MembroJudith_Starkston

Real Name

Judith Starkston

Sobre Minha Biblioteca

I have included many of my favorite authors, as well as a number of books about Hittites, Mycenaean Greeks, mythology and Homer that I find very useful in my research. My favorite authors write a mix of historical fiction and contemporary fiction.

About Me

I’m a classicist by training (Greek and Latin literature and history), a Hellenist more specifically, which means I focused more on Greeks than Romans. This is somewhat ironic since I spent twenty-plus years teaching Latin and English, and not a single one teaching Greek.

I completed a Bachelor’s in classics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Master’s at Cornell University.

Along the way I fell in love with Homer’s Iliad. The ancient epic and I have had a lasting relationship, starting with an undergraduate thesis and continuing through many years of teaching. It was a perennial favorite among my students.

Six years ago I was struck by a question that arose from a startling aspect of the Iliad. When the greatest warrior, Achilles, takes a young woman named Briseis captive, destroys her city and kills her husband and brothers, she falls in love with him, and he with her. Not quite the reaction most of us would have. Yet the Homeric tradition, while tantalizingly brief on the subject, is pretty insistent that she loves him. What kind of woman would fall in love with her captor? It’s epic poetry, a male dominated world, so her tale is never told; she appears in only a few scattered lines. So who is Briseis? So I decided to write a book and find out.

I’ve been learning more about her world—lots of research and travel—and getting to know her as she appears on the page and re-adjusts my ideas. My book is almost done—editing rather than growing now.

As a break from writing I love to read historical and contemporary fiction, and I enjoy conversing with others who do also.

Localização

United States

Página pessoal

http://www.judithstarkston.com

Memberships

LibraryThing Early Reviewers

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Autores Favoritos

Isabel Allende, Geraldine Brooks, Trevor Bryce, Fiona Buckley, Anita Diamant, Harry A. Hoffner, Homer, P. D. James, Alice McDermott, Stacy Schiff, Emily Vermeule, Jacqueline Winspear

Member Connections

Amigos

DavidGaughran, dscarson, ElisabethZguta, flightsafancy, ginnyday, HeathDAlberts, JanetinLondon, jordantaylor, KCahalane, ktleyed, Layeredpages, Maggie.Anton, MarysGirl, rtkaelin, Storeetllr, SusieBookworm, thebooky, thogodesarah

Biblioteca interessante

ginnyday, KCahalane, lindabarr, thorold

Greek

ginnyday