Charles Martindale

Profile

Biography

Charles Martindale read Literae Humaniores at the University of Oxford, and subsequently took a B Phil in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature there; in 1991 he was awarded a doctorate by publication at the University of Bristol. He taught at the University of Sussex from 1974 to 1988, and then at the University of Bristol, where he was appointed Professor of Latin in 1992 and was from 2009 to 2013, Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He retired from Bristol in January 2013, and from September 2013 joined the York Department of English and Related Languages in a part-time capacity. He was a pioneer of what is sometimes called 'the new Latin'. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (1997), and has published widely on Latin poetry from Catullus to Juvenal and on English/Classics literary relations, with books on Milton and Shakespeare. Together with Sarah Annes Brown he has also edited Nicholas Rowe's classic translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (1998). He enjoys collaborative work, and has edited, or co-edited, 8 collections to date, the last being volume 3, 1660-1790, of The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. From 1993-6 he was Principal Investigator on a 3-year research project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust: 'Receptions of Rome in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries'. From 2002-4 he was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to write a monograph Latin Poetry and the Judgement of Taste arguing for the importance of beauty and the aesthetic in our response to the arts, subsequently published by OUP.

Research

Overview

Charles Martindale’s research interests are wide-ranging, but he is best known for his work on classical receptions and reception theory, and on Latin and English literary relations, including in particular Shakespeare's and Milton's engagement with antiquity. His book Redeeming the Text (CUP, 1993), on reception theory and the classics, helped to set the agenda for what has become the fastest growing area of the discipline He has also written widely on Latin poetry (Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Catullus, Lucretius), and has edited collections on the reception histories of the three great Augustan poets, Virgil and his Influence, Ovid Renewed, and Horace Made New. His work covers Classics, English, Comparative Literature, Critical Theory, and Aesthetics; other concerns include translation and translation theory, autobiographical writing and the personal voice, and theories of reading and criticism. Currently he is co-editing a collection Pater the Classicist: Classical Scholarship, Reception, Aesthetics, for Oxford University Press.

Supervision

Professor Martindale welcomes applications from prospective research students planning to work on topics related to any of the above areas. Examples of PhDs he has supervised are: Ovidian influences on English Literature; Virgil’s Presence in 20th-Century France; Landscape and the Eclogues; Catullus and his Reception.

External activities

Memberships

Professor Martindale is on the International Advisory Board of Classical Receptions Journal and on the Editorial Board of Societies. He is member of the Advisory Board for Classical Studies at I. B. Tauris.

In 2000 he was Stubbs Lecturer at the University of Toronto.

Editorial duties

He is co-editor of two series: with Duncan Kennedy and Shane Butler, of New Directions in Classics, published by I. B. Tauris, and, with Robert Fowler and Neville Morley, of The Bristol Blackwell Lectures in Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition, published by Wiley-Blackwell.

He regularly assesses projects for a number of publishers, including Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press.

Currently, together with Professor David Hopkins, he is general editor of the 5-volume Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, one of the largest projects in literary reception ever undertaken.