Geoffrey Kirk

Geoffrey Stephen Kirk ( born December 3, 1921 in Nottingham, † March 10, 2003 in Cambridge ) was a British philologist Classic.

Life

Geoffrey Kirk attended Rossall School and then studied at Clare College, Cambridge. The Second World War interrupted his studies: 1941 Kirk joined the Royal Navy, a year later he was employed as an officer in the Aegean Sea. He supported the partisan movement on several Greek islands and in 1945 it was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. After the war he took up his studies again and graduated in 1946 with a Master from.

By 1946, Kirk was a research fellow at Trinity Hall (Cambridge). From 1949 to 1950 he held to be a Commonwealth Fund Fellow at Harvard University. He was then appointed to Trinity Hall Fellow and Director of Classical Studies. 1959 elected him as a member of the British Academy, 1961, he was appointed to the reader in Greek at Cambridge. From 1965 to 1970 he held a chair of Classics at Harvard University. In 1968/1969 he held himself as Sather Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1971 Kirk as a professor of Classics at Bristol University. In 1974 he returned to Cambridge, where he was appointed the 35th holder of the Regius Chair of Greek. In 1982 he became Professor Emeritus.

Kirk dealt with the Homeric epic, with the philosophy of the pre-Socratic philosophers, and especially with the Greek myth. He examined the meaning and function of myths in Greek culture and literature and moved using as well as the myths of other cultures. In the Homeric epics, he examined especially the poetics and narrative structures and involved the concepts of orality and literacy. A late work is his commentary on the Iliad Six band. In addition, Kirk has also published writings on Greek Poetry and Tragedy.

Writings (selection )

  • Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments. Cambridge 1954. Edition with improvements, London 1962
  • With John E. Raven: The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. 1957th second, revised edition with Malcolm Schofield, 1984 German translation by Karlheinz Hülser: The pre-Socratic philosophers. Introduction, texts and comments. Stuttgart 1994. Study edition Stuttgart 2001
  • German translation by Renate note: Greek Myths: Their meaning and function. Berlin 1980. Reinbek 1987
Trinity Hall, Cambridge University of Bristol Regius Professor of Greek (Cambridge) Hugh Lloyd-Jones Integrated Authority File
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