Biography
Matt Ludwig is a PhD candidate in the Department of Classics at the University of Toronto. He currently holds the Crake Doctoral Fellowship (2023-24) at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, where he is teaching courses on the intersections of Greek tragedy and film as well as introductory Latin. Matt’s dissertation, Aesthetic Theory in Action: Sophocles’ Conception of Tragic Plot and Character, locates traces of an early theory of tragedy enacted in Sophoclean drama. In his study, Matt argues that Sophocles’ theory of tragedy, while concerned with the same components as Aristotle’s Poetics, diverges significantly from what the philosopher will argue a century later and has its own set of philosophical implications. Beyond Sophocles, Greek tragedy, and the history of aesthetics, Matt is interested in the Greco-Roman poetic tradition writ large and classical reception. Currently Matt is researching translation as a form of classical reception—specifically the nebulous figure of the ‘celebrity translator’—as a member of an international research group based in Toronto, Gießen, and Pisa.
He recently published:
“‘Where do these warrish hands and heart of Venus come from?’ Statius’ subversion of Ovidian militia amoris in the Thebaid.” Past Imperfect 25 (2023): 3-26.
Research Interests: Greek tragedy, ancient literary criticism, classics in reception, the theory and politics of translation, the Greco-Roman poetic tradition