Angus M. Bowie

Angus Morton Bowie (born 1949) is a British academic, Emeritus Lobel fellow in Classics at The Queen's College, Oxford. His research interests include Homer, Herodotus, Greek lyric, tragedy and comedy, Virgil, Greek mythology, structuralism, narratology, and other theories of literature.

Biography

After attending St Peter's School, York, Bowie studied for his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, under the academic supervision of P. E. Easterling. He was employed as a Lecturer from 1976 at the Greek Department of the University of Liverpool for five years. He received his PhD in 1979 and moved to Queen's College, Oxford, in 1981. In 1987 he taught a semester at Berkeley. Apart from Lobel Fellow and Tutor in Classics (from Praelector to Associate Professor), he also served as Senior Tutor (1981–1987) and Fellow Librarian at The Queen's College, as Chair of the Faculty of Classics (2011–2014), and as Assessor of the University of Oxford for a year.

An international conference on Greek comedy in honour of Bowie took place in May 2017.^[1]

His younger brother, Andrew, is an academic philosopher.

On 4 May 2018, he delivered a eulogy at the funeral of his long-time partner, Peter Bayley, onetime Drapers Professor of French at the University of Cambridge.^[2]

Contributions

Bowie's first book (based on his doctoral thesis) addressed the relationship between the language of the Lesbian poets, Homer, and spoken Aeolic. He showed that the language of Sappho and Alcaeus was a true poetic diction, the traditions of which stem form a poetic Koine, and that the origins of this Koine are presumably to be sought back in the Mycenaean period at least.^[3]

His most influential book has been Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy (1993; reprinted in 1994, 1995, 1996, 2005; and translated into Modern Greek in 1999),^[4] in which he traces patterns from mythology, rituals, and rites of passage in the extant Aristophanic comedies (usually found in a reversed form than expected). In a decade when structuralism was seen as outdated and restrictive by classicists, and deconstruction was becoming more and more popular, this book contributed to a positive re-evaluation of structuralist approaches to literature. Later (and contemporary) scholarship in the field has confirmed that "Future studies of myth and ritual in Aristophanes and other poets of Old Comedy, will surely be indebted to Bowie's important first steps".^[5]

Bowie's Cambridge commentary on Herodotus is "particularly strong and up to date in its synthesis of historical and literary observations. In this sense his work outshines earlier, unsatisfactory English commentaries on Book 8".^[6] As for Odyssey XIII-XIV, also in the Cambridge 'green and yellow' series, "the text is Bowie's own, though he has not consulted the MSS. It is provided with a spare apparatus criticus. The bibliography is abundant and modern. The notes that accompany the commentary are exemplary. Bowie gives just the right amount of information, whether it is on the history of the word, or its usage, or background of a custom. Every so often he intersperses a prose summary of the text coming up, marvels of compression and lucidity."^[7]

Monographs and edited volumes

• (1981) The Poetic Dialect of Sappho and Alcaeus (New York).^[8]
• (1993) Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual, and Comedy (Cambridge; New York).^[9]
• (2004) with I. De Jong and R. Nünlist (eds.), Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden).^[10]
• (2007) Herodotus: Histories, Book VIII (Cambridge).^[11]
• (2013) Homer: Odyssey, Books XIII and XIV (Cambridge).^[12]
• (2019) Homer: Iliad, Book III (Cambridge).^[13]

Forthcoming:

• Homer: Iliad 21–24 (Greek and Latin Writers Series: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla and Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)^[14]

References

1. International Graduate Conference in Greek Comedy, 20–21 May 2017, Oxford, archived from the original on 1 June 2017, retrieved 16 May 2017
2. "Peter Bayley". Emmanuel College Magazine 2017–2018. p. 317.
3. Nagy, Gregory (1983). "Review of: The Poetic Dialect of Sappho and Alcaeus". Phoenix. doi:10.2307/1088955. JSTOR 1088955.
4. Modern Greek edition: ISBN 9607643941
5. Rosen, Ralph (1994). "Review of: Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN 1055-7660.. According to Google Scholar, the 1996 edition alone is cited by 369 (as in May 2017).
6. de Bakker, M. P. (2010). "Review of: Herodotus: Histories Book VIII". Mnemosyne. ISSN 0026-7074. JSTOR 25801893.
7. Powell, Barry (2014). "Review of: Homer: Odyssey, Books XIII and XIV". Classical Review. ISSN 0009-840X.
8. ISBN 0405140290. Liberman, Gauthier (1987). "Review of: The Poetic Dialect of Sappho and Alcaeus". Revue des Études Grecques. ISSN 0035-2039. | Führer, Rudolf (1984). "Review of: The Poetic Dialect of Sappho and Alcaeus". Gnomon. ISSN 0017-1417. JSTOR 27688698.
9. ISBN 0521440122 (1993); ISBN 0521575753 (1996).
10. ISBN 9004139273. Scodel, Ruth (2005). "Review of: Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature. Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN 1055-7660.
11. ISBN 9780521575713. Lateiner, Donald (10 April 2017). "Review of: Herodotus: Histories. Book VIII. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN 1055-7660.
12. ISBN 0521159385. Bostock, Robert (2 February 2015). "Review of: Homer: Odyssey, Books XIII and XIV". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN 1055-7660. | Morrison, James (2015). "Review of: Homer: Odyssey, Books XIII and XIV". Exemplaria Classica. ISSN 1699-3225.
13. ISBN 9781107063013.
14. "Epic Poetry Network – Research Projects". epic-poetry-network.com.

External links

• Profile on College website
• Profile on Faculty website, archived from the original on 7 July 2016, retrieved 31 March 2017
• Faculty's newsletter upon his retirement (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 8 June 2017, retrieved 31 March 2017