Rosen, Ralph
Loading...
Email Address
ORCID
Disciplines
Classics
relationships.isProjectOf
relationships.isOrgUnitOf
Position
Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of Classical Studies
Introduction
Ralph M. Rosen (B.A. in Greek and Latin, Swarthmore College, 1977; MA, PhD in Classical Philology, Harvard University, 1983) is the Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His scholarly interests lie broadly in Greek and Roman literature and intellectual history, with particular focus on ancient comic and satirical poetic genres. He has published widely on archaic and classical Greek poetry, and has recently completed a new book about ancient poetic mockery and satire (Making Mockery: The Poetics of Ancient Satire, forthcoming Oxford University Press, 2007). Other interests within Classical Studies include ancient medicine and philosophy; much of his current work concerns the Hippocratic tradition and the 2nd-C C.E. medical writer, Galen.
Research Interests
Collection
40 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 40
Publication Comic Aischrology and the Urbanization of Agroikia(2006-01-01) Rosen, Ralph MIn the preceding chapter, Helen Cullyer has lucidly shown just how complex, even contradictory, the concept of agroikia was in ancient Greek culture. On the one hand, the harsh realities of a rural life in antiquity often gave rise to the notion that agroikoi were perennially dyspeptic and incapable of experiencing pleasure; on the other hand, lacking the kind of education and socialization of their urban counterparts, the agroikos was often conceptualized as lacking self-control and so prone to vices of an opposite kind, such as unrestrained indulgence in bodily pleasures or shameful speech. Cullyer is certainly correct, therefore, to see agroikia as a multivalent term that could connote quite different things depending on who was using it, and for what purpose. But one point is perfectly clear: whether the agroikos was conceptualized as a pleasure-seeking rustic boor, or a humorless misanthrope broken by the harshness of rural life, the term itself was rarely actively positive. The word belongs predominantly to the vocabulary of opprobrium and mockery, especially, as Cullyer has shown, among ancient ethicists such as Aristotle and Theophrastus, who found little philosophically or aesthetically appealing about a rustic life.Publication Performance and Textuality in Aristophanes' Clouds(1997) Rosen, Ralph MDuring the 5th century BCE Athenians honored the god Dionysus at two public events with ritual activity, political business and public spectacle. The smaller of the two, the Leneaen festival, took place in the winter, and the city Dionysia a few months later in the spring.2 These festivals featured a number of musical and poetic events, but they are best known to us as the occasions for the performance of Greek tragedy and comedy.3Publication Homer and Hesiod(1997) Rosen, Ralph MOne of the most frustrating aspects of Homeric studies is that so little literary material outside the Homeric corpus itself survives to enhance our understanding of the cultural landscape of the period. Recent scholarship suggests that a large and diverse poetic tradition lay behind the figure we refer to as "Homer," but little of it survives. Indeed we have little continuous written Greek for another century. The one exception is Hesiod, who composed two extant poems, the Theogony and Works and Days, and possibly several others, including the Shield of Heracles and the Catalogue of Women. As we shall see, while Hesiodic poetry was not occupied specifically with heroic themes, it was part of the same formal tradition of epic, sharing with Homer key metrical, dialectal, and dictional features.Publication 'I Am Whatever You Say I Am': Satiric Program in Juvenal and Eminem(2002-07-01) Rosen, Ralph MLiterary satire has always lent itself well to comparative study, if only because so many of its characteristic traits seem particularly stable across time and place. In another era, one might have been tempted to speak of indignation, mockery and ironic self-righteousness - to name only a few of satire's continually recurring elements - as human universals, and so to believe that as long as people find artistic outlets to represent their experience, there will always be something instantly recognizable as satire.Publication Iambos, Comedy and the Question of Generic Affiliation(2013-05-01) Rosen, Ralph MPublication Aristophanes' Frogs and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod(2004-10-01) Rosen, Ralph MDionysus' unexpected decision at the end of the play is generally thought to reflect the notion that poets such as Aeschylus and Euripides had practical moral insight to offer their audiences and to promote an "Aeschylean" over a "Euripidean" approach to life. I argue, however, that this ending offers a curiously offbeat combination of aesthetic insight and intertextual playfulness that ultimately relieves the Aristophanic Aeschylus and Euripides of the moralizing burden they have had to shoulder for so long. My reasons for suggesting this arise from consideration of the relationship between Frogs and another literary text that featured a high-profile poetic contest, namely, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.Publication Galen on Poetic Testimony(2013-01-01) Rosen, Ralph MGalen had an abiding reverence for the classicized Greek poets of his day, in keeping with the prevailing cultural norms of the educated elite. He wrote monographic works on Attic comedy, and often peppered his medical treatises (particularly the psychological and propaedeutic works) with quotations from Homer, the Greek lyric poets and the tragedians. But while he regarded the study of poetry as essential for a complete education, however nebulously construed, he was conflicted about its utility for the scientific enterprise. Often in On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato (Plac. Hipp. Plat.), for example, Galen ridicules the Stoic Chrysippus for misusing the testimony of poets in the service of philosophical and scientific argument, while elsewhere in the treatise he freely cites classic poets as illustrative of his own arguments. In Protrepicus, too, he includes mousikē (encompassing for Galen something like our notion of ‘the literary’) as one of the ‘elevated arts’ (semnai tekhnai), the cultivation of which will help humans live according to truth and reason. This paper will examine Galen’s complicated, often inconsistent, attitude to the role of ‘literature’ in his work, focusing specifically on questions of poetic vs. logical/philosophical authority. In particular, I will discuss how Galen aligns his own practice of invoking poetic authors as evidence or exempla with Plato’s, and attempt to clarify what he believed literary testimony could contribute to his argument, both rhetorically and philosophically.Publication Comedy and Confusion in Callias' Letter Tragedy(1999-04-01) Rosen, Ralph MPublication Hipponax, Boupalos and the Conventions of the Psogos(1988) Rosen, Ralph MStudents of the Greek Iambos continue to dispute whether the poets' targets were fictional or real characters. Most recently the Cologne Archilochos has challenged scholars to square the received biographical tradition about the poet with its "new" evidence. Is the "I" of the poem Archilochos himself? Are the characters generic stock-figures, each bearing an appropriately significant name: Lycambes the "Wolf-walker", Neobule, the woman "of New Plan," for example?1Publication Review of Thomas K. Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy. Aristophanes and the Intertextual Parabasis(1992-03-01) Rosen, Ralph MFew formal elements of Old Comedy have troubled scholars as much as the parabasis. In its typical form, this choral "digression" appears to interrupt the dramatic fiction of the play with commentary on contemporary social or political issues and often brazen trumpeting of the poet's virtues. Its apparent discontinuity with the rest of the play encouraged scholars of an earlier age to consider it the original kernel of Comedy onto which dramatic episodes were eventually grafted.