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]
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek and Roman literature and their original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics may also include as secondary subjects Greco-Roman philosophy, history, archaeology, anthropology, art, mythology, and society.
Herodotus was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the Histories, a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars, and was the first writer to apply a scientific method to historical events. He has been described as "The Father of History", a title conferred on him by the ancient Roman orator Cicero, and the "Father of Lies" by others.
Homer was an Ancient 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 works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey 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.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
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.
Telemachus, in Greek mythology, is the son of Odysseus and Penelope, who is a central character in Homer's Odyssey. When Telemachus reached manhood, he visited Pylos and Sparta in search of his wandering father. On his return to Ithaca, he found that Odysseus had reached home before him. Then father and son slew the suitors who had gathered around Penelope. According to later tradition, Telemachus married Circe after Odysseus's death.
In Greek mythology, Calypso was a nymph who lived on the island of Ogygia, where, according to Homer's Odyssey, she detained Odysseus for seven years against his will. She promised Odysseus immortality if he would stay with her, but Odysseus preferred to return home. Eventually, after the intervention of the other gods, Calypso was forced to let Odysseus go.
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:
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.
Simon Hornblower, FBA is an English classicist and academic. He was Professor of Classics and Ancient History in the University of Oxford and, before retiring, was most recently a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
In Greek mythology, Gorgythion was one of the sons of King Priam of Troy at the time of the Trojan War and appears as a minor character in Homer's Iliad. His mother was Castianeira of Aisyme.
Priapeia 68 or Priapea 68 is the sixty-eighth poem in the Priapeia, a collection of Latin poetry of uncertain authorship. The eighty poems lack a unified narrative, but share Priapus, an ithyphallic god of fertility worshiped in both Ancient Hellenic and Roman religions, as by turns a speaker and subject.
Rosalind Thomas FBA is a Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Balliol College, Oxford University and professor of Ancient Greek history. She focuses on ancient literacy, oral tradition and performance culture as well as Greek law and society, Greek historiography, Greek relations with the Persians, and the Greek polis. She was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2020.
Cynthia Ellen Murray Damon is a Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and has written extensively on Latin literature and Roman historiography, having published translations and commentaries on authors such as Caesar and Tacitus.
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.
Emily Greenwood is Professor of the Classics and of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. She was formerly professor of Classics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University and John M. Musser Professor of Classics and Chair of the Department of Classics at Yale University. Her research focuses on Ancient Greek historiography, particularly Thucydides and Herodotus, the development of History as a genre and a modern critical discipline, and local and transnational black traditions of interpreting Greek and Roman classics. Her work explores the appropriation and reinvention of Greco-Roman classical antiquity from the late nineteenth century to the present.
Deborah Kamen is Chair and Professor of Classics at the University of Washington. Her research is on Greek cultural and social history, with a particular focus on ancient slavery.
Sasha-Mae Eccleston is a classicist and the John Rowe Workman Assistant Professor of Classics at Brown University. She is an expert on reception studies and the works of Apuleius. She is the co-founder of Eos, an academic network which focuses on Africana receptions of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Emily Hauser is a British scholar of classics and a historical fiction novelist. She is a lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter and has published three novels in her 'Golden Apple' trilogy: For the Most Beautiful (2016), For the Winner (2017) and For the Immortal (2018).