According to the passage, the work of Simone Weil and Erich Auerbach on Homer was primarily concerned with which one ...

jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com on February 12, 2022

While a new surge of critical interest in the ancient. Greek poems conventionally ascribed to Homer has. taken place in the last twenty years or so, it was. nonspecialists rather than professional scholars who
(5) studied the poetic aspects of the Iliad and the Odyssey between, roughly, 1935 and 1970. During these years,. while such nonacademic intellectuals as Simone Weil. and Erich Auerbach were trying to define the qualities. that made these epic accounts of the Trojan War and its (10) aftermath great poetry, the questions that occupied the . specialists were directed elsewhere: "Did the Trojan. War really happen?" "Does the bard preserve Indo–. European folk memories?" "

I am not an instructor but I will try to help. Please refer to the line reference above.

The line reference states that it was the nonspecialists (not the specialists) who studied the poetic aspects of Illiad and Odyssey between 1935 to 1970. During that time, while such nonspecialists such as Simone Well and Erich Auerbach were trying to define what makes these poetries great, the questions that the specialists were trying to figure out were not the same. Namely, the specialists were trying to study other peripheral issues (not the poetries themselves) by trying to answer questions such as “Did the Trojan War really happen?” etc.

Since we know that Simon Well and Erich Auerbach were nonspecialists during the 1935 to 1970 trying to study the poetries themselves and not the peripheral issues (target of study for specialists), we can pick answer choice B) analyses of the poetry itself in terms of its literacy qualities.

I hope that I explained it correctly. Please feel free to correct me. Thank you.

Emil-Kunkin on October 13 at 02:41PM

Agreed! I think the simplest way to put it is that the passage says that they were concerned with the actual poetry, while academic scholars were concerned with peripheral elements.