Matthew Wright, "Euripides’ Quotation Marks”

This talk is being generously funded by the Ratliff bequest to Stanford Classics as part of a graduate seminar on ancient Greek poetry, Dr. John Tennant’s “The Proverb in Ancient Greek Literature.” Per the terms of the Ratliff Trust, Professor Wright’s talk is to be a public-facing talk during the first hour of the seminar with the larger Stanford Classics community invited to attend. After Professor Wright’s talk there will be a break and then the regular seminar will commence. Members of the Classics community are also invited to join and participate in the seminar if they wish!

Description: Eclectic reading was a well-established habit in antiquity. Dipping into texts, excerpting important verses, hunting down memorable phrases or edifying sentiments, quoting passages and treating them (rightly or wrongly) as embodying the author’s own opinions – these were among the most common ways in which Euripides’ readers engaged with tragedy and other forms of poetry. This paper argues that Euripides was fully aware of these practices and played along with his readers by deliberately highlighting certain verses as ‘quotations’ right from the start.

Biography: Matthew Wright is Professor of Greek at the University of Exeter, UK; he has also taught at Vassar College. He is a specialist on the ancient theatre, and his many publications include The Comedian As Critic, The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy, and Euripides and Quotation Culture.

This talk will not be available on zoom and will not be recorded.