Text-focused research in the department covers a range of genres and approaches. Areas of strong interest include drama, Homer, Plato, lyric, literature in its cultural settings, translation, commentaries, and cognitivist approaches. There are close connections with the reception cluster, with much work straddling both fields.
Elton Barker's research interests in this strand range widely over epic, historiography and tragedy. His book, Entering the Agon (Oxford University Press, 2009), investigates representations of debate in epic, historiography and tragedy in terms of an interpretative framework of dissent from authority. He is particularly interested in epic rivalry and reception, the politics of Greek tragedy, the relationship between Herodotus and Thucydides, and the spatial analysis of networks in Herodotus. He has also worked on the use of oracles in Herodotus's Histories, the relationship of the new Archilochus fragment to Homer, and the chorus in Sophocles.
Publications relevant to the Greek and Latin texts cluster
Chris Emlyn-Jones is interested in exploring the texts of Plato’s dialogues as representatives of a unique genre which nevertheless interacts with other genres and types of discourse, e.g. dramatic, epic, sophistic, fable, mime. Part of his interest involves editing; and he has recently completed a major translation and commentary on Republic. He has retired from his full-time post and is now Emeritus Professor.
Publications relevant to the Greek and Latin texts cluster
Trevor Fear’s research focuses primarily on Latin elegy (Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus) and lyric (Catullus, Horace) with a secondary interest in Greek lyric (especially Sappho) and epigram (Callimachus and Greek Anthology). He is principally interested in the connections between specific genres/types of literature and their rootedness in their specific historical socio-political climate.
Publications relevant to the Greek and Latin texts cluster
Lorna Hardwick researches the reception of classical drama, poetry and historiography in Anglophone contexts from c. 1970 to the present. She has a particular interest in receptions in post-colonial contexts and in the processes of translation (verbal and semiotic). Her research involves the formal, philological and contextual analysis of the ancient texts and comparison with the modern receptions. The emphasis is on their dialogical relationship, including study of intertextuality and on transmission (including modes of migration and translation). Lorna Hardwick is interested in the notion of commentary in its broadest sense – e.g. the idea that the reception is in some sense a commentary on the source; this brings the arts practitioner and the scholar into a new kind of dialogue. She has retired from her full-time post and is now Emeritus Professor.
Publications relevant to the Greek and Latin texts cluster
Paula James’s work on texts has focused on the ancient novel (especially Apuleius) and Ovid's Metamorphoses, resulting in literary commentaries (books and articles). Her current research into Ovid’s myth of Salmacis investigates the literary import of his similes and the visual imagery of his straight narrative scenes. She has also published on later Latin poets whose imagery and use of mythical motifs and devices is highly charged, e.g. Claudius and Prudentius. She aims to produce linguistically sensitive and philologically contextualised interpretations of the texts in the original.
Publications relevant to the Greek and Latin texts cluster
James Robson’s main area of research is Aristophanic comedy, with particular focus on their humour, obscene language, sexuality and translation into English. His previous work has engaged with closely with the language of the plays, looking at how humour is constructed and translated, for example, and how obscene and erotic language are manipulated in Aristophanic comedy. He has also engaged with the plays' staging, both in a modern and ancient context, by exploring topics such as physical humour and clothing. His interest in the sexual ethics of the plays has recently developed into a broader interest in the topic, with a new monograph, Sex and Sexuality in Classical Athens, due to be published in 2013. He is also co-author of a recent English edition of the fragments and testimonia of the Greek historian, Ctesias.
Publications relevant to the Greek and Latin texts cluster
Laura Swift’s research focuses on archaic and classical Greek poetry. Her book The Hidden Chorus explored the relationship between the tragic chorus and other forms of choral song in Greek society (for example paeanic, hymeneal, or epinician choruses), and she is therefore particularly interested in questions of genre and of poetic language. Her current research is on archaic Greek iambus and elegy, and she is finishing a commentary on Archilochus, which will provide detailed literary and linguistic analysis of all of Archilochus’ surviving poetry.
Publications relevant to the Greek and Latin texts cluster
Naoko Yamagata’s research interest is in epic, especially Homer. Her various approaches to Homer include examination of key moral and social concepts in their wider context (including use of linguistic evidence e.g. Mycenaean Greek) and formal analysis of narrative techniques (e.g. use of formulae, themes, genre scenes), comparison of Homeric values and world view with that in other epic poems such as Hesiod and Virgil and especially the Tale of the Heike, a medieval Japanese epic tale of heroes. She mostly focuses on tackling specific problems in interpreting Homeric concepts and passages by re-examining them in wider contexts, either within the text, within Greek literature or in comparison with other literary traditions.
Publications relevant to the Greek and Latin texts cluster
Doris Post, The chorus in Sophocles
Bijon Sihna, Classical representations of Crete
Pauline Rochelle has now been awarded her PhD (2012)
