Scholarship and Controversy: Centenary Essays on the Life and Work of Sir Kenneth Dover

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The essays collected in this volume were written to mark the centenary of the birth of Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the twentieth centurys most influential classical scholars. Between them, they explore the two major sides of his career: his groundbreaking scholarship on Greek language, literature and history, and the more public-facing roles he assumed in universities and at the British Academy which brought him into the national spotlight, not without some notoriety, in his later years. The contributors consider the various facets of Dover's life and work from a range of perspectives which reflect the burgeoning field of the history of scholarship. Some contributors were students and colleagues of Dovers at different stages of his career, while others are themselves leading experts in areas of Classics to which he devoted his energies. Chapters on his academic publications and on the controversies he faced in the public realm are not bland celebrations of his legacy but offer critical assessments of his motivations and achievements, cumulatively demonstrating that there is much to be learned not just about Dover himself but also about the fields he helped to shape.

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Dovers monumental scholarly achievement, clothed in a clarity of exposition that is a lesson to us all, ranks him as the leading Hellenist of his generation, and one of the finest the world has seen. The questions that this admirably wide-ranging book has raised about some aspects of his methodology do not shake that judgment, and suggest as many questions about modern methodologies as they do about Dovers. As for the searingly honest portrait he paints of himself in his autobiography, it remains largely unaffected and an extraordinary testament to the man himself. * Classics for All *

Author Bio

Stephen Halliwell is Wardlaw Professor Emeritus of Greek at the University of St Andrews, UK. His books include Aristotles Poetics (Bloomsbury, 1986), Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (2008) and a commentary on Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime (2022). Christopher Stray is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Swansea, UK. His publications include Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society 1830-1960 (1998) and Classics in Britain: Scholarship, Education, and Publishing 1800-2000 (2018).