Brooks Otis

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Brooks Otis (born June 10, 1908 in Boston , † July 26, 1977 in Chapel Hill , North Carolina ) was an American classical philologist who emerged through fundamental work on Virgil and Ovid .

After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University in 1935 , he taught at Hobart College in Geneva (New York) until 1957 . From 1958 to 1970 he headed the Classics Department at Stanford University . He then taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until his death . In 1971 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Otis' teaching at Hobart College resulted in an extensive manuscript on the epic of the Augustan epoch, in which he examined how in Rome at a time when the belief in gods had lost its binding force and the literary large form of the epic no longer met the requirements of a refined style was fair, nevertheless great literature could arise in this area. His two important books on Virgil (1964) and Ovid (1966) emerged from the manuscript : In one, he describes Virgil's path from adopting the stylistic innovations of the neotericists , who were based on the Greek poets Callimachus and Theocritus , to a tremendous one psychological compression and deepening of the epic material. In the second book he deals with Ovid's ironization of myth.

Although Otis considers the questionable behavior of Aeneas at the end of the Aeneid (he kills his opponent, who begs for protection), unlike other interpreters, to be justified and certifies Aeneas to have his passions under control at this point in time, the ancients' attitude towards life is for fundamentally tragic , insofar as the affects are ultimately viewed as uncontrollable. The tragedians as well as later Christian thinkers are concerned with The Transcendence of Tragedy , the title of another large manuscript from which his posthumously (1981) published book Cosmos & Tragedy: An Essay on the Meaning of Aeschylus emerged .

Otis had the most lasting effect with the distinction made in Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry between a Virgilian “ Odyssey ” (books I to VI of the Aeneid with the “wanderings” of Aeneas, which Aeneas told at the court of Dido like the Homeric Odysseus his at the court of the Phaeacians ) and " Iliad " (books VII to XII with the battles after Aeneas' landing in Latium and the conflict with Turnus, which is modeled on that of Achilles and Hector in Homer).

Fonts

  • De Lactantii qui dicitur Narrationibus Ovidianis , Diss. Harvard 1935; partly printed under dems. Title in: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 40 (1935), pp. 209-211, and as The Arguments of the So-called Lactantius , in: ibid. 41 (1936), pp. 131-163.
  • Ovid and the Augustans . In: Transactions of the American Philological Association 69 (1938), pp. 188-229; German Ovids love seals and the Augustan time , trans. Ruth von Albrecht, in: M. von Albrecht and E. Zinn (ed.): Ovid . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1968 (= ways of research 92), pp. 233-254.
  • Horace and the Elegists . In: Transactions of the American Philological Association, 76 (1945), pp. 177-190.
  • Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System . In: Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958), pp. 95-124.
  • The Unity of the Seven Against Thebes . In: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 3 (1960), pp. 153-174.
  • The Throne and the Mountain . In: The Classical Journal 56 (1961), pp. 146-165 (about Gregor von Nazianz ).
  • Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1964.
  • Propertius' single book . In: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 70 (1965), pp. 1-44.
  • Ovid as to Epic Poet . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1966; 2nd edition 1970 with rewritten final chapter.
  • The Uniqueness of Latin Literature . In: Arion 6 (1967), pp. 185-206.
  • The Originality of the Aeneid . In: DR Dudley (Ed.): Virgil . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1969, pp. 27-66.
  • The Relevance of Horace . In: Arion 9 (1970), pp. 145-174.
  • A New Study of the Georgics . In: Phoenix 26 (1972), pp. 40-62.
  • Virgilian Narrative in the Light of Its Precursors and Successors . In: Studies in Philology 73 (1976), pp. 1-28.
  • Cosmos & Tragedy: An Essay on the Meaning of Aeschylus , Ed. E. Christian Kopff. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1981.

Web links

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  1. ↑ For the biographical information on Otis and those on the creation of his main works, see their forewords.
personal data
SURNAME Otis, Brooks
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American classical philologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1977
Place of death Chapel Hill , North Carolina