Professor Tobias Reinhardt

prof tobias reinhardt
Corpus Christi Professor of the Latin Language and Literature
Fellow, Corpus Christi College and Chairman, Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources
01865 276704
tobias.reinhardt@classics.ox.ac.uk

Qualifications: Staatsexamen Frankfurt am Main 
MA DPhil Oxf

Link to college page: https://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk/Fellows/f/17/

https://oxford.academia.edu/TobiasReinhardt

 

Academic Background

I grew up in Germany and obtained my first degree at the University of Frankfurt. While I was a student, the work of two Oxford scholars caught my attention. It was because of them that I applied to Oxford for a place to do graduate work, and I was fortunate to end up being jointly supervised by them. After my doctorate I did a tour of Oxford: starting at Corpus, I went to Merton for a year as a Junior Research Fellow, was then Fellow and Tutor in Latin and Greek at Somerville for six years, and then returned to Corpus.

Research Interests

My research interests are in Latin prose, ancient rhetoric and literary criticism, Latin didactic poetry, the borderline area between classical literature and ancient philosophy, as well as Latin textual criticism. In my work I try to combine close philological analysis with broader interests in intellectual history and Greco-Roman culture. Among other things, I am interested in arguments, in the circumstances in which they count as good or relevant (e.g. public debate, philosophical discourse, legal casuistry), and in how they are expressed in Latin and Greek; in the way in which 'theory' (rhetorical, philosophical, legal) made an impact on real life, by informing attitudes on everyday matters and shaping the perception and solution of practical problems; and in the way in which philosophical and rhetorical doctrine was used to articulate traditional or intuitively held views and convictions. At the moment I am working on an edition and a commentary of Cicero's Academica (both for OUP).

Research Keywords

Latin literature, ancient philosophy, Latin textual criticism.

Teaching

I am happy to advise graduate students in my areas of interest and welcome approaches from prospective applicants.

Publications

Full Publications: professor_tobias_reinhardt_full_list_of_publications.pdf

Selected Publication:

  • Linguistic Naturalism in Cicero’s Academica.

    June 2019
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Language and Nature in the Classical Roman World

  • Exemplarity and its discontents: Hellenistic Jewish Wisdom texts and greco-roman didactic poetry

    January 2019
    |
    Journal article
    |
    Journal for the Study of Judaism
    © 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. This article sets up a dialogue between two bodies of ancient texts, i.e. Jewish wisdom literature and Greco-Roman didactic of the Hellenistic period, with an awareness of the scholarly and interpretive communities that have studied, taught and transformed these bodies of texts from antiquity until the present. The article does not claim direct influence or cross-pollination across intellectual, religious or social communities in the Hellenistic period. Instead, the article suggests four discrete frameworks for thinking about comparative antiquity: Creation, the law, the sage and literary form. The comparative model proposed here intends to create the conditions for noticing parallels and kindred concepts. However, the article resists the temptation to repeat earlier scholarly arguments for dependency or priority of influence. Instead, the essay demonstrates remarkable alignments, suggestively similar developments, and synergies. Perhaps, the ideal first reader for this article is none other than Philo of Alexandria.

  • Antiochus of Ascalon on Epistemology in the Academic Tradition

    January 2018
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Plato Latinus Actes des Diatribai de Gargnano

  • Pithana and Probabilia

    January 2018
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle

  • Cicero and Augustine on Grasping the Truth

    August 2016
    |
    Chapter
    |
    Philosophie in Rom - römische Philosophie? : Kultur-, literatur- und philosophiegeschichtliche Perspektiven
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