What arguments did Friedrich August Wolf make about the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey?

In his seminal work Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795), the German classical scholar Friedrich August Wolf challenged the long-held belief that the Iliad and the Odyssey were the products of a single author, the blind bard Homer.1

Wolf’s arguments fundamentally shifted the study of philology by proposing that the Homeric poems were not originally written works but were instead composed orally by multiple authors. He argued that the artistic unity perceived in the epics was not the result of a single creative vision at the time of composition, but rather an artificial structure imposed upon the disparate songs at a much later date.1

By questioning the traditional view of Homer as the sole author, Wolf initiated what is known as the "Homer question," opening the door for modern scholarly inquiry into the nature of oral tradition, the evolution of epic poetry, and the historical process by which these texts were eventually stabilized and recorded.1

Would you like to explore how later scholars built upon or challenged Wolf's theories regarding oral composition?