems had been transmitted orally was right there in the text itself. All those stylistic quirks, including the formulaic and recurring plot elements and the bizarrely repetitive epithets – ‘clever Odysseus’ and ‘gray-eyed Athena’ – that had always perplexed readers were actually like thumbprints left by a potter: material evidence of how the poems had been crafted. They were mnemonic aids that helped the bards fit the meter and pattern of the line, and remember the essence of the poems.
- The greatest author of antiquity was actually, Parry argued, just ‘one of a long tradition of oral poets that … composed wholly without the aid of writing’. Parry realised that if you were setting out to create memorable poems, the Odyssey and the Iliad were exactly the kind of poems you’d create. It’s said that cliches are the worst sin a writer can commit, but to an oral bard, they were essential. The very reason that cliches so easily seep into our speech and writing – their insidious memorability – is exactly why they played such an important role in oral storytelling. The principles that the oral bards discovered as they sharpened their stories through telling and retelling were the same mnemonic principles that psychologists rediscovered when they began conducting their first scientific experiments on memory around the turn of the twentieth century. Words that rhyme are much more memorable than words that don’t, and concrete nouns are easier to remember than abstract ones. Finding patterns and structure in information is how our brains extract meaning from the world, and putting words to music and rhyme is a way of adding extra levels of pattern and structure to language.
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Section 2
Questions 27-32
Reading passage 3 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
- the claim that Odyssey and Iliad were not poems in their original form.
Answer: E
Supporting Sentence: They were, rather, a loose collection of songs transmitted by generations of Greek bards, and only redacted in their present form at some later date.
Keyword: Odyssey, Iliad, not poems, original form
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, 2nd line
Explanation: This is the correct option as modern researchers like Friedrich August Wolf have suggested that the literary works of Homer is not only not penned by him but wasn’t even poetry. They were songs that passed on from one generation to another by Greek bards and it was later that they were redacted as poetry.
- a theory involving the reinterpretation of the term ‘author’
Answer: D
Supporting Sentence: In his 1781 Essay on the Origin of Languages, the Swiss philosopher suggested that the Odyssey and Iliad might have been “written only in men’s memories. Somewhat later they were laboriously collected in writing”- though that was about as far as his enquiry into the matter went.
Keyword: theory, reinterpretation, author
Keyword Location: Paragraph D, 3rd line
Explanation: This is the correct option as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a modernist critic has suggested a theory on the contemporary understanding of authorship for Odyssey and Iliad. According to him, these Greek epics were not penned by one person named Homer, rather it is a collective work of several men who recited them through their memory and it was later that they found space in writing.
- references to the fact that little is known about Homer’s life
Answer: C
Supporting Sentence: There were no historical records of Homer, and no trustworthy biography of the man exists beyond a few self-referential hints embedded in the texts themselves.
Keyword: references, little, known, Homer’s life
Keyword Location: Paragraph C, 4th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as neither much is known about Homer’s life nor any historical records are found. The little information that has been gathered is through self-referential hints that the texts of the epics provide.
- a comparison between the construction of Homer’s poems and another art form
Answer: E
Supporting Sentence: He suggested that the reason Homer’s epics seemed unlike other literature was because they were unlike other literature.
Keyword: comparison, construction, Homer’s poems, another art
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, 5th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as Milman Parry draws a comparison between Homeric poetry and other literature and the reason why Homeric epics are very different is that they are orally transmitted, unlike other literature that has been written down.
- examples of the kinds of people employed to recall language
Answer: A
Supporting Sentence: In India, an entire class of priests was charged with memorizing the Vedas with perfect fidelity. In pre-Islamic Arabia, people known as Rawis were often attached to poets as official memorizers.
Keyword: examples, people, employed, recall, language
Keyword Location: Paragraph A, 7th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as in ancient times culture was transmitted orally in form of poems and in countries like India and pre-Islamic Arabia, priests and Rawis were employed to memorize and recall the language and literature.
- doubts regarding Homer’s inappropriate descriptions
Answer: B
Supporting Sentence: Sometimes the epithets seemed completely off-key. Why call the murderer of Agamemnon “blameless Aegisthos”? Why refer to “swift-footed Achilles” even when he was sitting down? Or to “laughing Aphrodite” even when she was in tears?
Keyword: doubts, Homer, inappropriate, description
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, 9th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as Homer’s use of epithets like “blameless Aegisthos”, “swift-footed Achilles”, “laughing Aphrodite” sounds inappropriate when we look at the event ongoing in the epic. Homer’s work, even though it is considered a model from which every literature can draw inspiration, yet has put the critics at unease due to its odd quirks.
Questions 33 and 34:
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Which TWO of these points are made by the writer of the text about the Odyssey and the Iliad?
Question 33:
Answer: C
Supporting Sentence: In terms of both structure and theme, the Odyssey and Iliad were also oddly formulaic, to the point of predictability. The same narrative units – gathering armies, heroic shields, challenges between rivals – pop up again and again, only with different characters and different circumstances.
Keyword: content, similar
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, 11th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as in the reading, the writer has mentioned that both the poems, Odyssey and Iliad, share a common structure and theme. The narrative is almost the same with just different characters playing the roles in different circumstances.
Question 34:
Answer: D
Supporting Sentence: These two poems – possibly the first to have been written down in the Greek alphabet – had long been held up as literary archetypes. However, even as they were celebrated as the models to which all literature should aspire
Keyword: writers, referred, ideal examples, writing
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, 2nd line
Explanation: This is the correct option as Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad is the oldest extant epic work that has inspired so many successive literary works and has been interpreted and reinterpreted by contemporary critics.
Questions 35 and 36:
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Which TWO of the following theories does the writer of the text refer to?
Question 35:
Answer: B
Supporting Sentence: In 1795, the German philologist Friedrich August Wolf argued for the first time that not only were Homer’s works not written down by Homer, but they weren’t even by Homer.
Keyword: Odyssey, Iliad, written, Homer.
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, 1st line
Explanation: This is the correct option as German critic Friedrich August Wolf has suggested that the works of Homer were not written down by him. It was only later that it got redacted in the written form and has since then known as, possibly, the first epic to be written down in the Greek alphabet.
Question 36:
Answer: C
Supporting Sentence: Parry had discovered what Wood and Wolf had missed: the evidence that the poems had been transmitted orally was right there in the text itself.
Keyword: Homer, created, Odyssey, Iliad, without, writing
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, 7th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as Milman Parry thoroughly studied the text and came to the conclusion that the text itself suggests that the poems have been transmitted orally and not in written form in the beginning due to the presence of mnemonic aids that the bards used to remember the essence of the poem.
Questions 37-40:
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Question 37:
Answer: generation
Supporting Sentence: Until the last tick of history’s clock, cultural transmission meant oral transmission and poetry, passed from mouth to ear, was the principal medium of moving information across space and from one generation to the next
Keyword: Spoken, poetry, culture, community, pass, knowledge
Keyword Location: Paragraph A, 1st line
Explanation: This is the correct option as the cultural transmission was carried out through oral practices like poetry that passed from one generation to another.
Question 38:
Answer: citizen
Supporting Sentence: It was, argues the classicist Eric Havelock, a “massive repository of useful knowledge, a sort of encyclopedia of ethics, politics, history and technology which the effective citizen was required to learn as the core of his educational equipment”.
Keyword: duty, know poetry, informed, subjects, politics, history
Keyword Location: Paragraph A, 4th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as oral poetry was the means through which not only culture was transmitted but also useful knowledge about history, politics, ethics etc were transmitted too. Hence, every citizen needed to learn through oral poetry to be educated in the real sense.
Question 39:
Answer: abstract
Supporting Sentence: Words that rhyme is much more memorable than words that don’t, and concrete nouns are easier to remember than abstract ones.
Keyword: Psychologists, remember, information, difficult, words, ideas
Keyword Location: Paragraph F, 9th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as recent psychological studies have shown that abstract ideas are difficult to be remembered and that is why earlier epics that were orally transmitted had more mention of concrete nouns than abstract ones.
Question 40:
Answer: music
Supporting Sentence: Finding patterns and structure in information is how our brains extract meaning from the world, and putting words to music and rhyme is a way of adding extra levels of pattern and structure to language.
Keyword: easier, remember, words, sound, similar
Keyword Location: Paragraph F, 11th line
Explanation: This is the correct option as the human brain extracts meaning by finding patterns and structure, and music or rhyming words add to it thus making it easier for the brain to remember.
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