Graduate Student, School of Languages and Literatures
Thesis Title: Valerius Maximus on Vice: A Commentary on Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium IX
|
Prof. David Wardle
|
About
For my doctoral research I am writing a commentary on book 9 of Valerius Maximus' Facta et Dicta Memorabilia, the only book of the work to have an unremitting focus on negative values. Apart from historical and literary commentary on the text of this first century A.D. writer, my dissertation will also include exegetical essays on the various vices covered in book 9, such as luxury, lust, cruelty, anger etc., contextualising them in Roman moral tradition and ancient ethical thought and literature in general.
My other main research interest is in the field of Classical Reception Studies, and particularly in the colonial and postcolonial periods of southern African history. Here my focus is on the reception of classical thought and literature in the history, literature, and education of a society as it moves from the colonial period (heavily influenced by European colonial powers) into the postcolonial period (characterised by an ever-increasing adoption of ‘African identity’).
