Charles Segal

Charles Paul Segal (born March 19, 1936 in Boston , Massachusetts , † January 1, 2002 ibid) was an American classical philologist .

Life

Segal attended the Boston Latin School and studied Classical Philology at Harvard . His exam in 1957 received the grade "summa cum laude". In 1961 he was awarded a Ph.D. Phi Beta Kappa academic community . 1964–67 Segal was Professor at the University of Pennsylvania , 1968–86 at Brown University , 1987–90 at Princeton University . In 1990 he followed a call to Harvard as Walter C. Klein Professor of Classical Philology. He was visiting professor at the Universities of Columbia and Brandeis , as well as the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the Ecole Normale Superieure.

His specialty was the interpretation of ancient literature, especially Greek tragedy and Greek and Roman epic and lyric poetry, in the methodical application of structuralism . He also dealt with contemporary literary criticism. His writings on Euripides , Sophocles , Lucretius , the Odyssey , Bukolik , Orpheus and others were translated into many languages ​​and found worldwide distribution.

Before he could finish a pamphlet on Ovid's Metamorphoses , he died after a long illness on New Year's Day 2002. He was survived by his widow Nancy Jones Segal, two children and two grandchildren. His colleague Richard F. Thomas , professor and chairman of the Classics Department at Harvard University, described Segal in an obituary as the most intelligent and educated literary scholar of the 20th century.

Segal was a member of the Fulbright Commission , Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation , the National Endowment for the Humanities , the National Humanities Center , the American Academy in Rome (whose Prix ​​de Rome he received), and the Center for Hellenic Studies . In 1992 he was elected a full member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1994 he was president of the American Philological Association .

Fonts (selection)

• Reason, Emotion, and Society in the Sophists and Democritus . Unpublished dissertation, Harvard 1961
• Landscape in Ovid's Metamorphoses. A Study in the Transformations of a Literary Symbol . Wiesbaden 1969 ( Hermes. Individual writings 23)
• The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad . Leiden 1971
• Poetry and Myth in Ancient Pastoral. Essays on Theocritus and Virgil . Princeton 1981
• Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' Bacchae . Princeton 1982. 2nd edition 1997
• Interpreting Greek Tragedy. Myth, poetry, text . Ithaca 1986
  • French translation by C. Malamoud and MP Gruenais: La Musique du Sphinx. Poésie et structure dans la tragédie grecque . Paris 1987
• Language and Desire in Seneca's Phaedra . Princeton 1986
• Pindar's Mythmaking. The Fourth Pythian Ode . Princeton 1986
• Orpheus. The Myth of the Poet . Baltimore 1989
• Lucretius on Death and Anxiety. Poetry and Philosophy in De rerum natura . Princeton 1990
• Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow. Art, Gender, and Commemoration in Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Hecuba . Durham 1993
• Oedipus Tyrannus. Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge . London / New York 1993. 2nd edition 2001
• Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey . Ithaca 1994
• Sophocles' Tragic World. Divinity, Nature, Society . Cambridge 1995
• Aglaia. The Poetry of Alcman, Sappho, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Corinna . Lanham / Oxford 1998
• Tragedy and Civilization. An Interpretation of Sophocles . Norman 1999

Web links

• Entry on Charles Segal in the Database of Classical Scholars (English)
• Literature by Charles Segal in the catalog of the German National Library
• Obituary in the Harvard Gazette, 2002 (English)
• Memorial Minute in the Harvard Gazette, 2009 (English, with photograph)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted in the obituary of the Harvard Gazette, 2002 ( Memento of May 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (see web links)