Mr Henner Petin

Research and Teaching

I predominantly teach the Greek language component for Mods in Classics, though I have an equal interest in a range of Greek literature papers, particularly tragedy and comedy as well as in research/writing technique and the theory and practice of translation.

For my DPhil project, entitled “Coping with the Arbitrary: the Challenges of Euripides’ Problem Plays” under joint supervision of Professor Constanze Güthenke and Professor Felix Budelmann (Groningen), I work on the perceived oddity of some of Euripides’ tragedies and the puzzlement still caused by it. In our grappling with tragic poetics provoked by such plays, I suggest that the concept of inevitability as a hallmark of tragedy can and ought to be balanced by a reappraisal of ‘the arbitrary’ as an equally if not more important concept in our reading and appreciation of tragedy.

As such, I have broader interests in the Athenian cultural and intellectual climate of the late 5^th century as well as in the long and complex afterlife of this period through the reception of tragedy in literature, theatre, opera and of course in scholarship. In previous projects, I worked on the anthropology of René Girard and the relationship between tragic poetics and his theory of mimetic rivalry.

As the Graduate Teaching Assistant, I am also Associate Director of the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus Christi.