Saskia Willigers 

Saskia Willigers is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are in the field of narratology and archaic and classical Greek poetry and drama. Currently, she is working on her research project “Choral Narrative: Drama as the Successor of Epic and Lyric” at the Institute of Culture and History (ICH). This project sets out to investigate how the tragic poets adopted short-story techniques from their lyric and epic predecessors.

 Current Research Project
“Choral Narrative: Drama as the Successor of Epic and Lyric”

The origins of Greek tragedy have been debated since Aristotle in his Poetics and have remained a scholarly discussion up until the present. Attic tragedy suddenly bloomed in the late 6th and 5th century, but of course cannot have been created e nihilo. For one thing, it has become clear that there are continuities between Attic tragedy, the lyric poetry of the Archaic period and epic. Thus a number of studies have laid bare continuities in metre, dialect, ritual, themes, and stories.

A form of continuity which has received only little attention is that of narrative form. Narratology, by now an established instrument within classics, offers a refined framework to investigate this topic. Attic tragedy contains many embedded narratives, especially in the choral songs. These short stories bring along their own characteristic techniques. This project sets out to investigate these short-story techniques, showing how the tragic poets adopted - and developed - them from their lyric and epic predecessors.

This project is supervised by prof. dr. Irene de Jong.

Key words: Greek Tragedy, Greek Lyric Poetry, Narratology, Genre Continuity, Choral Song

Education

2010-2012 MA in Literary Studies (research) at the University of Amsterdam (cum laude)
2007-2010 BA in Greek and Latin Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam (cum laude)
2008-2010 Italian Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam (propaedeutic diploma, cum laude)

• ICH

• Geen nevenwerkzaamheden