Based on textual analysis, is it plausible that the Iliad and the Odyssey were largely composed by the same author (i.e. "Homer")?

Answer 1

It is very possible that a single other, whom we shall call Homer, brought together the Iliad and the Odyssey, but both epics are the result of a longstanding oral tradition. We can tell this due to a number of factors:

1. A number of conventions used throughout both texts are very prominent in oral poetry, most importantly formulaic phrases. These conventions are easy for the poet to remember and to build the composition mid-performance, as the poet knows the phrase's meter without thinking.
2. The text uses a variety of endings that come from several dialects of ancient Greek. The text even uses a letter, the digamma (pronounced like a "w") that had died out by the 9th century BCE on occasion throughout the text, telling us that part of the poem was composed before the letter had died out.
3. While mostly stylistically-uniform, there are segments of both poems that have different styles, suggesting different origins.