Scholia Absurda

New Publication: Pasolini’s Greeks and the Irrational

Open Access: https://journals.uni-lj.si/clotho/article/view/11518 Abstract: This article traces Pasolini’s engagement with Aeschylus Oresteia and the concept of the “irrational,” through which he sought to excavate patterns of ideological resistance in the classical past. I argue that Pasolini’s translations and adaptations of Aeschylus ultimately failed to achieve his desired ambition to forward an Aeschylus fit for the proletariat, and…

A Field Guide to N. H. Pritchard’s Works

Current Version August 3 2022. This page serves as a bibliographic research tool for readers interested in exploring the poetic works of N. H. Pritchard. I have assembled this guide collating information from other online repositories and bibliographic tools (cited among the bibliographic sources). The main features are: (1) a listing of all known works,…

An Antifascist Topography?

[Part I of a Series of Blog Posts on Modern Epigraphic Problems, tangentially related to a book project on the Pyramid in Rome.] I took this photo in Piazza Pascoli in Matera. For those who are not familiar with this kind of sight, the picture shows an intentionally destroyed fascist monumental plaque. The erasure is…

Emma Pauly’s Bacchae at Rhetoric & Poetics (Nov 19 2020)

Recording (w/ Screen Captions) Closed Captioning by Larry Eames. Archival Info The performance was preceded by an Introduction by Emma (included in the video above) and followed by a 45-min discussion with some members of the cast and select audience members (not included). Blurb A young person returns to their hometown for the first time…

Homeric Kingship in Italy

The complex position occupied by King Umberto I di Savoia in Italian history is punctuated by attempts on his life, only the third of which was successful. Gaetano Bresci was the last of the three “anarchists” who set out to kill a man whose repressive policies had long impinged on the working classes, and whose…

Penelope in India: Brough’s Spurious “Translations”

John Brough’s Poems from the Sanskrit (1968) is one of those old Penguin Classics worth picking up in a second hand shop. I bought the book when I was an undergrad and enjoyed it immensely–and I had little idea that I would one day be reading Sanskrit in the original. Since then it has been…

Welcome to Scholia Absurda

Scholia Absurda represents the culmination of my misdirected academic attention(s). The blog will take many forms, among which the following well-established and often praised genres: Erratic & Erotic Marginalia Out-of-Touch Annotations Limerick-Haiku Fusions Forensic Invective  Impersonal Essay Polemic Tweetstorms Epistolary Romance etc The full range of human experience is not wide enough to encompass the…


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