Professor Adrian Kelly

adrian kelly
Professor of Ancient Greek Literature
Tutorial Fellow in Ancient Greek Language and Literature, Balliol College
01865 277580
adrian.kelly@classics.ox.ac.uk

Qualifications: DPhil in Classical Languages and Literature

Link to college page: http://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/about-balliol/adrian-kelly

https://oxford.academia.edu/AdrianKelly

 

 

Academic Background

I did my undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Melbourne, before coming to Oxford in 1998 to do my DPhil under the supervision of Oliver Taplin. That thesis was examined by Malcolm Willcock and Bryan Hainsworth, and published by OUP in 2007. After my doctorate, I held teaching posts at Magdalen, St Anne’s and Balliol, and the Fulford Junior Research Fellowship at St Anne’s (2003–5), and was very briefly employed by the University of Warwick before returning to Balliol as a Tutorial Fellow in 2008. Recently, I have completed my commentary on Iliad Book XXIII for the Greek and Latin Classics series (CUP 2026), and I have also co-edited (with Patrick Finglass) the Cambridge Companion to Sappho (CUP 2021), (with Chris Metcalf) Divine Narratives in Early Greece and the Ancient Near East (CUP 2021), and (with Henry Spelman) Texts and Intertexts in Archaic and Classical Greece (CUP 2024).

 

Research Interests

I am primarily concerned with the function of tradition and the evolution of early Greek poetry from the 8th-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.

Research Keywords

Tradition, textuality, intertextuality, Greek epic, Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Stesichorus, lyric, epic, tragedy.

Teaching

Greek literature and language.

Publications

Full Publications: Prof Adrian Kelly full_list_of_publications.pdf

Selected Publications: