The History of Modern Classical Scholarship (Since 1750)
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 July 2015
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2015
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0199
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 July 2015
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2015
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0199
Introduction
The history of classical scholarship has multiple identities: it is an established, though often secondary, part of historically self-conscious scholarship, in terms of naming its traditions and genealogies; but it has also, especially alongside new research interests in the reception of Antiquity, claimed its place as a more fully reflective and theorized field that ought to be integral to classical studies themselves. Classical scholarship, its contexts, practices, and epistemologies, is itself a form of reception and thus open to investigation and interpretation. As a field of inquiry, the history of modern classical scholarship is multifaceted and multidisciplinary. It taps into the larger concerns of the history of scholarship and science and of disciplinarity in the modern research university; it encourages the meta-critical reflection of specific, historically conditioned practices, epistemologies, and ways of knowing; and it addresses, even if indirectly, the question of what forms of knowledge of Antiquity lie outside the confines of the discipline. Thus, the history of classical scholarship needs to draw on a wide range of methods and approaches, such as intellectual and cultural history, the history of institutions and of knowledge, as well as biography and prosopography—all facets which are represented in this bibliographical selection. This particularly tangled web is readily acknowledged as a quality of the world of the Early Modern Republic of Letters. The rise of modern classical scholarship, though, as an institutionalized, professionalized, and disciplined form of study from the middle of the 18th century coincided with the emergence of the national and the individual as the dominant paradigms for the interpretation of the self, of history, and of culture, ancient or modern. In consequence, histories of classical scholarship, its practices, and its practitioners have often been relatively compartmentalized. More recently, the interrogation of those categories and their boundaries (such as the national, institutional, or disciplinary) has led to revisionist and more interdisciplinary approaches. Many of the categories in this bibliography are thus mutually related: they are best understood as nodes in a network of approaches. After sections dealing with reference works and genres of general studies, such as a institutional histories or biographical approaches, the bibliography is broadly separated into sections that deal with national traditions, European and non-European; linking topics such as the transnational, migration and war, or politics; and finally disciplinary approaches, including subsections on specific disciplines. Many entries lead double lives, so to speak, in several sections. It is hoped that the structure is transparent enough to allow the reader further shakes of the kaleidoscope. In addition, the history of scholarship as a field of research has been dominated by the edited volume as a popular mode, which adds to the somewhat protean shape of the literature. The structure of this bibliography reflects this distribution of research and indicates certain hubs around which research interest has clustered to date (such as Germany, Victorian Britain, elite institutions, prosopography, or migration and politics). Throughout, particular emphasis has been put on cultural contextualization, as well as on suggesting, where possible, new avenues for conceptualization and theorization.
Reference Works
General reference works on the history of classical scholarship come in various formats, though predominantly with an unquestioned focus on individual scholars and their works as the basic taxonomic principle. Briggs 1994 and Todd 2004 are biographical dictionaries for the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively; Briggs and Calder 1990 has fewer but longer articles and covers international territory. Kuhlmann and Schneider 2014, the latest supplement to Brill’s New Pauly, is essentially also a European biographical dictionary, prefaced by some historical survey essays. Calder and Kramer 1992 and Calder and Smith 2000 are annotated bibliographic catalogues. Grafton, et al. 2010, on the classical tradition more generally, has both thematic and individual-focused entries regarding the history of classical scholarship. The searchable database of the Bibliotheca Academica Translationum is an innovative pilot-project for a reference tool that focuses on scholarly works and their reception.
Briggs, Ward W., Jr., ed. 1994. Biographical dictionary of North American classicists. Prepared under the auspices of the American Philological Association. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Short biographical entries with, importantly, full information on sources; appendices contain lists of subjects, of institutions represented, of last degree earned (and place), as well as a general bibliography on American classical scholarship.
Briggs, Ward W., Jr., and William M. Calder III, eds. 1990. Classical scholarship: A biographical encyclopedia. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities 928. New York: Garland.
Fifty detailed biographical essays on scholars mostly of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with close attention to their scholarly work as much as to their academic contexts and genealogies.
Calder, William M., III, and Daniel Kramer. 1992. An introductory bibliography to the history of classical scholarship chiefly in the XIXth and XXth centuries. Hildesheim, Germany: Olms.
Useful bibliographies, outspokenly annotated (though of its categories only monographs and edited volumes receive comments). The volumes are organized into general books and articles, and books and articles on institutions and individuals, a taxonomic reflection of this being essentially a catalogue of Calder’s expansive collection of literature on this field.
Calder, William M., III, and R. Scott Smith, eds. 2000. A supplementary bibliography to the history of classical scholarship chiefly in the XIXth and XXth centuries. Bari, Italy: Edizioni Dedalo.
The follow-up volume to Calder and Kramer 1992, maintaining the same structure and organization.
Classics Centre of the University of Oxford and Centre Louis Gernet Paris (CNRS/EHESS). Bibliotheca Academica Translationum.
Searchable database of (mostly) cross-European translations of scholarly writing on Greek and Roman Antiquity, especially of the 18th and 19th centuries (officially 1701–1917). Having originated in Oxford, the project is currently maintained at the EHESS in Paris. The site also has useful bibliographies on translation and cultural transfers.
Grafton, Anthony, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis, eds. 2010. The classical tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
A dictionary-style guide to the receptions of classical Greco-Roman Antiquity in later cultures in their full variety of forms, mediators, and media. Entries, both on individuals and thematic, vary from a few hundred to a few thousand words in length. Useful index.
Kuhlmann, Peter, and Helmuth Schneider, eds. 2014. Brill’s new Pauly supplements 6: The history of classical scholarship: A biographical dictionary. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Short biographical entries, international in orientation, together with some introductory historical essays.
Todd, Robert B., ed. 2004. The dictionary of British classicists. 3 vols. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Continuum.
Short biographical essays, supplemented with author bibliographies and further reading. Also contains a good general bibliography on British classics.
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- Academy, The
- Acropolis of Athens, The
- Aeschylus
- Aeschylus’s Oresteia
- Aesthetics, Greek and Roman
- Africa, Roman
- Agathias
- Agriculture in the Classical World
- Agriculture, Roman
- Alcibiades
- Alexander of Aphrodisias
- Alexander the Great
- Amicitia
- Ammianus Marcellinus
- Amyklaion
- Anatolian, Greek and
- Anaxagoras
- Ancient Classical Scholarship
- Ancient Greek and Latin Grammarians
- Ancient Greek Terracotta Sculpture
- Ancient Mediterranean Baths and Bathing
- Ancient Olympia
- Ancient Skepticism
- Ancient Thebes
- Antisthenes
- Antonines, The
- Aphrodite
- Apollodorus
- Apollonius of Rhodes
- Appendix Vergiliana
- Apuleius
- Apuleius's Platonism
- Ara Pacis Augustae
- Arabic “Theology of Aristotle”, The
- Aratus
- Archaeology, Greek
- Archaeology, Roman
- Archaic Latin
- Architecture, Etruscan
- Architecture, Greek
- Architecture, Roman
- Arena Spectacles
- Aristophanes
- Aristophanes’ Clouds
- Aristophanes’ Lysistrata
- Aristotle
- Aristotle, Ancient Commentators on
- Aristotle's Categories
- Aristotle's Ethics
- Aristotle's Metaphysics
- Aristotle's Philosophy of Mind
- Aristotle’s Physics
- Aristotle's Politics
- Art and Archaeology, Research Resources for Classical
- Art, Etruscan
- Art, Greek
- Art, Late Antique
- Artemis
- Asconius
- Athena
- Athenaeus of Naucratis
- Athenian Agora
- Athenian Economy
- Attic Middle Comic Fragments
- Augustine
- Augustus
- Aulularia, Plautus’s
- Aulus Gellius
- Ausonius
- Bacchylides
- Banking in the Roman World
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism in the Roman World
- Biography, Greek and Latin
- Birds, Aristophanes'
- Boethius
- Britain, Roman
- Bronze Age Aegean, Death and Burial in the
- Caecilius Statius
- Caere/Cerveteri
- Callimachus of Cyrene
- Carthage, Punic
- Casina, Plautus’s
- Cato the Censor
- Cato the Younger
- Catullus
- Christianity, Early
- Chronicles
- Cicero
- Cicero's Catilinarian Orations
- Cicero’s Philosophical Works
- Cicero's Pro Archia
- Cicero's Rhetorical Works
- Cicero's Speeches: Individual Speeches
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- Cities in the Roman World
- Classical Architecture in Europe and North America since 1...
- Classical Architecture in Renaissance and Early Modern Eur...
- Classical Art History, History of Scholarship of
- Classics and Cinema
- Classics and Dance
- Classics and Opera
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- Classics and the Victorians
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- Cleisthenes
- Cleopatra
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- Colonization in the Roman Empire
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- Corpus Tibullianum Book Three
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- Crete, Ancient
- Critias of Athens
- Death
- Death and Burial in the Roman Age
- Declamation
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- Demosthenes
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- Diodorus Siculus
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- Dionysus
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- Drama, Latin
- Economy, Roman
- Education
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- Emotions
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- Ennius
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- Epicureanism
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- Epigraphy, Greek
- Epigraphy, Latin
- Eratosthenes of Cyrene
- Etruscans
- Etymology, Greek Lexicon and
- Euripides
- Euripides' Alcestis
- Euripides’ Bacchae
- Euripides’ Electra
- Euripides' Orestes
- Euripides’ Trojan Women
- Fabius Pictor
- Family, Roman
- Federal States, Greek
- Festus
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- Flavian Literature
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- Frontiers of the Roman Empire
- Galen
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- Geography
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- Greek and Roman Logic
- Greek Colonization
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- Heritage Management
- Hermes
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- Herodotus
- Hesiod
- Historia Augusta
- Historiography, Greek
- Historiography, Latin
- History, Greek: Archaic to Classical Age
- History, Greek: Hellenistic
- History of Modern Classical Scholarship (Since 1750), The
- History, Roman: Early to the Republic
- History, Roman: Imperial, 31 BCE–284 CE
- History, Roman: Late Antiquity
- Homer
- Homeric Hymns
- Homo novus/New man
- Horace
- Horace's Epistles and Ars Poetica
- Horace’s Epodes
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- Indo-European, Greek and
- Indo-European, Latin and
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- Lactantius
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- Latin Paleography, Editing, and the Transmission of Classi...
- Latin Particles and Word Order
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- Law, Greek
- Law, Roman
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- Novel, The Greek
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- Orpheus and Orphism
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- Ovid’s Exile Poetry
- Ovid’s Love Poetry
- Ovid's Metamorphoses
- Painting, Greek
- Panaetius of Rhodes
- Panathenaic Festival, the
- Pantheon
- Papyrology: Literary and Documentary
- Parmenides
- Parthenon
- Parthian Empire, The
- Pausanias
- Performance Culture, Greek
- Perikles (Pericles)
- Petronius
- Philo of Alexandria
- Philodemus of Gadara
- Philoponus
- Philosophy, Dialectic in Ancient Greek and Roman
- Philosophy, Greek
- Philosophy of Language, Ancient
- Philosophy, Presocratic
- Philosophy, Roman
- Philostratus, Lucius Flavius
- Pindar
- Plato
- Plato’s Apology of Socrates
- Plato’s Crito
- Plato's Laws
- Plato’s Metaphysics
- Plato’s Phaedo
- Plato’s Philebus
- Plato’s Sophist
- Plato's Symposium
- Plato’s Theaetetus
- Plato's Timaeus
- Plautus
- Plautus’s Amphitruo
- Plautus’s Curculio
- Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus
- Pliny the Elder
- Pliny the Younger
- Plotinus
- Plutarch's Moralia
- Poetic Meter, Latin
- Poetry, Greek: Elegiac and Lyric
- Poetry, Greek: Iambos
- Poetry, Greek: Pre-Hellenistic
- Poetry, Latin: From the Beginnings through the End of the ...
- Poetry, Latin: Imperial
- Polis
- Political Philosophy, Greek and Roman
- Polybius
- Pompeii
- Porphyry
- Posidippus of Pella
- Posidonius
- Poverty in the Roman World
- Proclus
- Prometheus
- Prometheus, Aeschylus'
- Propertius
- Prosopography
- Protagoras
- Prudentius
- Pyrrho of Elis
- Pythagoreanism
- Quintilian
- Religion, Greek
- Religion, Roman
- Rhetoric, Greek
- Rhetoric, Latin
- Roman Agricultural Writers, The
- Roman Consulship, The
- Roman Italy, 4th Century bce to 3rd Century ce
- Roman Kingship
- Roman Legion, The
- Roman Patronage
- Roman Roads and Transport
- Sacrifice
- Sallust
- Samnites
- Samothrace
- Sappho
- Sardis, Ancient
- Scholia
- Science, Greek and Roman
- Sculpture, Etruscan
- Sculpture, Greek
- Sculpture, Roman
- Seneca the Elder
- Seneca the Younger's Philosophical Works
- Seneca’s Oedipus
- Seneca's Phaedra
- Seneca's Tragedies
- Severans, The
- Sexuality
- Silius Italicus
- Simplicius
- Slavery, Greek
- Slavery, Roman
- Socrates
- Solon
- Sophocles
- Sophocles’ Ajax
- Sophocles’ Antigone
- Sophocles’ Electra
- Sophocles’ Fragments
- Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus
- Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
- Sophocles’ Philoctetes
- Sophocles’ Trachiniae
- Sosipatra
- Spain, Roman
- Sparta
- Sport
- Statius
- Stesichorus of Himera
- Stoicism
- Strabo
- Suetonius
- Symposion, Greek
- Tacitus
- Technology, Greek and Roman
- Terence
- Terence’s Adelphoe
- Terence’s Eunuchus
- Tertullian
- The Sophists
- The Tabula Peutingeriana (Peutinger Map)
- Theater Production, Greek
- Theocritus of Syracuse
- Theoderic the Great and Ostrogothic Italy
- Theophrastus of Eresus
- Thucydides
- Tibullus
- Topography of Athens
- Topography of Rome
- Tragic Chorus, The
- Translation and Classical Reception
- Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature
- Valerius Flaccus
- Valerius Maximus
- Varro, Marcus Terentius
- Veii
- Velleius Paterculus
- Virgil
- Vitruvius
- Wall Painting, Etruscan
- Xenophanes
- Xenophon
- Zeno of Elea
- Zeus