Jean Irigoin

Jean Irigoin (born November 8, 1920 in Aix-en-Provence , † January 28, 2006 in Paris ) was a French classical philologist . As a specialist in the history of transmission of Greek literature, he made a particular contribution to the textual criticism of the poets Pindar and Bakchylides .

Life

Jean Irigoin attended the Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague and studied at the Sorbonne , at the University of Aix-Marseille and at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris . His academic teachers included the Indo-Germanist Émile Benveniste , the Graecists Pierre Chantraine and Alphonse Dain, and the epigrapher Louis Robert . After graduation, Irigoin worked as a research assistant at the Center national de la recherche scientifique and at the Lexicon of the Early Greek Epic in Hamburg (1952/1953), which had been founded a few years earlier by Bruno Snell . During this time, Irigoin wrote two qualification papers, which appeared in 1952 and 1953.

From 1953 Irigoin was a lecturer at the University of Poitiers , where he was appointed professor of Greek language and literature in 1956. In 1965 he moved to the University of Paris-Nanterre as Professor of Greek Philology and in 1972 in the same capacity at the Sorbonne . In 1985 he accepted a professorship for Greek history and textual criticism ( tradition et critique des textes grecs ) at the Collège de France , where he worked until his retirement in 1992.

Jean Irigoin was married to the librarian Janine Garaud from 1954. The couple had two sons and two daughters.

Research work

Irigoin's research focused on the textual criticism and tradition of the Greek poets, above all the poets Pindar and Bakchylides . In his first monograph, Histoire du texte de Pindare , he examined the textual history of the Pindarian Odes from antiquity to the first printed editions. In particular in the area of ​​Byzantine manuscripts, whose relationship and dependency he largely clarified, he performed fundamental work. In 1953 and 1958 his monographs on the metrics of Greek choral poetry and the metrical Pindar scholia followed . His palaeographic and codicological expertise was also shown in the research report on Greek manuscripts that he wrote for the magazine Lustrum .

From 1964 to 1999 Irigoin was editor of the Greek series of the Budé Collection , in which critical editions of ancient texts appear with French translation and explanations. To structure the work of the staff in the series, Irigoin published a handout in 1972 under the title Règles et recommandations pour les éditions critiques . Although these “rules and recommendations” applied primarily to the Budé Collection, “they are also of fundamental importance for the edition of Greek texts”. Of Irigoin's other works, the critical edition of the Dithyramben , Epinikien and Fragments des Bakchylides (1993) should be mentioned. A selection from his numerous individual studies was published in an anthology under the title La Tradition des textes grecs. Pour une critique historique (2003).

From the 1960s on, Irigoin was also involved in international scientific associations. He was a member of the Advisory Board of the International Association of Paper Historians from 1963 to 1976 and was Vice President from 1976 to 1980. From 1965 he was co-editor of the codicological journal Scriptorium , from 1970 co-editor of the Revue d'histoire des textes and from 1986 to 1994 president of the Comité scientifique de l'Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes .

Awards

Irigoin has received numerous awards for its scientific achievements. He was a member of the Accademia Pontaniana (from 1975), the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (from 1981), the Academy of Athens (from 1983), the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen (from 1989), the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei ( from 1991) and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (from 1996). In 2002 he received the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and in 2003 an honorary doctorate in philosophy from the University of Athens .

He was also knight of the Legion of Honor , officer of the Ordre national du Mérite and Commandeur des Ordre des Palmes Académiques .

Fonts (selection)

• Histoire du texte de Pindare . Paris 1952
• Recherches sur les mètres de la lyrique chorale grecque: la structure du vers . Paris 1953
• Les scholies métriques de Pindare . Geneva 1958
• Règles et recommandations pour les éditions critiques . Paris 1972
• with Jacqueline Duchemin and Louis Bardollet: Bacchylide. Dithyrambes-Epinicies-Fragments . Paris 1993
• La tradition des textes grecs. Pour une critique historique . Paris 2003

Editing

• with Jacques Bompaire : La paleographie grecque et byzantine . Paris 1977
• La pratique des ordinateurs dans la critique des text . Paris 1979
• Tradition et critique des text grecs . Paris 1997

literature

• Jacques Jouanna : Allocution à l'occasion du décès de M. Jean Irigoin, membre de l'Académie . In: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres . 2006, pp. 229-233
• Brigitte Mondrain: Jean Irigoin (1920-2006) . In: École pratique des hautes études. Section des sciences historiques et philologiques . 21, 2005-2006 (2007), pp. 39-42 (with picture).
• Ernst Vogt : Obituary: Jean Irigoin . In: Bavarian Academy of Sciences, yearbook 2006 . Munich 2007, pp. 319–321 (with picture; PDF file ).

Web links

• Jean Irigoin at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (French)

Individual evidence

1. ^ The International Who's Who 2004 , p. 789.
2. ↑ Les Manuscrits Grecs 1931-1960 . In: Lustrum . 7th year, 1962 (1963), pp. 1–93; 332-335.
3. ^ Ernst Vogt: Obituary: Jean Irigoin . In: Bavarian Academy of Sciences, yearbook 2006 . Munich 2007, p. 320.