Martin Revermann

Martin Revermann is a classical philologist and cultural historian, with particular interests in theatre (especially ancient Greek and 20th-century European theatre), translation, Bertolt Brecht, ancient Greek religion, lyric poetry (both ancient and modern), the history of science as well as modes of comparatism. Specific areas of research include performance criticism, iconography and sociology of Greek drama; the cultural history of Greek theatre from antiquity to the 21st century; the dramatic and lyric work of Bertolt Brecht; the history, theory and practices of translation (esp. that of Greek and Latin texts); the role of theatre and performance in the history of science; and exploring the interfaces between theatre and religion. Major focal points of his research have been Greek comedy (notably Aristophanes), tragedy as a dynamic art form, theatre theory as well as the work of Bertolt Brecht. His research (and graduate teaching) therefore integrates Classics, Theatre Studies, Comparative Literature, German Studies and History.

Revermann’s award-winning doctoral research was the foundation of Comic Business. Theatricality, Dramatic Technique and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy (Oxford 2006). He has edited or co-edited five other books: Performance, Iconography, Reception. Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin (Oxford 2008), Beyond the Fifth Century: Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages (Berlin/New York 2010), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy (Cambridge 2014), A Cultural History of Theatre (Vol. 1: Antiquity) (London 2017) and Semiotics in Action (Brno 2020). His latest monograph is Brecht and Tragedy: Radicalism, Traditionalism, Eristics (Cambridge 2022) while he is the editor of Translating Latin and Greek: A Guide for Classicists and Others (to be published by Cambridge University Press).

Revermann was trained as a Classicist in Germany and the UK, and holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford (where was a Rhodes Scholar). He also held research fellowships at Oxford University (Merton College), at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, at the School of Advanced Study (London) and at Cambridge University (Pembroke College). In 2022 he was awarded the Humboldt Prize for his work.

Education:        

Ph.D. (Oxford University)

M.A. (LMU Munich) (distinction)

Staatsexamen (LMU Munich) (distinction)

Graduate appointments:

• Member, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies 
• Associate Member, Centre for Comparative Literature
• Faculty Associate, Schwarz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society
• Associate Member, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures 
• Member, Department of Classics  

Previous appointments, fellowships and major awards:

• Humboldt Prize, Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation 
• Visiting Fellow, Pembroke College, Cambridge
• Desmond Morton Research Excellence Award, University of Toronto
• Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Classics Department, University of St. Andrews
• T.B.L. Webster Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London
• Junior Research Fellow, Merton College, Oxford
• Junior Fellow, Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington D.C.
• Rhodes Scholar (at Corpus Christi College, Oxford) Lecturer in Classics, Magdalen College, Oxford Senior Scholar, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Gaisford Dissertation Prize, Oxford University Gaisford Prize for Greek Prose, Oxford University
• Member of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (Berlin/Bonn)

Research areas:

• Ancient Greek drama
• Translation
• Bertolt Brecht
• Ancient Greek religion 
• Modes of comparatism
• Cultural history of science
• Lyric poetry (both ancient and modern)
• Sociology, psychology and history of playgoing

Other work experience:

• Strategic management consulting
• Care for elderly people in seniors’ home
• Work with mentally handicapped adults (volunteering)

Publications:

Books:

• (forthcoming, editor) Translating Latin and Greek: A Guide for Classicists and Others. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press).
• (2022) Brecht and Tragedy: Radicalism, Traditionalism, Eristics. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) (492 pp., 38 colour illus., 18 b/w illus.) [pbk. edition published in August 2022].
  • [Book launch event, hosted by the Oxford Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QUl0R4eb10.]
• (2019, editor) Semiotics in Action. (= Theatralia vol. 22 Supplementum). Brno (Masaryk University Press) (139 pp., 11 illustrations).
• (2017, editor) The Cultural History of Theatre, vol. 1 (‘Antiquity’). London (Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama; General Editors: C. Balme/T. Davis) (xii + 254 pp., 14 illustrations) [Pbk. edition published in 2019.] [A translation into Chinese is in preparation.]
• (2014, editor) The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) (xvii + 498 pp., 24 illustrations). [Translation into modern Greek appeared in 2018.]
• (2010, edited with I. Gildenhard) Beyond the Fifth Century: Interactions with Greek Tragedy from the Fourth Century BCE to the Middle Ages. Berlin and New York (de Gruyter, 441 pp.) [Pbk. edition published in 2016.]
• (2008, edited with P. Wilson) Performance, Iconography, Reception. Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin. Oxford (Oxford University Press, xi + 583 pp.).
• (2006) Comic Business. Theatricality, Dramatic Technique and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy. Oxford (Oxford University Press) (xiv + 396 pp., 15 illustrations).

Articles:

• (forthcoming) ‘Translating Pindar: challenges, strategies, rewards’. In: H. Spelman (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Pindar. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press).
• (2023) ‘Divinity on the classical Greek stage: proposing a new model’. In: P. Totaro, S. D. Olson and O. Taplin (edd.) Page&Stage. Texts and Performance of Ancient Greek Theatre. Berlin/New York (de Gruyter), 45-63.
• (2021) ‘Women as Strangers in Brecht’s Early Poetry/Frauen als Fremde in der frühen Dichtung Brechts’. Brecht Yearbook 46: 164-81.
• (2019a) ‘Beckett and the Theatrical Sign: the Need for Semiotics’, in M. Revermann (ed.), Semiotics in Action (= Theatralia Supplementum 22),  9-22.
• (2019b) Entries ‘Axionicus’, ‘business, stage’, ‘entrances and exits’, ‘Euripides’, ‘gesture’, ‘Heniochus’, ‘Lysistrata (play)’, ‘Lysistrata (character)’, ‘revision of scripts (post-performance)’, ‘Sophocles’, ‘stage-directions, implicit’, ‘windows’, in Sommerstein, A. (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Greek Comedy. Malden, MA and Oxford.
• (2018) ‘Bert’s Bard: (Re)Assessing Brecht’s Translation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus’, Brecht Yearbook 43: 210-29.
• (2017a) ‘Introduction: Cultural History and the Theatres of Antiquity’, in: Revermann, M. (ed.) The Cultural History of Theatre, vol. 1 (‘Antiquity’). London (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama; General Editors: C. Balme/T. Davis), 1-15.
• (2017b) ‘Institutional Frameworks’, in: Revermann, M. (ed.) The Cultural History of Theatre, vol. 1 (‘Antiquity’). London (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama; General Editors: C. Balme/T. Davis), 17-33.
• (2017c) ‘Interpretations’, in: Revermann, M. (ed.) The Cultural History of Theatre, vol. 1 (‘Antiquity’). London (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama; General Editors: C. Balme/T. Davis), 103-19.
• (2016a) ‘Reception of Tragedy 500 to 323 BCE’, in van Zyl Smit, B. (ed.) A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama. Malden, MA and Oxford, 13-28.
• (2016b) ‘Brecht and Greek tragedy: re-thinking the dialectics of utilizing the tradition of theatre’. German Life and Letters 69: 215-34.
• (2014a) ‘Introduction’, in Revermann, M. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 1-23.
• (2014b) ‘Divinity and religious practice’, in Revermann, M. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 275-87.
• (2013a)  ‘Brechtian Chorality’, in Billings, J., F. Budelmann and F. Macintosh (eds.) (2013) Choruses, Ancient&Modern. Oxford (Oxford University Press), 151-69.
• (2013b) ‘Paraepic Comedy: Point(s) and Practices’, in Bakola, E., L. Prauscello and M. Telò (eds.) (2013) Comic Interactions: Comedy and Other Genres. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press), 101-28.
• (2013c)  ‘Generalizing about Props: Greek Drama, Comparator Traditions, and the Analysis of Stage Objects’, in Harrison, G. and V. Liapis (eds.) (2013) Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre. Leiden (Brill), 77-88.  
• (2013d) ‘Théoriser les accesoires: théâtre grec, outils comparatifs et analyse des accessoires’ (= French translation, by Brigitte LeGuen, of ‘Generalising about Props’), in LeGuen, B. and S. Milanezi (eds.) (2013) L’Attirail Scenique dans les Spectacles de l’ Antiquité. Paris, 35-49.
• (2011) ‘Brecht’s Asia vs. Brecht’s Greece: Cultural Constructs and the Explanatory Power of a Binary’, The Brecht Yearbook 36: 277-90.
• (2010a) ‘Introduction’ (co-authored with I. Gildenhard) to Gildenhard, I. and M. Revermann (eds.) (2010) Beyond the Fifth Century: Interactions with Greek Tragedy from 400 BCE to the Middle Ages. Berlin and New York (de Gruyter), 1-35.
• (2010b) ‘Situating the Gaze of the Recipient(s): Theatre-Related Vase Paintings and their Contexts of Reception’, in Gildenhard, I. and M. Revermann (eds.) (2010) Beyond the Fifth Century: Interactions with Greek Tragedy from 400 BCE to the Middle Ages. Berlin and New York (de Gruyter), 69-97.
• (2010c) ‘On Misunderstanding Lysistrata, Productively’, in D. Stuttard (ed.) (2010) Looking at Lysistrata. London (Duckworth), 70-79.
• (2008a) ‘Introduction’ (co-authored with P. Wilson), in: Revermann, M. and P. Wilson (eds.) Performance, Iconography, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin,  Oxford (Oxford University Press), 1-12.
• (2008b) ‘Aeschylus’ Eumenides, Chronotopes, and the “Aetiological Mode”’, in: Revermann, M. and P. Wilson (eds.) Performance, Iconography, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin,  Oxford (Oxford University Press), 237-61.
• (2008c) ‘The Semiotics of Curtain Calls’, Semiotica 168: 191-202.
• (2008d) ‘The Appeal of Dystopia: Latching onto Greek Drama in the 20^th Century’, Arion 16:  97-117.
• (2008e) ‘Reception Studies of Greek Drama’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 128: 175-8.
• (2006) ‘The Competence of Theatre Audiences in 5^th- and 4^th-Century Athens’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 126: 99-124.
• (2005) ‘The Cleveland Medea Calyx Crater and the Iconography of Ancient Greek Theatre’, Theatre Research International 30: 3-18.
• (2003) ‘Spatio-Temporal Dynamics in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King’, University of Toronto Quarterly 72: 789-800.
• (1999/2000) ‘Euripides, Tragedy and Macedon: Some Conditions of Reception’, in: Cropp, M., K. Lee and D. Sansone (eds.) Euripides and Tragic Theatre in the Late Fifth Century. Illinois Classical Studies 24/25: 451-67.
• (1999) ‘The Shape of the Athenian Orchestra in the Fifth Century: Forgotten Evidence’. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 128: 25-28.
• (1998) ‘The Text of Iliad 18,603-6 and the Presence of an aoidos on the Shield of Achilles’. Classical Quarterly n.s. 48: 29-38.
• (1997) ‘Cratinus’ Dionysalexandros and the Head of Pericles’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 117: 197-200.

Undergraduate courses:

CLA 101 Introduction to Classical Civilization CLA 235 Ancient Visual Culture

CLA 237 Introduction to Greek Society and Culture

CLA 300 Ancient Greek Tragedy, Comedy and Satyr Play CLA 301 Greek Epic Poetry

CLA 303 The Ancient Novel CLA 308 Greek Religion

CLA 395 The Worlds of Sappho

CLA 404 The Greek Hero: Ideology and Cult Practice CLA 499 Independent Studies

DRE 220 History of Performance