Dr Andrew Turner
Australian Postdoctoral Fellow
- Telephone:
- (+61 3) 8344 5680
- Email:
- ajturner@unimelb.edu.au
- Fax:
- (+61 3) 8344 4161
- Location:
- Room 119, Old Quadrangle
The University of Melbourne VIC 3010
Academic Profile (click on the link for more information)
Biography
Qualifications: MA (University of Melbourne); PhD (University of Melbourne)
Andrew Turner studied at universities in Melbourne and Germany, before undertaking a PhD at the University of Melbourne. He was subsequently awarded a post-doctoral fellowship there, working with Dr K. O. Chong-Gossard on a project examining the depiction of the private and public lives of Roman emperors. He has worked on a number of projects involving Latin language, particularly in collaboration with Professor Bernard Muir, with whom he has edited mediaeval Latin texts and a manuscript of Terence. He has also taught Latin grammar at all levels, both at university and school level.
Research
Andrew's main research interests include editing Latin texts from manuscript, and understanding the constraints placed on ancient writers, particularly Roman writers of the early second century, by the current political situation.
Current Projects
Public and Private Lies: Retelling the clash of duty, power and sexual indulgence in the Roman imperial court
Type of Project: ARC-DP
Collaborator: Dr. K. O. Chong-Gossard
The best accounts of the first-century Roman court date from 100-130 AD and depict the deleterious effect of private acts on public conduct. The project explores how the interests of the authors Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal were characteristic of their own generation rather than those described by their texts. We examine literary issues (genre, reception, Hellenistic influences) and cultural concerns (moral philosophy, gender politics, sexual deviance) to discover these authors' contemporaneous viewpoints.
In association with this project, and with the collaboration of our new colleague Frederik Vervaet, a conference will be held at the University of Melbourne from 7-10 July, 2008 with the title ‘Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Ancient World’.
Digital edition of Terence’s Comedies
An illustrated 12th-century manuscript of Terence, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct F.2.13, is being edited for publication in CD-Rom format under the general editorship of Bernard Muir of the School of Culture and Communication. This manuscript is a representative of an important family of illustrated manuscripts of Terence, which derive ultimately from a lost illustrated manuscript of Terence complied in the late-antique period. Besides its important illustrations, the manuscript also contains many scholia on the text which were written in the Carolingian period, and which provide important information on contemporary scholarship on the ancient classics, as well as further insights into the manuscript tradition of Terence. Turner is working with Professor Muir in establishing the text of the manuscript, and edited and translated the scholia.
Publications
Books
- Eadmer’s Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, edited and translated by Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir (Clarendon Press; Oxford, 2006)
Journal Articles
- A. Turner, ‘A missing manuscript of Eadmer’s Vita S. Wilfridi’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society (2006)
- A. Turner, ‘Frontinus and Domitian’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology (2005)
- Review article: L. Canfora, Julius Caesar. The People’s Dictator (Edinburgh, 2007). AWE (forthcoming)
Presentations
- ‘Punctuation in Tacitus: Evidence from the Manuscripts’. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 15 January, 2007
- ‘A mediaeval manuscript of Terence’s comedies: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.2.13’. Universiteit Gent (Belgium), 22 January, 2007
- ‘No time like the present: the council in Tacitus Ann. 12.1-3’, Australasian Society for Classical Studies 27, Hobart, Feb. 2006
- ‘The emperor’s new wife: the council in Tacitus Annals 12.1-2’, American Philological Association 137, Montréal, Jan. 2006
- ‘Contemporary values and audience reception in Tacitus’, Centre for Classics and Archaeology seminar series, the University of Melbourne, Oct. 2005
- Metre and Rhetoric in Vergil’s Aeneid, series of lectures to VCE students presented for the Classical Association of Victoria at the University of Melbourne in Sept. 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005
- ‘The role of the author in Frontinus’ Strategemata’, Australasian Society for Classical Studies 25, Bendigo, Feb. 2004