Fitzgerald, William 1952- (William Claiborne Fitzgerald)

PERSONAL:

Born February 29, 1952.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Classics, Gonville & Caius College, Trinity St., Cambridge CB2 1TA, England.

CAREER:

Writer, classics scholar, and educator. University of Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, university lecturer in classics; University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, professor in department of literature.

WRITINGS:

Agonistic Poetry: The Pindaric Mode in Pindar, Horace, Holderlin, and the English Ode, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1987.

Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1995.

Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Martial: The World of the Epigram, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Classics scholar, educator, and writer William Fitzgerald is a lecturer in classics and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge in England.

In Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination, Fitzgerald considers the ways in which the literary imagination of ancient Rome was affected by the widespread presence of slavery. Fitzgerald considers what the imagination of free Romans thought about the presence of slaves, who were at the same time considered human and nonhuman. The book looks at a wide range of Roman literature and themes, including the continuum of slave/master relationships, issues of punishment, effects of proximity, and enslavement and metamorphosis. Fitzgerald also explores the ideological connections between Roman literature and slavery, discovering ways in which slavery served as a metaphoric context for other relationships and elements of Roman society.

Fitzgerald looks at the life and work of a master of the epigram in Martial: The World of the Epigram. Martial was classical antiquity's most accomplished practitioner of the epigram, a concise short poem with an often humorous or pithy thought or observation and a clever twist of thought at the end. He notes that, in his time, Martial was well known, widely published, and eagerly read. Fitzgerald seeks to rescue Martial from relative obscurity, arguing that the writer and poet is worthy of greater attention as a major author of classical times.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Journal of Philology, fall, 1997, Carole E. Newlands, review of Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position, p. 468; winter, 2001, Jo-Ann Shelton, review of Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination, p. 599.

Choice, October, 2000, D. Konstan, review of Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination, p. 326.

Classical Journal, December, 1996, Christopher Nappa, review of Catullan Provocations, p. 199; October 1, 2002, Kelly Olson, review of Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination, p. 94.

Comparative Literature, spring, 1991, Steven Shankman, review of Agonistic Poetry: The Pindaric Mode in Pindar, Horace, Holderlin, and the English Ode, p. 182.

Greece & Rome, October, 1996, Alison Sharrock, review of Catullan Provocations, p. 230.

Reference & Research Book News, July, 1996, review of Catullan Provocations, p. 57.

Times Literary Supplement, July 15, 1988, C.H. Sisson, review of Agonistic Poetry, p. 772.

ONLINE

Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge Web site,http://www.cai.cam.ac.uk/ (February 4, 2008).