Sheila Murnaghan | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Harvard University, Cambridge University, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classics |
Sub-discipline | Classical tradition,Ancient Greek literature |
Institutions | University of Pennsylvania |
Notable students | Monica Cyrino |
Notable works | Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey |
Sheila Murnaghan is the Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek at the University of Pennsylvania. She is particularly known for her work on Greek epic,tragedy,and historiography. [1]
Murnaghan gained her AB in Classics from Harvard University in 1973 followed by a BA from Cambridge University in 1975 and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980. [2] Murnaghan taught at Yale University from 1979 until 1990 then moved to the University of Pennsylvania where she is now the Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek. [3]
Murnaghan works on Greek epic poetry,tragedy,and historiography,gender in classical culture,and the classical tradition. Her groundbreaking work Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (Princeton 1987),which was based on her PhD thesis,was republished in 2011. [4] [5]
Murnaghan currently works on the classical tradition,particularly the development of Greek mythology as children's literature in the 19th-20th centuries. She was invited to give a lecture on the subject as part of the Heinz Blum Memorial Lecture Series at Boston College in 2016 [6] and her volume on the subject with Deborah H. Roberts was published in 2018. [3]
Homer was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey,two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad,the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus,king of Ithaca,and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war,which lasted ten years,his journey from Troy to Ithaca,via Africa and southern Europe,lasted for ten additional years during which time he encountered many perils and all of his crewmates were killed. In his absence,Odysseus was assumed dead,and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.
Penelope is a character in Homer's Odyssey. She was the queen of Ithaca and was the daughter of Spartan king Icarius and Asterodia. Penelope is known for her fidelity to her husband Odysseus,despite the attention of more than a hundred suitors during his absence. In one source,Penelope's original name was Arnacia or Arnaea.
In Greek mythology,Eurycleia,or Euryclea,is the daughter of Ops and granddaughter of Peisenor,as well as the wet-nurse of Odysseus.
A Greek chorus in the context of ancient Greek tragedy,comedy,satyr plays,is a homogeneous group of performers,who comment with a collective voice on the action of the scene they appear in,or provide necessary insight into action which has taken place offstage. Historically,the chorus consisted of between 12 and 50 players,who variously danced,sang or spoke their lines in unison,and sometimes wore masks.
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In this text Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική,which refers to poetry and more literally "the poetic art," deriving from the term for "poet;author;maker," ποιητής. Aristotle divides the art of poetry into verse drama,lyric poetry,and epic. The genres all share the function of mimesis,or imitation of life,but differ in three ways that Aristotle describes:
The Epic Cycle was a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems,composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War,including the Cypria,the Aethiopis,the so-called Little Iliad,the Iliupersis,the Nostoi,and the Telegony. Scholars sometimes include the two Homeric epics,the Iliad and the Odyssey,among the poems of the Epic Cycle,but the term is more often used to specify the non-Homeric poems as distinct from the Homeric ones.
Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature,dating back to the early Archaic period,are the two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey,set in an idealized archaic past today identified as having some relation to the Mycenaean era. These two epics,along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod,the Theogony and Works and Days,constituted the major foundations of the Greek literary tradition that would continue into the Classical,Hellenistic,and Roman periods.
The Oeconomicus by Xenophon is a Socratic dialogue principally about household management and agriculture.
The Telegony is a lost ancient Greek epic poem about Telegonus,son of Odysseus by Circe. His name is indicative of his birth on Aeaea,far from Odysseus' home of Ithaca. It was part of the Epic Cycle of poems that recounted the myths of the Trojan War as well as the events that led up to and followed it. The story of the Telegony comes chronologically after that of the Odyssey and is the final episode in the Epic Cycle. The poem was sometimes attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta,but in one source it is said to have been stolen from Musaeus by Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene. The poem comprised two books of verse in dactylic hexameter.
Homeric scholarship is the study of any Homeric topic,especially the two large surviving epics,the Iliad and Odyssey. It is currently part of the academic discipline of classical studies. The subject is one of the oldest in education.
Patricia Elizabeth Easterling,FBA is an English classical scholar,recognised as a particular expert on the work of Sophocles. She was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2001. She was the 36th person and the first —and,so far,only —woman to hold the post.
Emily Rose Caroline Wilson is a British American classicist,author,translator,and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2018,she became the first woman to publish an English translation of Homer's Odyssey. Her translation of the Iliad was released in September 2023.
Dennis Ronald MacDonald is the John Wesley Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Claremont School of Theology in California. MacDonald proposes a theory wherein the earliest books of the New Testament were responses to the Homeric Epics,including the Gospel of Mark and the Acts of the Apostles. The methodology he pioneered is called Mimesis Criticism. If his theories are correct then "nearly everything written on [the] early Christian narrative is flawed." According to him,modern biblical scholarship has failed to recognize the impact of Homeric Poetry.
Mimesis:The Representation of Reality in Western Literature is a book of literary criticism by Erich Auerbach,and his most well known work. It was written in German between 1942 and 1945,while Auerbach was teaching in Istanbul,Turkey,where he fled after being ousted from his professorship in Romance Philology at the University of Marburg by the Nazis in 1935,it was first published in Switzerland in 1946 by A. Francke Verlag,with an English translation by Princeton University Press following in 1953,since when it has remained in print.
Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks,and a genre of ancient Greek folklore,today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories concern the ancient Greek religion's view of the origin and nature of the world;the lives and activities of deities,heroes,and mythological creatures;and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece,and to better understand the nature of myth-making itself.
Odysseus Acanthoplex is a lost play by the Athenian dramatist Sophocles. Several fragments are extant. The plot told of Odysseus' death,accidentally killed by his son Telegonus. Some scholars believe that another Sophocles title,Niptra,is the same play as Odysseus Acanthoplex. Dana Sutton,however,disputes this,suggesting that Niptra was a separate play dealing with Odysseus' return to Ithaca but not with his death.
Barbara Graziosi is an Italian classicist and academic. She is Professor of Classics at Princeton University. Her interests lie in ancient Greek literature,and the way in which readers make it their own. She has written extensively on the subject of Homeric literature,in particular the Iliad,and more generally on the transition of the Twelve Olympians from antiquity to the Renaissance. Her most recent research was a project entitled 'Living Poets:A New Approach to Ancient Poetry,which was funded by the European Research Council.
Ann Bergren was Professor of Greek literature,Literary Theory,and Contemporary Architecture at University of California,Los Angeles. She is known for her scholarship on Ancient Greek language,gender,and contemporary architecture.
The metabasis paradox is an instance in the received text of Aristotle's Poetics where,according to many scholars,he makes two incompatible statements. In chapter 13 of the book,Aristotle states that for tragedy to end in misfortune is "correct," yet in chapter 14 he judges a kind of tragedy "best" that does not end in misfortune. Since the 16th century,scholars in Classics have puzzled over this contradiction or have proposed solutions,of which there are three from the 21st century. Gotthold Lessing's solution has been the most influential yet there is not a consensus.