Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood

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Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood , Greek Χριστιάνα Σουρβίνου-Ίνγουντ (born February 26, 1945 in Volos ; † May 19, 2007 ) was a Greek Graecist and historian of religion in the field of ancient Greek religion .

Life

Sourvinou was born in Volos in 1945 , but grew up in Corfu . Her father was a high officer in the Greek army, her mother an economics teacher and later headmaster. The family then moved to Athens, where Sourvinou studied Classical Archeology with the excavator of Santorini , Spyridon Marinatos . In 1966 she finished her studies as the best of her year and began to work on the linear font B in Athens and then in Rome . In 1969 she came to Great Britain and, after a short stay in Birmingham , enrolled for a D.Phil. in Oxford . In 1973 she received her doctorate there with a dissertation on Minoan and Mycenaean concepts of the afterlife.

She then lived continuously in Oxford, but could not acquire a permanent position there. From 1976 to 1978 she was lecturer in ancient history and classical archeology in Liverpool , from 1989 an honorary research fellow and from 1990 to 1995 a senior research fellow at University College , Oxford , and from 1995 to 1998 reader in classical philology at the University of Reading . In 1994 she was invited to give the Carl Newell Jackson Lectures at Harvard University, which resulted in her book Tragedy and Athenian Religion (2003). Otherwise she lived and worked as a private scholar (independent scholar) .

After a first short marriage with the Belgian mycenaeologist Jean-Pierre Olivier , Sourvinou married the philosopher Michael Inwood in 1971 . She died unexpectedly at the age of 62 of an undetected cancer. She bequeathed her private library to the Ionian University in Corfu.

Under the pseudonym Christiana Elfwood ( Greek Χριστιάνα Έλφγουντ ) she wrote detective novels in addition to her scientific work, including Murder Most Classical , the location of which is the ancient sanctuary of Artemis von Brauron .

Research priorities

Sourvinou worked mainly on Greek religion and mythology , in particular on sanctuaries, rites , rites de passage (the arkteia as part of the Artemis cult), festivals ( Plynteria , Panathenaia , Dionysia ) and mythology ( Theseus , Aglauros , Erechtheus ) of the city of Athens and the Landscape Attica and Attic tragedy . She combines the methodology of structuralism with precise interpretation of literary, archaeological and artistic evidence (hence the term reading in two of her book titles). Cultural products such as texts, images, myths and rituals are in need of interpretation for them; they have to be decoded as symbols . Sourvinou-Inwood is particularly known for the model of the Polis religion she developed.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • Minoan and Mycenaean Afterlife Beliefs and Their Relevance to the Homeric Underworld. University of Oxford, 1974.
  • Theseus as son and stepson. A tentative illustration of Greek mythological mentality (= Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Suppl. 40). University of London, London 1989. - Review by Claude Bérard, Gnomon 52, 1980, pp. 616-620; Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, Revue de l'histoire des religions 199, 1982, p. 438, (online) .
  • Studies in girls' transitions. Aspects of the arkteia and age representation in Attic iconography. A. Kardamitsa, Athens 1988.
  • 'Reading' Greek death to the end of the classical period. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1995, excerpts online .
  • Tragedy and Athenian religion. Lexington Books, Lanham, MD 2003, ISBN 0-7391-0399-7 , excerpts online . - The Carl Newell Jackson lectures that she gave at Harvard in 1994. - Review by Charles Delattre, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2003-09-33
  • Hylas, the Nymphs, Dionysus and Others. Myth, ritual, ethnicity. Svenska Institutet i Athens, Stockholm 2005 (Martin P. Nilsson Lecture on Greek Religion, delivered 1997 at the Swedish Institute at Athens), table of contents . - Review by Sébastien Dalmon, Kernos 20, 2007, pp. 432-436, (online) .
  • Athenian myths and festivals. Aglauros, Erechtheus, Plynteria, Panathenaia, Dionysia. Edited by Robert Parker. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011, table of contents . - Review by Jenifer Neils, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2012.03.26 ; Bernhard Smarczyk, sehepunkte 12, 2012, No. 10, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood: Athenian Myths and Festivals from October 15, 2012.

Collected Essays

  • 'Reading' Greek culture. Texts and images, rituals and myths. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-814750-3 . - Review by Judith M. Barringer, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 04/03/14 ; Gerhard J. Baudy , Gnomon 66, 1994, pp. 484-492, (JStor online) ; Helen King, Journal of Hellenic Studies 113, 1993, 202.

Essays

  • Medea at a Shifting Distance. Images and Euripidean Tragedy. In: James J. Clauss, Sarah I. Johnston (Eds.): Medea. Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1997, ISBN 0-691-04376-0 , pp. 253-296.
  • Myths in Images. Theseus and Medea as a case study. In: Lowell Edmunds (Ed.): Approaches to Greek Myth. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, London 1990, pp. 395-445, (online) .
  • What Is Polis Religion? In: Oswyn Murray , Simon Price (Eds.), The Greek City from Homer to Alexander. Oxford UP, Oxford 1990, 295–322, reprinted in: Richard GA Buxton (Ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Religion. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000.

Detective novel

  • Murder Most Classical. Vanguard Press, London 2007.
    • Modern Greek translation: Ενας Πολύ Κλασικός Φόνος. Μετάφραση: Ελένη Καπετανάκη. Εκδοτικός Οίκος Α. Α. Λιβάνη, Athens 2003.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sourvinou, Christiane; Σουρβίνου-Ίνγουντ, Χριστιάνα (Modern Greek); Elfwood, Christiana (pseudonym); Έλφγουντ, Χριστιάνα (pseudonym, modern Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek Graecist and historian of religion
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Volos
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 2007