Dr Richard Rawles (BA, PhD)

Lecturer; Greek

Biography

Background

was born and brought up in Glasgow, but my BA and PhD are both from University College London (UCL); I am also particularly fond of the English Lake District.

Since completing my PhD I have taught at St Andrews, UCL, Edinburgh and Nottingham, and I am very pleased now to have returned to Scotland and to Edinburgh.

When not in my office or the library, I enjoy classical music and looking at wildlife and the company of Figaro, a ginger and white cat.

Responsibilities & affiliations

I have been invited to act as referee for a number of distinguished journals in Classics:

  • Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
  • Classical Quarterly
  • Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
  • Journal of Hellenic Studies, Ramus

Undergraduate teaching

My teaching, as my research, has focused on Greek language, literature and culture, but I have been known to dabble on the Roman side as well. At the moment, I am teaching Greek language and literature from beginners' to advanced levels, and contributing literature lectures for our interdisciplinary first year courses on Greek history and culture.

Postgraduate teaching

I shall be teaching a Greek reading course for our masters students this year, on Bacchylides.

Research summary

Places: 

  • Mediterranean

Themes: 

  • Ancient Civilisations
  • Culture
  • Ideas
  • Language & Literature
  • Society

Periods: 

  • Antiquity

Research interests

My main research interests are in the poetry of archaic, classical and Hellenistic Greece, especially archaic and early classical lyric and Hellenistic poetry.

I am interested in approaching early Greek poetry through its ancient reception, and in the relationship between drama and non-dramatic poetry. Poets of special interest include Simonides (especially!), Sappho, Ibycus, Callimachus, Theocritus; I have also published on both Aeschylus and Aristophanes.

Project activity

At the moment I am awaiting publication of my book Simonides the Poet: intertextuality and reception, in which I combine reading Simonides against traditions from earlier poetry with reading Simonides in the light of the rich tradition of ancient reception through stories and anecdotes about his life.

I am also writing a short book on Callimachus.

After that, I intend to develop a project about genre and intertextuality in early and classical Greek poetry.

The list below is a subset of the information held on the University of Edinburgh PURE system, and includes Books, Chapters, Articles and Conference contributions. For a full list, including details of other publication types (e.g. reviews), please see the Edinburgh Research Explorer page for Dr Richard Rawles.

Books - Authored

Rawles, R. (2019) Callimachus. London: Bloomsbury AcademicDOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474254892

Rawles, R. (2018) Simonides the Poet: Intertextuality and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316493816

Articles

Rawles, R. (2015) Lysimeleia (Thucydides 7.53, Theocritus 16.84): What Thucydides does not tell us about the Sicilian Expedition. The Journal of Hellenic Studies (JHS), 135, pp. 132-146DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426915000105

Chapters

Rawles, R. (2018) Simonides on tombs, and the 'tomb of Simonides'. In: Goldschmidt, N. and Graziosi, B. (eds.) Tombs of the Ancient Poets: Between Literary Reception and Material Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Rawles, R. (2018) Theoric song and the rhetoric of ritual in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women. In: Andújar, R., Coward, T. and Hadjimichael, T. (eds.) Paths of Song: the lyric dimension of Greek tragedy. Berlin : De Gruyter, pp. 221-238

Rawles, R. (2016) The Tattoo Elegy. In: Sider, D. (ed.) Hellenistic Poetry: A Selection. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 40-55DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.4748527

Rawles, R. and Natoli, B. (2013) Erotic lyric. In: Hubbard, T. (ed.) A Companion to Greco-Roman Sexualities. Oxford, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 335-351

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