The claim of not being created consciously seems much more applicable to many of the scripts of recent movies than to the Homeric Epics.
The main plot lines of the epics, which are quite clever, must have been designed consciously and whoever did that should be considered the main creators of the epics. I am among those who believe that the main authors of Iliad and Odyssey must have been distinct, but they probably were members of the same family, e.g. the main author of the Odyssey might have been a niece or granddaughter of "Homer".
In any case while the main authors have devised the plots, they have expressed the plot using a huge amount of verse sequences, metaphors and similes inherited via oral tradition from their ancestors and the selection of a verse sequence appropriate for a certain point in the story might have been partially non-deterministic and unconscious.
Once the initial versions of the epics had been performed, it is likely that all later public performances by the main authors or by their descendants have never repeated completely identically, but with small variations in verse choices, until they have been fixed in writing. It is possible that multiple variants have been fixed in writing or the copists have made various mistakes, because the canonical variants known today have been edited in their final form only many hundreds of years later.
The main plot lines of the epics, which are quite clever, must have been designed consciously and whoever did that should be considered the main creators of the epics. I am among those who believe that the main authors of Iliad and Odyssey must have been distinct, but they probably were members of the same family, e.g. the main author of the Odyssey might have been a niece or granddaughter of "Homer".
In any case while the main authors have devised the plots, they have expressed the plot using a huge amount of verse sequences, metaphors and similes inherited via oral tradition from their ancestors and the selection of a verse sequence appropriate for a certain point in the story might have been partially non-deterministic and unconscious.
Once the initial versions of the epics had been performed, it is likely that all later public performances by the main authors or by their descendants have never repeated completely identically, but with small variations in verse choices, until they have been fixed in writing. It is possible that multiple variants have been fixed in writing or the copists have made various mistakes, because the canonical variants known today have been edited in their final form only many hundreds of years later.