As a classicist with a focus on intertextuality and translation studies, my research reconceptualizes the ways in which Greco-Roman literature is appropriated and transformed from antiquity to the present day. In particular, I am interested in how formal properties of ancient texts are assigned meaning across different reception contexts. At the moment, I am writing my first monograph, entitled Homeric Translation in Antiquity, which challenges existing views of ancient translation by demonstrating the interconnectedness of interlingual (Greek-to-Latin) and intralingual (Greek-to-Greek) translations of Homer.
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Homeric Translation in Antiquity
Homeric Translation in Antiquity
Under review.
Abstract: This monograph, based on my dissertation, expands scholarly conceptions of translation through a comprehensive study of translations of the Homeric epics in Greco-Roman antiquity. By broadening conventional notions of ancient translation formally, linguistically, and chronologically, this research argues for the pivotal role of Homeric translation as a collective form of textual production. In particular, my project encompasses two types of materials previously overlooked. Firstly, by developing a framework for the concept of intralingual translation—that is, rewording in the same language—of Homer in ancient Greek texts, I extend the scope of translation to Homeric glossaries, lexica, hypotheses, and paraphrases, which have been traditionally studied under separate rubrics. By treating these texts as translations instead, my dissertation proposes a diachronic network of Homeric reception across Greek and Latin texts. Secondly, while existing scholarship in ancient translation focuses on elite literature, I highlight the important contribution of non-elite texts to Homeric translation, including papyri and inscriptions, many of which are connected to the ancient classroom. By examining structural and textual parallels between these non-canonical Homeric translations and their canonical counterparts, my book reframes ancient rewritings of Homeric epic across different material contexts and social spheres.
Homer into Greek: Intralingual Translation in Greco-Roman Antiquity
Homer into Greek: Intralingual Translation in Greco-Roman Antiquity
Published in The Routledge Handbook of Intralingual Translation, ed. Ö. Berk Albachten and L. Pillière (Routledge: London), 2024, pp. 95–109. DOI: 10.4324/9781003188872-8
Abstract: This chapter pursues the double aim of presenting an overview of one of the earliest documented instances of intralingual translation—the practice of rendering the Homeric epics into different forms of ancient Greek—and situating this translational practice in the context of ancient Greek discourses of intralingual translation in general. The issues of intralingual translation and Homeric reception were intimately connected in the ancient Greek tradition. By virtue of their antiquity and monumentality, the IIiad and Odyssey assumed the principal position in the Greek literary canon early on, which in turn made them a privileged target for scholarly, philosophical, and artistic practices of all types. In the realm of critical and literary reception, the Homeric epics would inform – and transform – conceptions of textuality, just as they would shape ancient Greek (and, later, Roman) views on politics, gender, and religion. Consequently, frameworks for intralingually translating Homer, which frst appeared in embryonic form in the late seventh century BCE and, in subsequent centuries, were further developed in response to perceived patterns of synonymy and self-paraphrase in the epics themselves, came to serve as an exemplar for the intralingual (and, eventually, interlingual) translation of other authors and texts.
Pluralist Perspectives in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Pluralist Perspectives in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Published in Trends in Classics 15.1, 2023, pp. 219–241. DOI: 10.1515/tc-2023-0012
Abstract: This paper aims to demonstrate that the Thesaurus linguae Latinae, the world’s largest lexicon of ancient Latin and a traditional project rooted in 19th-century philology, makes a significant contribution to today’s intellectual diversity within Classical Studies. By analysing a corpus of 270 lemmas, ranging from r to razīmus, I argue that the TLL’s quietly revolutionary mode of philological pluralism is realized at three levels of lexicographic content: the selection of primary material (choosing textual passages of ancient Latin to be included in the lexicon); the arrangement of individual lexicographic entries (structuring the presentation of primary text in each article); and the annotation of passages, rubrics, and entire articles (providing metalinguistic description, explanation, and commentary). As a whole, my analysis presents the first-ever account of how the TLL systematically reshapes established lexicographic and scholarly practices.
The Secondary Incipit of the Odyssey (Od. 9.39): Quotation, Translation, and Adaptation in the Ancient Reception of Homer
The Secondary Incipit of the Odyssey (Od. 9.39): Quotation, Translation, and Adaptation in the Ancient Reception of Homer
Published in Classical Philology 117.3, 2022, pp. 411–437. DOI: 10.1086/720155
Abstract: Although recent scholarship has studied the incipit as a privileged intertextual locus in Latin poetry, the comparable role of work-internal beginnings in classical literature has been largely overlooked. This article argues that the opening sentence of Odysseus’ Apologue functions as the Odyssey’s secondary beginning from Odysseus’ point of view—a role that ancient audiences of the poem recognized and developed. Specifically, I demonstrate that later Greek and Latin authors use the Odyssey’s secondary incipit to emphasize narratorial subjectivity and to mark new literary beginnings. As a result, my research calls for a reconsideration of secondary incipits in Greco-Roman literature in general.
The Ilias Latina in the Context of Ancient Epitome Translation
The Ilias Latina in the Context of Ancient Epitome Translation
Published in Ilias Latina: Text, Interpretation, and Reception (Mnemosyne Supplements, vol. 443), ed. M. J. Falcone and C. Schubert (Leiden: Brill), 2021, pp. 39–66. DOI: 10.1163/9789004469532_004
Abstract: This book chapter argues that, on the basis of significant shared features, ancient Latin verse summaries of the Homeric epics should be assigned to a distinct literary category, which has not been previously recognized. The principal purpose of establishing this ancient poetic subgenre—which I call “Homeric epitome translation”—is to situate the one fully extant representative of the group, the Ilias Latina, among other only minimally preserved texts, such as Livius Andronicus’ Odusia, the post-Ennian Odyssea, the Iliad translations of Cn. Matius and Ninnius Crassus, and the Homeric versions by Attius Labeo. Latin Homeric verse epitomes draw on two related literary categories, Hellenistic epyllia and Homeric prose hypotheses, to forge a generic identity that is essentially new. A comparative analysis of three intertextual procedures—incipit and explicit translation, formulaic subversion, and combinatorial allusion—demonstrates the constitutive characteristics of the category and the Ilias Latina’s place within it.
Translating the Odyssey: Andreas Divus, Old English and Ezra Pound’s Canto I
Translating the Odyssey: Andreas Divus, Old English and Ezra Pound’s Canto I
Published in The Classics in Modernist Translation, ed. M. Hickman and L. Kozak (London: Bloomsbury Academic), 2019, pp. 33–43. DOI: 10.5040/9781350040984.ch-003
Abstract: This book chapter argues that Ezra Pound’s verse translation of the Odyssey in Canto I is significantly mediated through the Renaissance Latin prose translation of the epic by Andreas Divus and does not, as is commonly assumed, draw directly on Homer’s Greek for its lexical, syntactical, and metrical choices. Far from a simple aid to understanding the Greek (a so-called “crib”), Divus’ Odyssea instead becomes a programmatic model of epic secondariness for Pound, who both invokes and deploys the Renaissance scholar-translator as a template for his own poetic persona. Moreover, by extending this focus on mediating texts to Pound’s reworking of the Anglo-Saxon The Seafarer in the same poem, I demonstrate the important role that prior translations play in Pound’s epic project overall. Consequently, my research is able to show that the concept of retranslation, long central to scholarly discussions of ancient epic poetry, also applies to the modern reception of the genre.
Reviews:
V. Kolocotroni, The Classical Review 70.2, 2020.
J. Talbot, Translation and Literature 29.2, 2020.
Lexicographic Articles in the Thesaurus linguae Latinae (TLL)
Lexicographic Articles in the Thesaurus linguae Latinae (TLL)
retinaculum, reversatio, revestio. Forthcoming in TLL vol. XI 2, fasc. 11.
respecto, responsio, responsus, resumo, [resumpticius], resumptio, resumptivus, [resumptorius]. Published in TLL vol. XI 2, fasc. 10 (Berlin: De Gruyter), 2023.
repromissio, repromitto, reseco. Published in TLL vol. XI 2, fasc. 9 (Berlin: De Gruyter), 2023.
nervus. Published in TLL vol. IX 1, fasc. 4 (Berlin: De Gruyter), 2022.
refrigeratio, regero. Published in TLL vol. XI 2, fasc. 5 (Berlin: De Gruyter), 2017.
Corona vor Corona
Corona vor Corona
Published on the website of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Nov. 10, 2020).
Abstract: This web publication for a general audience looks at the multifaceted history of the Latin word corona prior to COVID-19 (in German).
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