The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side.
Ulysses finds himself unchanged, aside from his experience, at the end of his odyssey.
The Odyssey is the story of someone who, in the course of diverse experiences, acquires a personality or affirms and recovers his personality.
The Iliad is the private lives of people thrown into disorder by history.
One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey.
It doesn't seem to me that anyone has discovered much that's new since the Iliad or the Odyssey.