BLINDNESS AND LITERACY IN THE LIVES OF HOMER

摘要

The biographical device of blindness is undoubtedly the single feature of Homeric rnbiography most familiar to modern readers, and it seems to have been as central to rnancient understandings of Homer as well. As Barbara Graziosi observes, an exami-rnnation of the full range of available literary and visual evidence shows that, while rnthere are occasional sculptural representations of Homer as sighted, and there are rnsome texts that will make that claim as well, the overwhelming tendency seems to rnbe to represent him as blind, and even those writers who depict Homer as sighted rnfeel compelled to draw attention to their own denial of the more common version.rn1