alt Hacker NewsTis surely Twain, but come on, he came ages after Homer and came with civilisation that was not there in America when Homer lived.
The whole idea for looking for America’s …Homer is just super bizarre. Modern (last 150-200 years) of America is not what it was thousands of years ago - it stands on the burial grounds of millions of indigenous people obliterated altogether with their cultural inheritance.
It is questionable even today if American authors bear more the heritage of European literature than anything else.
Homer was 2k years ago. Conquistadors made sure nothing would be left of anything that was 2k years ago. English and French, besides being smarter in the north, dis likewise.
So your American Homer’s legacy perhaps lies buried down in some unmarked indigenous grave.
> So your American Homer’s legacy perhaps lies buried down in some unmarked indigenous grave.
There are probably people similar to Homer in someways. However, the thing about Homer is that he influenced literature across most of Europe, North Africa, and much of the Middle East. I do not think any one culture in North America had the wide influence the Greeks did.
> Homer was 2k years ago.
Almost 3k years ago, and very likely to have just written down an existing oral tradition that could be much older. The historical events on which the story is based are about a half millennium earlier than Homer.