An end and a beginning
January 29, 2014
This is a farewell post. I am retiring from my University position at the end of this week, having joined the staff in 1974 (not 1947, as was said in the blurb of one of my books!) and served for 14,368 days; simultaneously, this blog is being absorbed into the Classics Department’s new teaching and …
Disguise and change of clothing
September 13, 2013
In the snows of mid-January this year, I was in Amsterdam for the silver jubilee celebrations of the university’s student classical society, and gave a talk on “Disguise and change of clothes in Aristophanic comedy”. As I am not intending to publish this in the ordinary way, I have posted it here for blog browsers …
The Dionysia Drama Contest
July 16, 2013
In the many national and international competitions for literary and artistic prizes, there are two basic methods of determining the result. The most common, perhaps, is to choose a panel of judges (generally composed of professional experts), let them deliberate behind closed doors, and wait for a verdict which all the members of the panel …
Menander in Contexts
June 17, 2013
Fifteen of the papers from last year’s Nottingham conference on Menander in Contexts, byscholars from seven countries, are due to be published by Routledge in January 2014 as a book with the same title. It is over a century since Menander made his first great step back from the shades with the publication of the Cairo codex, and …
Paradoxical, or maybe not
June 4, 2013
In which classical Greek drama will you find these passages in praise of warlike achievements? 1. “Now, Spartans, do you not remember when Pericleidas the Spartan once came here to Athens and sat at our altars supplicating the Athenians – deathly pale in his scarlet cloak – begging for an army? You were hard pressed then …
Tragic Troy reviewed
May 22, 2013
Below is a review by Alan Geary of the Lace Market Theatre’s Women of Troy, from the Nottingham Evening Post of Wednesday 15 May. “The Trojan War has ended with Greek victory. Troy is in ruins; its menfolk have been killed; its women and children are being carried off into slavery or worse. As Women …
The appliance of cognitive science
May 8, 2013
On Thursday 9 May, at 5 pm in A2 Humanities Building, Dr Peter Meineck of New York University, who is a Special Professor in the Department of Classics, will give a lecture on an exciting new interdisciplinary development in the study of ancient drama. The Theatre that Moved the Soul: Understanding the Power of Ancient …
Death and honour, honour in death
April 15, 2013
When a person dies who was in life a towering but also a deeply controversial figure, how far, if at all, is it appropriate for those who hated her while she lived to continue giving expression to their hatred in word and deed? Like so many other perennial human questions, this one was pondered over …
Lunch with Lysistrata
March 14, 2013
Lakeside and The Nottingham New Theatre announce an exciting new adaptation of a classic Greek play, based on a translation from Aristophanes by Professor Alan Sommerstein and directed by Martin Berry, from 23 – 27 April 2013 at the Djanogly Theatre. Lysistrata is the result of a partnership combining the talents of the University’s highly …
A new guide to Sophocles
October 25, 2012
Nottingham classicists have contributed three chapters to the new Brill’s Companion to Sophocles edited by Andreas Markantonatos – more than any other institution in the world. In this volume, which covers all aspects of Sophocles’ dramas and their reception, Patrick Finglass writes on Sophocles’ Ajax (which he edited for Cambridge University Press last year), Alan Sommerstein on …
