Eric Robertson Dodds

Eric Robertson Dodds

Eric Robertson Dodds (born July 26, 1893 in Banbridge , † April 8, 1979 ), known as ER Dodds , was an Irish classical scholar .

Live and act

Dodds was born the son of a school teacher in County Down. His father, Robert Dodds, came from a Presbyterian family and died of alcoholism when he was seven years old. His mother, Anne, was of Anglo-Irish descent. He moved to Dublin with his mother at the age of ten and was educated at St. Andrew's College , where his mother taught, and at Campbell College in Belfast . In 1912, Dodds received a scholarship at University College in Oxford to the Literae humaniores this two-part, four-year study to complete. It consisted of five semesters of studying classical Latin and Greek texts, followed by seven semesters of studying ancient history and philosophy. Since 1924 he held the chair of Greek at the University of Birmingham , since 1936 he was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford . In 1942 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy . In 1961 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1956 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

His main work is the book The Greeks and the Irrational . One of his students was AWH Adkins .

Works (selection)

• Thirty-Two Poems: With a Note On Unprofessional Poetry (1929)
• Why I Do Not Believe in Survival (1934)
• Humanism and Technique in Greek Studies (1936)
• Maenadism in the Bacchae (1940)
• Minds in the Making (1941)
• The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), German The Greeks and the Irrational , Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1970, ISBN 3-534-04342-1 .
• Morals and Politics in the Oresteia (1960)
• Classical Teaching in an Altered Climate (1964)
• Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (1965), German by Hinrich Fink-Eitel, Heiden and Christians in an Age of Anxiety, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985.
• Supernormal Phenomena in Classical Antiquity (1971)
• The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (1973), German by Kristine Morgenthaler, Der Progressthanke der Antike and other essays on Greek literature and beliefs , Artemis Verlag, Zurich 1977.
• Missing Persons: An Autobiography (1977)

literature

• Hugh Lloyd-Jones : Eric Robertson Dodds † . In: Gnomon , Volume 52 (1980). Pp. 78-83.
• Member entry by Eric Robertson Dodds (with a link to an obituary by Ernst Vogt from 1980) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 26, 2017.
• DAFM Russell: Eric Robertson Dodds, 1893-1979. In: Proceedings of the British Academy Volume LXVII, 1981.
• Stephen Harrison , Christopher Pelling , Christopher Stray : Rediscovering ER Dodds: scholarship, poetry and the paranormal. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2019.

Web links

• Literature by and about Eric Robertson Dodds in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hugh Lloyd-Jones: Gnomon. 52. Vol., CH Beck, Munich 1980, pp. 78-83, Eric Robertson Dodds

predecessor	Office	successor
Gilbert Murray	Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University 1936–1960	Hugh Lloyd-Jones