2022 Lorenz Eitner Lecture: "Greek and Latin Refocused: Literature in the Multilingual Roman Empire"

Please join us for The 2022 Eitner Lecturer, featuring Phiroze Vasunia, Professor of Greek at University College London: Greek and Latin Refocused: Literature in the Multilingual Roman Empire

How should we study Greek and Latin literature in a multilingual framework?  The inhabitants of the Roman Empire wrote and spoke many languages.  Latin and Greek were important and widely used, but so were other languages such as Hebrew, Punic, and Egyptian (Demotic, Coptic).  In fact, literature in Greek and Latin reflects this linguistic and literary diversity.  What kind of frame for multilingual literary study is provided by the Roman Empire?  This paper tries to reframe Greek and Latin literature within the context of the multicultural Roman Empire and calls for these literatures to be read in the context of linguistic and literary multiplicity.

Professor Vasunia has written widely about the ancient world and its reception in later periods. Among his books is The Gift of the Nile(2001), The Classics and Colonial India (2013), and  Postclassicisms (co-author; 2019).  He is the editor of several books, including two forthcoming volumes, Classics and Race: An Historical Reader (with Sarah Derbew and Daniel Orrells) and The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire (with Daniel L. Selden).  He is the general editor of the book series Ancients and Moderns (Bloomsbury).