Geoffrey S. Kirk

Geoffrey Stephen Kirk (born December 3, 1921 in Nottingham , † March 10, 2003 in Cambridge ) was a British classical philologist .

Life

Geoffrey Kirk attended Rossall School and then studied at Clare College , Cambridge . The Second World War interrupted his studies: Kirk joined the Royal Navy in 1941, and a year later he was employed as an officer in the Aegean Sea . He supported the partisan movement on several Greek islands and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1945. After the war he resumed his studies and graduated with a master's degree in 1946 .

From 1946 Kirk Research Fellow at Trinity Hall (Cambridge). From 1949 to 1950 he was a Commonwealth Fund Fellow at Harvard University . He was then appointed Fellow and Director of Classical Studies at Trinity Hall. In 1959 he was elected a member of the British Academy , and in 1961 he was appointed Reader in Greek at Cambridge. From 1965 to 1970 he held a chair in Classical Philology at Harvard University. In 1968/1969 he was a Sather Professor at the University of California, Berkeley . In 1971, Kirk went to Bristol University as Professor of Classics . In 1974 he returned to Cambridge, where he was appointed 35th holder of the Regius Chair of Greek . In 1982 he retired .

Geoffrey S. Kirk dealt with the Homeric epic, with the philosophy of the pre-Socratics and especially with the Greek myth . He examined the meaning and function of myths in Greek culture and literature, drawing on the myths of other cultures as well. In the Homeric epics he primarily examined the poetological and narrative structures and incorporated the concepts of orality and written form. His six-volume commentary on the Iliad is an old work . In addition, Kirk also published writings on Greek poetry and tragedy.

Fonts (selection)

• Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments . Cambridge 1954. New edition with improvements, London 1962
• with John E. Raven : The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts . 1957. Second, revised edition with Malcolm Schofield, 1984
  • German translation by Karlheinz Hülser : The pre-Socratic philosophers. Introduction, texts and comments . Stuttgart 1994. Study edition Stuttgart 2001
• The Songs of Homer . Cambridge 1962. Revised new edition entitled: Homer and the Epic . Cambridge 1965
• The Bacchae by Euripides. A Translation with Commentary . Englewood Cliffs (NJ) 1970
• Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures . Los Angeles / Berkeley 1970
• The Nature of Greek Myths . Harmondsworth 1974
  • German translation by Renate Schein: Greek myths: their meaning and function . Berlin 1980. Reinbek 1987
• Homer and the Oral Tradition . Cambridge 1976
• with Michael Ayrton: Archilochos . London 1977
• The Iliad: A Commentary . Six volumes, Cambridge 1985-1993
• Towards the Aegaean Sea: A Wartime Memoir . Upton upon Severn 1997

literature

• Hugh Lloyd-Jones : Geoffrey Stephen Kirk . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . Volume 124 (2004), pp. 141-148

Web links

• Literature by Geoffrey S. Kirk in the catalog of the German National Library