Homer and the Indian Ocean

My friend Carla Bocchetti, a researcher at the French Institute in South Africa, has just produced a wonderful film detailing her work on Homerian epic and the Indian Ocean. Working in Mozambique and Kenya, she has engaged artists and other researchers to explore the potential linkages between Homer’s epic and the Indian Ocean, using local textiles and the terraqueous nature of Homer’s poem.

Perhaps the clearest link between Homer and the Indian Ocean is Luís de Camões’s 1572 epic, Os Lusíadas, which borrows heavily from Homer’s Odyssey and sets much of the epic’s action on the eastern coast of Africa. I appear briefly in the video mentioning this, though my contribution is hardly groundbreaking (who actually enjoys seeing themselves in video?).

Dr. Bocchetti’s goal now is to continue developing this project along with others that connect classical Greek literature (especially Homer) with the world beyond the Mediterranean. The point here is not to suggest that Homer himself had some connection to Mombasa or Maputo but rather to open up new linkages and discussions about what the world’s great cultures have in common and can share. Africa has always been a crossroads of dynamic cultures and their stories, and Dr. Bocchetti is artfully placing Homer and the Greeks into that tradition.