日向 太郎

My specialty is Classics. The area in which I have been most interested is the Latin poetry in the second half of the first century BC, especially keen on interpreting Virgil’s works. In my doctoral thesis I examined what functions the ekphrasis -- one of the descriptive devices employed chiefly in the epic genre since  Homeric verses-- serves in the Aeneid. Afterwards expanding gradually the scope of research, I work on  Roman elegists contemporary with Virgil, namely Propertius and Tibullus. In several papers I illuminated how carefully Ovid read Virgil, how profoundly he understood him, and how eagerly he tried to overcome him. In Adorando Omero (Chisenshokan 2019, written in Japanese with abstract and table of contents in Italian) I organized the considerations on these elegists mentioned above and discussed their view of epic poetry.

Besides Latin literature I am interested in the reception of Classics. My translation of Historia Langobardorum of Paulus Diaconus (Chisenshokan 2016) is one of the examples of this interest. Now tracing the way in which Petrarch and Boccaccio discover Homer, I try to verify the various phases of the reception in the early Renaissance period.

Along with these scholarly researches, I am also enthusiastic about kodan, traditional Japanese storytelling. Through my experience of performance I hope to elucidate some aspects of rhapsodic activity in ancient Greece that have been remained unknown up to now.