Professor of Classics, University of Cambridge
What made the Greek and Roman Classics “classic”? Who decided? Was a decision even made? Are the surviving Classics “good”? Have we lost the best books ever written? Who decide what’s worth knowing? What makes something worth reading? And how can we avoid forgetting everything?
In the inaugural Pharos @ the Lamb & Flag event, classicist David Butterfield presents the a series of talks on how the classics of European literature became classic.
Filmed in February-March 2024, recordings will be released in May
The four lectures span these topics:
The birth of writing and the dawn of ‘literature’
The birth of the library and the idea of the ‘canon’
The birth of the monastery and the advent of ‘universities’
The re-birth of Classicism and the crisis of ‘modernity’
Dr David Butterfield is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University Cambridge, editor of the Classics journal Antigone, and literary editor of The Critic.