My interest in ancient and modern Greece grows out of my work in Classical philology.
For some years it
has centered on ethnopoetics. This can be defined as the study of verbal art in its
cultural setting,
as distinguished from a universalizing poetics of the Aristotelian type, which
attempts to abstract
from individual places and times general rules of art. The inspiration for the
sort of work that
interests me comes, in large part, from the fieldwork of Milman Parry and
Albert Lord, who in
the 1930s recorded thousands of songs in the former Yugoslavia in the
interest of comparative
poetic research. (See now for digitized Parry collection materials: [link].
Folklore, social anthropology, the study of performance, and linguistics
all contribute to my
approach. Homeric poetry remains my primary interest within Classical
studies, and a main
comparandum in my fieldwork.
For further details of my published work and course syllabi visit [link]
