Pauline LeVen
Assistant Professor
The book based on her dissertation (The Many-Headed Muse: Tradition and Innovation in Late Classical Greek Lyric Poetry, under contract with Cambridge University Press) is a study of the extant corpus of Greek songs composed between about 440 BC and 320 BC. Combining close readings of little-studied texts with attention to their intellectual and cultural context, it examines Greek literary history between the classical and Hellenistic periods and argues against the idea of the demise of mousikê in the late classical period.
In addition to lyric poetry, LeVen’s research interests include the technical prose of the classical period, musical culture, and the ancient (and modern) novel. Her next book project is devoted to anecdotes as narrative and cultural practice.
Selected Recent Publications
- "New Music and Its Myths: Athenaeus’ Reading of the Aulos Revolution," JHS 140 (2010): 35–47
- "Timotheus’ Eleven Strings: a New Approach (PMG 791, 229–236)", CP (2011): 245–54.
- "‘You Make Less Sense Than a (New) Dithyramb’: Sociology of a Riddling Style", in The Muse at Play. Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry" ed. by J. Kwapisz, D. Petrain and M. Szymanski (forthcoming, de Gruyter)
- Commentary on paeans of Isyllus, Philodamus of Scarpheia, Aristonous, Erythraean Paeans, in a volume of texts and commentaries on Hellenistic poetry, ed. by D. Sider (to be published by Michigan University Press)
- "Musical Crisis: Musical Anecdotes and Competition" in Poesia, musica e agoni nella Grecia antica, proceedings of the IVth Moisa conference, Lecce October 2010, ed. by D. Castaldo and A. Manieri (forthcoming)
