Homer Vs. Ferdousi

Homer and Ferdousi are two of the Epic writers( One from Greece, and the other from Iran), whom occupy a central position in the self-definition of their cultures. These two writers with their brilliant work gave the later ganerations a sense of national and cultural identity in a way that people still refer to them during their daily activities.There are not too many differences in the way that the two writers present their works, they both wrote long poems about the historical events of their countries. What strikes me though is the fact that the two epics by Homer (Illiate and Odessay) have been widely introduced and analyzed in the western world, while Ferdousi's work (Shahname) is unknown to most. This discrimination has nothing to do with Homer's epics being better written, but perhaps by the way that the citizens of each country treat their ancients heritege. In order to write this text I wanted to do some research on the two writers, and my research was clouded by the fact that there is not much writen about Ferousi even on the net. This is while the Homer's epics have been translated to English and even thought in some High Schools in Northern America as a part of their English course. The obvious deffirence between the two writers can be depicted in the fact that Homer's epics are concentrated on only one event and that is the Trojan War and the returning of the noble fighters, (the trojan war my have never happend and the Homer's epics may infact only be a myth), on the other hand Ferdousi's epic holds within it self the true history of Iran, discribing the kings and dynasties one after another including beatiful miniture paintings to describe the scenes.
To read the shahname in farsi visit ===> http://www.mehrargham.com/dorjonline/books.html