Professor Adrian Kelly

BA MA Melb, DPhil Oxf
Professor of Ancient Greek Literature, Clarendon University Lecturer, Fellow and Tutor in Ancient Greek Language and Literature

Academic subject(s):

Classics
  • Core subject area: Classics (Literae Humaniores) and Joint Schools with Classics (Oriental Studies, Modern Languages).
  • Teaching: Homer, Hesiod, early Greek epic and lyric poetry, Athenian tragedy and comedy, Greek literature and culture of the 5th century BC. Recent graduate students have worked on a range of topics within the field of Greek literature, including an edition with commentary on the Batrachomyomachia, the divine assembly in Greek and Near Eastern texts from the Old Babylonian period into the first millennium BC, an edition with commentary of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the comparative literature of Greece and Egypt, and the concept of the daughter in early Greek epic poetry. 
  • Research interests: My research is primarily concerned with the function of tradition and the evolution of early Greek poetry from the 8th to 6th centuries BC, and the development of different notions of ‘text’ during that period. I also write on the relationship between Athenian tragedy and its society in the 5th century BC. I have recently completed a commentary on Iliad Book XXIII for Cambridge University Press, and I am planning to write a monograph on the depiction of violence in Archaic Greek literature.

Awarded OUSU Teaching Awards 2012 and 2016, and a JCR Teaching Award in 2012.

Departmental web page