Homer In Drag?

Via John J. Miller at the Corner this morning comes this article in which a Brit historian makes the claim that The Iliad and The Odyssey were probably written by a woman:

Aside from the poems themselves, no concrete clues exist to identify their author, but Dalby builds a case that the person probably was a woman.

"In many oral traditions, the best and most reliable creators, the ones who are used by folklore collectors, happen to be women," he said.

Dalby explained that women throughout the ancient world were "often the last and most skillful exponents of an oral tradition."

For example, the world’s first named poet was a Sumerian woman named Enheduanna, who lived from around 2285-2250 B.C. Dalby said women also saved the ancient oral poetry of the northern Japanese, many Irish traditions, and numerous English folk ballads.

I've often heard the argument that The Iliad and The Odyssey probably were not composed by the same person. I've also heard before the argument that The Odyssey may very well have been written* by a woman, especially given its emphasis on domestic detail. Indeed, Robert Graves makes this the central tenant of a very entertaining novel called Homer's Daughter, which I highly recommend. (I believe Stephen makes a reference to this theory in one of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels as well.) Is it true? I dunno.

But The Iliad? Not a chance. At the risk of setting off political correctness alarums, that epic has more testosterone per word than any other that I can think of off the top of my head. Between the violence, bloodshed, male bonding and the rest of it, I simply cannot conceive that the original poet did not have a full set of what Jayne would call "man parts".

*Yes, yes. I know it's silly to talk about these epics being "written", given that they came out of oral tradition and were not actually written down until quite some time after they had been in circulation.