ABSTRACT
Giambattista Vico's concern with the poetry of Homer emerges with the emergence of the idea of the 'New Science' itself; they are, as he said of philosophy and philology, 'geminae ortae', twin fruit of a single birth. The undertaking of the 'New Science' addresses itself, in principle, to the universal mind of man and has as its end the delineation of the eternal and ideal history of the human spirit in its universality. Vico assumes the laborious task only with respect to the culture to which his own is indigenous. Vico's immediate concern with the Homeric structure, the Iliad and the Odyssey, is to establish their character as true historical documents. The 'metaphysical' criticism of the Homeric structure follows a simple course, adhering strictly to the principles established in the theory of poetry and myth. Its objective is to reveal the Homeric poems as consisting essentially of fables of heroic or poetic characters.
