Andrew Laird - Detailed Homepage


Academic background and employment:

After receiving an MA in Literae Humaniores from Oxford University and an MA in Classics from King's College London, Andrew Laird wrote his doctorate in Oxford, under the supervision of Donald Russell and Don Fowler. He was Fellow by Examination at Magdalen College Oxford and then Lecturer in Latin with tenure at Newcastle University before moving to Warwick.

Andrew Laird has served as a Council Member of the Roman Society and as External Examiner for the University of Liverpool School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology and has examined doctoral dissertations in Classics and Spanish literature in the UK, US, Spain and Argentina. He has held visiting positions in Princeton, Claremont, Cincinnati, UW-Madison and in the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM). In November 2011 he gave the George B. Walsh Lecture at the University of Chicago and he will be visiting the Classics Department at Stanford in the Fall Quarter of 2012.

Current position:

Teaching:

Undergraduate courses cover topics Latin and Greek epic, imperial Roman literature, classical aesthetics, and the novel in antiquity. Subjects in classical literature and Latin humanism taught or supervised for MA or PhD research have included the history of grammar, commentary, Renaissance Latin sources for Milton's poetry and Latin Dido plays from Early Modern England and France. The interests of recent graduate students, including Ian Fielding and John Roberts, range from Latin love elegy, imperial Roman epic and the literature of late antiquity to Petrarch's Bucolicum Carmen and Latin commentary on Virgil in early modern Spain.

Research interests:

Andrew Laird's principal research field in Classics is Roman literature, but he has also published on some Greek authors, including Plato and Lucian. His first book, Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power (Oxford, 1999) drew attention to some fundamental philosophical, historical and ethical issues that are raised by the stylistic analysis of Greek and Latin texts. Other work (including two edited volumes with Oxford University Press) has been on the Roman novel, Latin epic, ancient and modern theory of literature and historiography, and the relation between fiction and philosophy in antiquity. A current project on early criticism of Virgil shows how his readers in antiquity conceived of the poet himself as the dramatic protagonist of the Aeneid. Future plans include a study of ancient biographies of the Roman poets and a commentary on Cicero's Pro Archia.

Andrew Laird's interests in Latin extend beyond Classics - to Italian humanism and other areas of Early Modern cultural history. Some of his work - including The Epic of America (London 2006) – has been devoted to opening up new avenues of research in the classical traditions of Latin America, particularly the relation between Latin writing, colonialism and ethnohistory. In 2007 he organised a Mellon-funded programme of workshops at the Newberry Library in Chicago to explore the multicultural intellectual history of colonial Spanish America.

Current Projects:

  • The Culture of Latin in Colonial Mexico: Creole humanism and native memory 1521-1810. This interdisciplinary project for a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship demonstrates the historical significance of the abundant Latin writing – poetry, oratory, ethnography, Aristotelian philosophy – that was produced in Mexico during the colonial period and highlights its important role in the interaction between European and Mesoamerican civilisations.
  • Latin text and English translation: Petrarca, Africa. The nine books of Petrach's renowned epic poem will be presented in two volumes with a substantial introduction, Contracted for I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press. In progress.
  • Lives of the Roman Poets: Ancient Criticism and the Myth of Biography (commencing 2012). Critical survey of the extant ancient biographies of Latin poets up to the second century AD to complement M. Lefkowitz, Lives of the Greek Poets (Duckworth1981). Latin testimonia will be examined in the light of comparable Greek sources, as well as in relation to ancient biographical convention and conceptions of the poet’s role, in order to show that the Latin ‘Lives’ can offer valuable insights on Roman views of poetry and modes of reading. Contract for Bloomsbury Academic.

Publications:

Books / Articles, essays and chapters / Short Articles and Book Reviews

Books

  1. Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power: Speech Presentation and Latin Literature OUP 1999. Oxford University Press 1999. ISBN 0 19 815276 0. 358pp. Monograph. [Reviewed: BMCR 2000, JACT Review 2000, American Journal of Philology 2001, Proceedings of the Virgil Society 2001, Rhetorica 2002, Journal of Roman Studies 2003, Classical Review 2003]
  2. A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, edited with A. Kahane, OUP 2001. ISBN 0 19 815238 8. 325pp. Variorum commentary with self-authored chapter, co-authored preface, Envoi, and concordance index.
  3. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Ancient Literary Criticism Oxford University Press 2006. ISBN 0 19 925865 1. 492pp. Edited volume: self-authored chapter (12,000 words), chronology, subject bibliographies and indices.
  4. The Epic of America: An Introduction to Rafael Landívar and the Rusticatio Mexicana Duckworth 2006. ISBN 0 7156 3281 7. 310pp. Monograph with essay studies and notes, annotated editions, translations and concordance index of Latin texts. [Reviewed TLS 26.1.07, JRS (97) 2007, BMCR 22.10.06]
  5. Italy and the Classical Tradition: Language, Thought and Poetry 1300-1600 edited with Carlo Caruso, Duckworth 2009. ISBN 0 7156 3737 1. 269pp. Co-authored chapter (12,000 words) and research bibliography. Contributors: Philip Burton, Jill Kraye, Giulio Lepschy, Martin McLaughlin, Hugo Tucker, Jonathan Usher, Claudia Villa, Nigel Wilson.
  6. The Role of Latin in the Early Modern World: Linguistic identity and nationalism 1350-1800. Renaessanceforum 8. Edited with Alejandro Coroleu and Carlo Caruso. Aarhus and Copenhagen: Forum for Renaissance Studies ISSN 902-5041. 2012 [www.renaessanceforum.dk/rf_8_2012.htm]

Articles, essays and chapters

Roman Literature:
  1. Person, persona, and representation in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, in: Materiali e Discussione (25) 1990, 129-64
  2. Sounding out Ecphrasis: Art and Text in Catullus 64, in: Journal of Roman Studies (83), 1993, 18-30
  3. Fiction, bewitchment and story worlds: Claims to truth in Apuleius, in: Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World ed. C. Gill and T.P. Wiseman, University of Exeter Press 1993, 147-74 [Essay reprinted in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism (84) 2006]
  4. Ut figura poesis: Writing art and the art of writing in Augustan poetry, in: Art and Text in Roman Culture ed. Jas Elsner CUP 1996, 75-102
  5. Description and divinity in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, in: Groningen Colloquia on the Novel (VIII) 1997, 59-85
  6. Approaching characterisation in Virgil, in: Cambridge Companion to Virgil ed. Charles Martindale CUP 1997, 283-93
  7. The Poetics and Afterlife of Virgil’s Descent to the Underworld: Servius, Dante, Fulgentius and the Culex, in: Proceedings of the Virgil Society (24) 2001, 49-80
  8. Authority and ontology of the Muses in epic reception, in: Cultivating the Muse: Struggles for Power and Inspiration in Classical Literature ed. E. Spentzou and Don P. Fowler, OUP 2002, 117-40
  9. Figures of Allegory from Homer to Latin Epic, in: Metaphor, Allegory and the Classical Tradition ed. George Boys-Stones, OUP 2003, 151-75
  10. Roman Epic Theatre? The poet in Virgil’s Aeneid, in: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (49) 2003, 19-39
  11. Metaphor and the riddle of representation in Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri, in: Ancient Narrative: Supplement 4, 2005, 225-44
  12. The Ars Poetica, in: The Cambridge Companion to Horace ed. S.J. Harrison, CUP, 2006, 132-43
  13. The True Nature of the Satyricon, in: Ancient Narrative: Supplement 8, 2007, 151-68
  14. Approaching rhetoric and style in ancient fiction, in: The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel ed. Tim Whitmarsh, CUP 2008, 201-17
  15. Virgil: Reception and the myth of biography, in: CentoPagine III 2009: 1-9 [http://www2.units.it/polymnia/centopagine09.php]
  16. The Rhetoric of Roman Historiography, in: The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians ed. Andrew Feldherr, CUP 2010, 197-213
Greek Literature:
  1. Ringing the Changes on Gyges: Philosophy and the Formation of Fiction in Plato’s Republic, in: Journal of Hellenic Studies (121) 2001, 12-29
  2. Fiction as a Discourse of Philosophy in Lucian’s Verae Historiae, in: The Ancient Novel and Beyond (ICAN 3) ed. Maaike Zimmerman, S. Panayotakis and W. Keulen, Brill 2003, 115-27.
  3. Death, politics, fiction, and vision in Plato’s Cave (After Saramago), in: Arion Winter: March 2003, 111-40 • Essay now reprinted in: Harold Bloom ed. Casebooks: José Saramago, Chelsea House Publications 2005, 121-44
Ancient and modern literary theory:
  1. Design and designation in Virgil’s Aeneid, Tacitus’ Annals and Michelangelo’s Conversion of Saint Paul, in: Intratextuality ed. A. Sharrock and H. Morales, OUP 2000, 143-70
  2. Philosophy, Fiction and Logical Closure, in: Classical Constructions: Papers in memory of Don Fowler, Classicist and Epicurean ed. S. Heyworth OUP 2007, 281-309
  3. Reception, in: Oxford Handbook to Roman Studies ed. Alessandro Barchiesi and Walter Scheidel, OUP 2010: 349-68
Latin humanism:
  1. Juan Luis De La Cerda, Virgil, and the Predicament of Commentary, in: The Classical Commentary ed. C. S. Kraus and R. Gibson, Brill 2002, 171-203
  2. Da Virgilio a Góngora: Istruzione e innovazione nel commentario di La Cerda, in: Studi Umanisitici Piceni: Atti dei Congressi (22) Sassoferrato 2002, 219-26
  3. La Alexandriada de Francisco Xavier Alegre: arcanis sua sensa figuris, in: Nova Tellus (21.2), 2003, 167-76
  4. Selenopolitanus: Diego José Abad, Latin, and Mexican identity, in: Studi Umanistici Piceni: Atti dei Congressi (24) Sassoferrato 2004, 231-7
  5. Politian’s Ambra and Reading Epic Didactically, in: Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre, Tradition and Individuality ed. Monica Gale, University Press of Wales, 2004, 27-47
  6. Allegories of colonialism in Rafael Landívar’s Rusticatio Mexicana, in:Grazer Beiträge: Supplementband 9, Vienna 2005, 146-55
  7. Renaissance Emblems and Aztec Glyphs. Italian Humanism and Mexico (I): 1520-1590, in: Studi Umanistici Piceni: Atti dei Congressi (26) Sassoferrato 2006, 227-39
  8. The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Birth of Latin Epic: Bernardo Ceinos de Riofrío’s Centonicum Virgilianum Monimentum, in: Mexico 1680: Cultural and Intellectual Life in the Barroco Indias ed. Jean Andrews and Alejandro Coroleu, Bristol University Press: HiPLAM, 2007, 199-220
  9. Metamorphosis andMestizaje: Ovid in New Spain, in: Latin and Vernacular in Renaissance Spain III ed. Alejandro Coroleu and Barry Taylor, Cañada Blanch Monographs, Manchester Spanish and Portuguese Monographs 2008, 135-45
  10. Pagan Symbols and Christian Images. Italian Humanism and Mexico (II): 1590-1750, in: Studi Umanistici Piceni: Atti dei Congressi (28) Sassoferrato 2008, 167-81
  11. Bartolo da Sassoferrato and the dominion of native Americans: The De debellandis indis and Las Casas' Apologia, in: Studi Umanistici Piceni: Atti dei Congressi (29) Sassoferrato 2009, 365-73
  12. Latin in Cuauhtémoc’s Shadow: Humanism and the politics of language in Mexico after the conquest, in: Latin and Alterity in the Early Modern World. Tempe, Az: Medieval and Renaissance texts and Studies ed. Yasmin Haskell and Juanita Ruys, 2010, 169-99.
  13. The Reinvention of Virgil's Wheel: The poet and his work from Dante to Petrarch, in: Classical Literary Careers and their Reception ed. Philip Hardie and Helen Moore Cambridge University Press 2010), 138-59
  14. The Aeneid from the Aztecs to the Dark Virgin: Virgil, native tradition and Latin poetry in colonial Mexico from Sahagún'sMemoriales to Villierías' Guadalupe (1724), in A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and its Tradition ed. Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell 2010), 217-38
  15. Migration und Ovids Exildichtung in der lateinishen Kultur Kolonialmexicos, in: 2000 Jahre Wiederkehr der Verbannung des Ovid: Exil und Literatur ed. Veronika Coroleu and Gerhard Petersmann (Horn/Salzburg: Berger 2011) 101-18 
  16. Aztec Latin, in: Studi Umanistici Piceni 31, 2011, 293-314
  17. Patriotism and the Rise of Latin in Eighteenth-Century New Spain: Disputes of the New World and the Jesuit constructions of a Mexican legacy, in: The Role of Latin in the Early Modern World: Latin, linguistic identity and nationalism 1350-1800. Renaessanceforum 7 ed. Alejandro Coroleu, Carlo Caruso and Andrew Laird. Aarhus and Copenhagen: Forum for Renaissance Studies 2012, 163-93 [www.renaessanceforum.dk/rf_8_2012.htm]
  18. Niccolò Perotti nel Nuovo Mundo: I Rudimenta grammatices e Cornu copiae nel Michoacan del XVI secolo, in: Studi Umnanistici Piceni 32, 2012, 51-70
  19. Franciscan humanism in post-conquest Mexico: Fray Cristóbal Cabreraʼs epigrams on classical and Renaissance authors (Vat. Lat. 1165), in Studi Umanistici Piceni 33 (2013)
  20. Enlightenment, Atomism and the Sublime: The Jesuit Latinists in Clavigero's circle, in: Lucretius in the European Enlightenment ed. Thomas Ahnert, Hannah Dawson and Michael Lurie, Oxford University Press forthcoming
  21. The New World, in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism ed. Jill Kraye, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming
  22. Latin America [chapter] in: Encylopedia of Neo-Latin Studies ed. Philip Ford, Charles Fantazzi and Arjan van Dijk, Leiden: Brill forthcoming

  23. The status of Latin, education and the indigenous nobility in sixteenth-century Mexico 1521-1600, in Latinity in the Post-Classical World ed. Oren Margolis and Graham Barrett, Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche-Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, 2014 forthcoming

Classical traditions and reception:
  1. Latin America, in: The Blackwell Companion to the Classical Tradition ed. Craig Kallendorf, Oxford 2006, 222-36
  2. The Cosmic Race and a heap of broken images: Mexico’s classical past and the modern creole imagination, in: Classics and National Cultures ed. Phiroze Vasunia and Susan Stephens, Oxford University Press, 2010, 163-81
  3. Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro), in: Der Neue Pauly Supplemente 7. Die Rezeption der antiken Literatur. Kulturhistorisches Weklexicon, ed. C. Walde, Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler 2010, 1108-30.
  4. Soltar las cadenas de las cosas: Las tradiciones clásicas de Latinoamérica, in: La influencia clásica en América Latina ed. Carla Bocchetti, Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2010, 8-23
  5. El patrimonio mexicano y la ideología en la cultura clásica del siglo XVI, in: Actualidad de los clásicos. III Congreso Internacional de Filología y Tradición Clásicas. <<Vicentina Antuña>> in memoriam ed. Elina Miranda Cancela and Gustavo Herrera Díaz, La Habana: UH Editorial, Cuba 2010, 54-60.

  6. Aztec and Roman Gods: Strategic uses of classical learning in Sahagún’s Historia general, in Altera Roma: Art and Empire from the Aztecs to New Spain, edited by John Pohl, Los Angeles: UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013/2014

  7. The teaching of Latin to the native nobility in Mexico in the mid-1500s: Contexts, methods and results, in: 'Learning me your language': Latin and Greek as second languages from antiquity to the present day ed. Jonathan Gnoza, Elizabeth Archibald and William Brockliss, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming

  8. Les Métamorphoses et le métissage religieux au Mexique colonial. L’influence d’Apulée dans l’écriture latine, espagnole et nahuatl 1540-1680, in: Actes du VIe Colloque Roman -­‐‑ La réception de l'ʹAncien Roman à la Renaissance et au début de lʹâge classique, Tours octobre 2011), ed. Cécile Bost, Richard Hillman and Bernard Pouderon, Lyon-­‐‑Paris: De Boccard (forthcoming).


Short Articles and Book Reviews

Classical Languages and Literature
  1. Speech Presentation for Oxford Classical Dictionary (Third Edition), 1996, 1434
  2. Freedom of Speech in Homer and Virgil’ Omnibus (40) September 2000, 27-9
  3. Emily Gowers, The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature, OUP 1991: Journal of Roman Studies (84) 1994, 198-9
  4. G.B. Conte (1996) The Hidden Author: An Interpretation of Petronius’ Satyricon, Berkeley/London: Journal of Roman Studies (88) 1998, 198-9
  5. Bers V. (1997) Speech in Speech: Studies in Incorporated Oratio Recta in Attic Drama and Oratory, Boulder and London: Classical Review 1999(49.2), 417-8
  6. Deborah Roberts, Francis Dunn and Don P. Fowler ed. Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature, Princeton 1997: Classical Review 1999 (49.2), 422-3
  7. J. Luque Moreno, De pedibus, de metris: Las unidades de medida en la rítmica y en la métrica antiguas, Granada 1995: Classical Review 1999 (49.2), 596
  8. Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric. A Foundation for Literary Study, trans. D.F. Orton and R.D. Anderson, Brill 1998:Classical Review 2000 (50.1), 313-14
  9. Don Fowler, Roman Constructions: Readings in Postmodern Latin OUP 2000: Classical Review 2003 (53), 244-6
  10. H.P. Stahl ed. Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context, Duckworth 1998: Classical Review 2003 (53), 100-2
  11. Speech Presentation, in: Oxford Classical Dictionary [Fourth Edition] ed. S. Hornblower, A.J.S. Spawforth and E. Eidinow, Oxford Univeristy Press 2012, 1392
Humanism and classical traditions:
  1. Michael Allen, Icastes: Marsilio Ficino’s Interpretation of Plato’s Sophist University of California Press 1989: Modern Language Review (86.4) October 1991, 1037-8
  2. T. Herrera Zapién, Historia del Humanismo Mexicano, UNAM Mexico 2000, and A. Higgins, Constructing the Criollo Archive: The Bibliotheca Mexicana and the Rusticatio Mexicana, Purdue Studies in Romance Literature 2000:Journal of Roman Studies (93), 2003, 45-7
  3. Gerardo Santana Henríquez, La tradición clásica en la literatura española e hispanoamericana (siglos XVIII-XX), Madrid 2008, in: Classical Review 2010 (60.1), 316-17
  4. Julia Haig Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and The Golden Ass: A Study in Transmission and Reception, Princeton 2008, in: The European Legacy 2010 (15.4), 507-8
  5. Latin American literature, in: The Virgil Encyclopedia ed. Richard Thomas and Jan Ziolkowski, Wiley Blackwell 2013, 729-31
  6. Bibliothecae (Hispanic), in: Encylopedia of Neo-Latin Studies ed. Philip Ford, Charles Fantazzi and Arjan van Dijk, Leiden: Brill 2013
  7. The Controversy of the Indies, in: Encylopedia of Neo-Latin Studies ed. Philip Ford, Charles Fantazzi and Arjan van Dijk, Leiden: Brill 2013
  8. Indigenous American Latin writers, in: Encylopedia of Neo-Latin Studies ed. Philip Ford, Charles Fantazzi and Arjan van Dijk, Leiden: Brill 2013
  9. New World Epic Writing, in Encylopedia of Neo-Latin Studies ed. Philip Ford, Charles Fantazzi and Arjan van Dijk, Leiden: Brill 2013

    Links

    reference and bibliography

    The Centre for Neo-Latin Studies at University College Cork hosts a well organised database of printed works in Latin by Irish authors (c. 1500-1800), which provided an exemplary demonstration of the importance of Latin writing for Early Modern cultural history.

    The Analytic Bibliography of On-Line Neo-Latin Texts
 compiled by Dana F. Sutton. This site now contains some 40,000 entries, indexed by author.

    Other links and events of interest

    • ISTITUTO DI STUDI PICENI 
Every year since 1980 the the Institute has organized the International Congress of Humanistic Studies, attended by scholars from all over the world.
    • Colloque Roman VI. La réception de l'Ancien Roman à la Renaissance et au début de l'âge classique, Université François-Rabelais, Tours 20-3 octobre 2011

    Contact Details

    Department of Classics and Ancient History
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL

    Tel (44) 2476 523023

    Email Andrew.Laird@warwick.ac.uk