Ruth Mitchell-Fox

My research draws together a wide-ranging selection of Ancient Greek and Latin, and Christian and ‘pagan’ poetry from the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Authors covered will pair the more prominent late antique epic poets (e.g., Nonnus and Eudocia), with lesser studied figures such as Dracontius. Across this group of texts, I explore the arresting moments of corporeal alteration which divine bodies undergo; they rupture, fragment and generate.

I am particularly interested in marrying historical theological questions, with classical, literary methodologies. As such, my research postulates how late antique readers could have understood moments of corporeal alteration as indicating (Christian) divine presence in poetry which treated Christian subjects both implicitly and explicitly.

This project is generously co-funded by the AHRC OOC-DTP and St John’s College, Oxford, and supervised by Dr Emma Greensmith and Dr Neil McLynn. I have made the move to Oxford after completing both my BA and MPhil in Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge.