‘Pitying Oedipus’
October 5, 2014
In our first Classics research workshop (also a Classical Association Lecture), Professor Patrick Finglass spoke on ‘Pitying Oedipus’; Professor Alan Sommerstein was inspired to offer this response… Professor Patrick Finglass kicked off the new semester on Tuesday 30 September with a talk in his usual sparkling style to the Nottingham branch of the Classical Association …
Happy Classical National Poetry Day!
October 2, 2014
In great haste… I spotted this morning, while procrastinating, that today is National Poetry Day! This clearly needed to be marked, and I’m just back from some rapid poetry-bombing of the Humanities Building. I felt that what was needed was some poetry in English (I wanted it to speak too everybody in the building) that …
The Spirit and the Argonauts Myth
September 28, 2014
Helen Lovatt finds some surprising references to classical Greek myth in The Spirit, a recent film by Frank Miller (author of 300)… When I sat down to watch a film the other night, I was happily anticipating a complete break from work. But perhaps it should not surprise me to find The Spirit (2008), directed …
Greek for the Globe
September 21, 2014
Requests for translation into ancient Greek are understandably rare. But one was passed on to Oliver Thomas recently from a friend-of-a-friend at the Globe Theatre. For their production of Julius Caesar the Globe’s creative team wanted to mark the three main deaths (those of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius) by adding a small female chorus of …
Holiday photos: late antiquity on the Adriatic (2)
September 11, 2014
In my last post, I shared some photos of the late antique basilica at Poreč, in Istria. Here, without much comment or introduction, are some more from the same part of the world, but across a few borders. Aquileia, close to the coast of Friuli Venezia Giulia in NE Italy, is an amazing place. It …
Thinking about Thinking about Ancient Greek Religion (2)
August 31, 2014
In January 2014, the Ancient Religions and Cognition (ARCog) project held its second workshop: on Transmission. Esther Eidinow gives an overview of the meeting, during which participants explored the theme of religious transmission using cognitive theorizing to think about ancient evidence, and vice versa. You can find out more about the project and the workshop, …
Holiday photos: late antiquity on the Adriatic (1)
August 20, 2014
In between research and other duties, I have taken a welcome week of holiday in Friuli (NE Italy, close to the border with Slovenia) and at Poreč on the peninsula of Istria, at the Western end of Croatia. My partner and I didn’t choose these destinations for any classics-related reason: the former is where her …
A Midsummer Night Reverie (2): more lost tragedies
August 15, 2014
In this post I (belatedly) publish the second part of Alan Sommerstein’s thoughts on Nick Lowe’s paper on tragic fragments, delivered to the Nottingham Branch of the Classical Association. In the first part of this post, I reported Nick Lowe’s top ten lost tragedies from his excellent paper at the AGM of the Nottingham …
Classical festivities in Edinburgh: A handy list
August 6, 2014
Lynn Fotheringham asks what’s on at the Edinburgh Festival this year and finds many interesting classical productions. For many years now my theatre-going has tended to focus on the Classics-related – not just performances of Greek drama; over my fifteen years in Nottingham, I remember Heaney’s Burial at Thebes and Berkoff’s Oedipus at the Playhouse, …
A Midsummer Night Reverie: ten top “lost” tragedies (and more) (1)
August 3, 2014
This post is by Professor Alan Sommerstein. A few weeks ago – on 24 June, Midsummer Day, to be precise (whence my title) – the Nottingham branch of the Classical Association held its Annual General Meeting (at Loughborough, whose admirable schools and teachers have long been one of the branch’s mainstays). Between the business meeting …
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