The Iliad and The Odyssey

I've finished Marx's Capital and am moving swiftly down my lists of must-reads before I matriculate in about two and a half weeks.  I might blog about Capital at some point, but honestly, it was such a strength of will to just keep up with daily reading and watching the Harvey lectures online that I'm a little maxed out on that.  

I'm currently reading The Jungle, which I have never read, and next on the list are both The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Part of the reason is because I've never really read them all the way through that I can remember...and because one of the books that we are reading during the quarter does a heavy analysis of The Iliad, and I don't want to look like a fool not knowing the text that well!  Anyway, today in French class, the best piece of non-French-language-knowledge I learned was that we have Alexander the Great to thank for these two texts setting the foundation of the literary canon.

The story goes that when he established Alexandria around 331 BCE, Alexander the Great ordered that objects, plants, animals, and human artifacts (i.e. everything from wine cups to songs) were to be collected and two samples of each were brought to Alexandria.  This was the beginning of what would become the Library of Alexandria, the largest library in the ancient world.  Once these objects were collected, scholars had to figure out how to organize all of these things, and so, they organized this knowledge based on the muses: 

Name of muse	Sphere of influence
Calliope	Epic poetry
Clio	History
Euterpe	Flutes and lyric poetry
Thalia	Comedy and pastoral poetry
Melpomene	Tragedy
Terpsichore	Dance
Erato	Love poetry
Polyhymnia	Sacred poetry
Urania	Astronomy

This is why we call a museum a museum.  Anyway, the story my professor tells is that the librarians and scholars at the Library of Alexandria transcribed and edited The Iliad and The Odyssey from their spoken tradition and thus, inducted them into the literary canon.   

I'm fascinated with the connection between Alexander the Great's imperialist conquests and the foundation of the literary canon.  I have just never understood the canon from its original roots in imperialism.  I previously understood the canon as imperialist because of other means of establishing great books that have happened in more recent memory.  It's got me thinking of some great comebacks for the next few years if I am ever made to feel inferior for not knowing certain canonical works....