Prof. Michael Clarke

Established Professor of Classics

On research leave September 2012–August 2013.
E-mail: michael.clarkenuigalway.ie

Classics for me has been "a hobby that got out of hand" - from an early fascination with mythology and ancient languages, I became a specialist in ancient Greek epic and finally returned to an approach rooted in cross-cultural comparison, setting Classical and medieval materials alongside each other. I was born in Dun Laoghaire and I love coastal places and the sea, and my wife Niamh and I are kept busy by three young sons, Sean (5), Cormac (3) and Brian (1).

I have been Professor of Classics at NUI Galway since 2007, and I have worked with my colleagues to orient the discipline towards the North, the barbarian world, and the Christian Middle Ages - three complementary directions that may help to make the ancient inheritance meaningful in new ways for in the twenty-first century. I am now following on from Dr Mark Stansbury as Co-ordinating Director of CAMPS, the University's Centre for Antique, Medieval and Pre-Modern Studies, which works under the umbrella of the Moore Institute to share and enhance individual research and collaborative projects among colleagues from many disciplines with an interest in this broadly-defined area (see http://www.nuigalway.ie/camps).

My specialist research interests lie in two complementary areas, historical linguistics and ancient and medieval heroic literature. Both are in my first book Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer, where the main text is concerned with the world-picture of early Greek epic poetry and the footnotes try to trace the shifting meanings of  words. Since then, my linguistic interests have focussed on semantic change, prototype theory, and lexical reconstruction. This work was supported by a Government of Ireland Research Fellowship (2000-1), and has being applied in a series of lexical studies in Greek, Latin, Irish and English. My literary work on heroic traditions has led me to a special interest in Middle Irish recreations of Greek mythology and pseudo-history, focussing on the unpublished third recension of Togail Troí­, the Irish rendering of the Trojan War. I am continuing to publish article-length studies on this and related texts, while working when time allows on an edition and translation based on the two fifteenth-century manuscripts. 

Select publications

Books

Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer: a Study of Words and Myths (Oxford University Press, 1999)

Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil and the Epic Tradition, edited by Michael Clarke, Bruno Currie and Oliver Lyne (Oxford University Press, 2006)

Translating Emotion, edited by Michael Clarke and K.M. Shields (Peter Lang Publications, 2011)

Articles in journals

'Between lions and men: an image in the Iliad', Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 36 (1995) 137-59

'The wisdom of Thales and the problem of the word hieros', Classical Quarterly 45 (1995) 296- 317

' Pinusko and its cognates: a problem in Simonides, fr. 508 PMG', Glotta 74 (1998) 135-142

'Thrice-ploughed woe: Sophocles, Antigone 859', Classical Quarterly 51 (2001) 368-374

' "Heart-cutting talk": Homeric kertomeo and related words', Classical Quarterly 51 (2001) 329-338

'An ox-fronted river-god (Sophocles, Trachiniae 13-14)', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 102 (2004) 97-112 [published February 2006]

Contributions to Festschrift collections

'Aeschylus on mud and dust', Hermathena 158 (1995) 7-26 (in commemorative volume for A.E. Hinds)

'Etymology in the semantic reconstruction of early Greek words', Hermathena 179 (2005) 13-38 (in commemorative volume for J.M. Dillon)

Chapters in multi-authored books

'Gods and mountains in Greek myth and poetry', in A.B. Lloyd (ed.), What is a God? (Duckworth, 1997), 65-80

'Spartan ate at Thermopylae? Semantics and ideology at Herodotus, Histories 7.223.4', in A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (eds.), Sparta Beyond the Mirage (Duckworth, 2002), 63-84

'The semantics of colour in the early Greek word-hoard', in K. Stears and L. Cleland (eds.), Colours in the Ancient Mediterranean World (British Archaeological Reports, 2004), 131-9

'Manhood and heroism', in R. Fowler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Homer (Cambridge, 2004), 75-90

'An focal fileata: O Hoimear go dti­ an Winding Stair Cafe', i m Bliainiris 2003, in eagar ag R. O hUiginn agus L. Mac Coil (Clo Carbad, Baile Atha Cliath, 2004)

'On the semantics of early Greek smiles', in D. Cairns (ed.), Body Language in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Duckworth, 2005), 37-54

'Achilles, Cu Chulainn, Byrhtnoth: from Homer to the medieval North', in Epic Interactions (see above)

'Snowy Helen and bull-faced wine: Ion and the language of poetry', in A. Katsaros and V. Jennings (eds.), Ion of Chios (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 2007)

'An Irish Achilles and a Greek Cu Chulainn', in R. O hUiginn, M. Ni­ Bhrolchain and B. O Cathain, eds., Ulidia II: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Ulster Cycle (Maynooth, 2008), 238-51 

'Semantics and vocabulary', in E. Bakker, ed., Blackwells Companion to the Ancient Greek Language (Blackwell, 2009), 160-182

'Translation and transformation: a case study from medieval Irish and English', in Translating Emotion (2011, see above)

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility