Richard Jenkyns

What makes Greek and Roman literature great? How has classical literature influenced Western culture? What did Greek and Roman authors learn from each other? Richard Jenkyns is emeritus Professor of the Classical Tradition and the Public Orator at the University of Oxford. His books include Virgil's Experience and The Victorians and Ancient Greece, acclaimed as 'masterly' by History Today.

Classical Literature

A thought-provoking new assessment of this important Greek dramatic text by a major scholar.

A Study of Aeschylus’ Oresteia

The Path from Aulis

Westminster Abbey is the most complex church in the world in terms of its history, functions and memories - perhaps the most complex building of any kind. It has been an abbey and a cathedral and is now a collegiate church and a royal peculiar. It is the coronation church, a royal mausoleum, a Valhalla for the tombs of the great, a 'national cathedral' and the 'Tomb of the Unknown Warrior'. This new edition recounts the story of this iconic building and the role it plays in our national psyche.

A thousand years of national pageantry

Westminster Abbey

In the ancient world Homer was recognised as the fountainhead of culture. His poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were universally admired as examples of great literature which could never be surpassed. In this study, Richard Jenkyns re-examines the two Homeric epics and the work that is perhaps their closest rival, the Aeneid of Virgil. A wide range of topics is covered, including chapters on heroism and tragedy in the Iliad, morality in the Odyssey and Virgil's skilful reworking of elements from the two earlier epics. Essential reading for those who are unfamiliar with the works of Homer and Virgil, the author's lively and provocative approach will also appeal to more experienced scholars of classical literature.

Homer and Virgil

Classical Epic

Sappho, Catullus and Juvenal

Three Classical Poets

The starting point for Richard Jenkyns's latest work is his contention that the Victorian age, which we think of as the great age of Gothic, was so shot through with the influence of the classical past that we should instead think of Victorian art and architecture as the continuing flow forward of two stylistic streams--the Gothic and the classical, side by side. In advancing his argument Jenkyns turns our accepted notions of the Victorians upside down, presenting Ruskin as an admirer of Greek statuary, the Houses of Parliament as a classical rather than a Gothic composition, and Thomas Woolner, the only sculptor among the original Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, as a neo-Hellenic carver and poet. Jenkyns moves effortlessly between the general and the particular and is refreshingly unafraid to make judgments. Here are some of the best descriptions of Victorian painting, sculpture, and architecture to have appeared in recent years. From the very gradual changes throughout the paintings of Leighton and Alma-Tadema, to the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, the 'aesthetic scripture' of Pater, and even the advertisements for Beecham's pills, Jenkyns shows how what had been merely eclectic became a distinctive fin-de-siecle style and eventually began to point the way for Modernism. These are grand themes, presented by a masterly guide. Above all Jenkyns is entertaining: Dignity and Decadence is one of the most illuminating and enjoyable books about the Victorians yet to appear.

Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance

Dignity and Decadence

Reader in Classical Languages and Literature Fellow Richard Jenkyns

What is it about Jane Austen's writing that brings such pleasure? There are good, even great novelists who are not good story-tellers, and there are highly gifted story-tellers who write thoroughly bad books. Jane Austen was both a very good story-teller and a great novelist. How did she doit? Was it all due to native talent? Or did she serve an apprenticeship to her craft, to learn from experience, and from the example of other writers? Richard Jenkyns' sparkling study delights in Austen's craft and wit. His deep reading of the novels illuminates the subtlety, depth and innovationthat lies within them. He explores the development of her style, storytelling and characterization, her technical prowess, and her place in comparison with her contemporaries with a grace and wit worthy of the subject herself. All who read this book will come away with their admiration for Austendeepened, and their pleasure in her work enhanced.

An Appreciation of Jane Austen

A Fine Brush on Ivory

This book studies Virgil's ideas of nature, history, sense of nation, and sense of identity. It is exact and patient in its probing for nuance and detail, but also bold, wide, and original in its scope. It combines the study of Virgil with the study of attitudes to nature throughout antiquity. Blending literature with history, and in the case of Lucretius, philosophy, it offers a vision and an interpretation of the culture of the 1st century BC as a whole. It argues that Lucretius and Virgil affected a revolution in Western sensibility; claiming that a book about poetry should be a book about life, it combines scholarship and precision with a sense of the importance of literature and its capacity to enhance our understanding of our past and of ourselves.

Nature and History: Times, Names, and Places

Virgil's Experience

Focuses on Victorian culture, assessing the immense influence the ancient Greeks had on British classical education, the images and themes of George Eliot's writings, Christian sensibility, decorative arts, and English playing fields during the nineteenth

Richard Jenkyns

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