F.J. (Felix) Budelmann, Prof

The ancient ‘now’

I am working on a study of how Greek literature from Homer down to the Hellenistic period represents the present and the flow of time. My questions are literary and cultural. How do Greek authors capture and configure the ‘now’?  How do notions of the ‘now’ in Greek antiquity compare to our own? How does thinking about literary temporality feed into thinking about human existence and human limitation?

Cognitive classics

I have a long-standing interest in modes of interaction between the literary humanities and the study of cognition, and am in the process of co-editing volumes on cognition and Greek tragedy (with Ineke Sluiter, Leiden) and cognition and visualisation in classical literature (with Katharine Earnshaw, Exeter). The next project will, I hope, be on the imagination. I am co-editor, with Ineke Sluiter, of Oxford University Press’ Cognitive Classics series, and with Katharine Earnshaw of the Cognitive Classics website.

Modes of reading

More tentatively, I am interested in the growing body of work in English, Comparative Literature and other literary disciplines that attempts to broaden the manner in which we write about literary texts. Together with Joshua Billings (Princeton) I edit a journal issue on responses to classical texts that are not primarily interpretative (personal meaning, affect, ethics, etc.).

Please see our research website for more information on Groningen projects.