August 26, 2010: Our Town – OWU

Associate Professor of Humanities-Classics and the William Francis Whitlock Professor of Latin, Lee Fratantuono, Ph.D.

Photo courtesy of OWU’s Office of Marketing and Communication

Summers Not Lazy for OWU Professors
From research abroad to mentoring students on campus, professors continue scholarly pursuits. Here’s just one example.

Best-selling author James Patterson has published three new thrillers this year, with a fourth set to come out next month.

But the prolific writer has nothing on Ohio Wesleyan University’s Lee Fratantuono, Ph.D. Fratantuono, Associate Professor of Humanities-Classics and the William Francis Whitlock Professor of Latin, has many recent and forthcoming works in the publication pipeline, including “Seraque terrifici: Archery, Fire, and the Enigmatic Portent of Aeneid V.”

This paper has been published as an invited contribution to the new volume Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History XV, edited by Professor Carl Deroux of the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. The article offers a new interpretation of one of the more vexing problems of interpretation for scholars of Virgil’s Aeneid. “During the archery contest in Aeneid V, Aeneas’ host, Acestes, receives a portent of a flaming arrow,” Fratantuono says. “Scholars have long debated the meaning of the portent. This study offers an original solution of the problem.”

Fratantuono’s other recent and forthcoming publications include:

• The article “Pius Amor: Nisus, Euryalus, and the Foot Race of Aeneid V,” which appeared in the first 2010 issue of Latomus, a peer-reviewed Belgian classics journal.
• The article “Nivales Socii: Caesar, Mamurra, and the Snow of Catullus c. 57,” which will appear in the third and final 2010 issue of Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, a peer-reviewed Italian classics journal published by the University of Urbino.
• An article he wrote with Michael McOsker, a recent OWU grad who is finishing his doctorate in classics at the University of Michigan, which is appearing this year in the same journal issue: “Camilla and Cydippe: A Note on Aeneid 11, 581-582.”
• Two 2010 reviews for The Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
• “Princeps ante omnis: Palinurus and the Eerie End of Virgil’s Protesilaus,” which has been accepted for publication in 2011 in Latomus.
• “Decus fluviorum: Juturna in the Aeneid,” which will appear in 2011 in the peer-reviewed Italian classics journal Athenaeum.
• A monograph on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with an expected 2011 publication date.
• The first volume of a co-produced edition of the sermons of Peter the Lombard, which is with the series editor, with a projected release in 2011 or 2012.
• More than 100 invited entries for The Virgil Encyclopedia, a forthcoming reference work edited by Richard Thomas and Jan Ziolkowski of Harvard University.

In addition, Fratantuono is working with current classics major Cynthia Susalla ’12 on an article on the Roman poet Horace and his Integer vitae ode. “The article had its genesis in my Fall 2009 advanced Latin course on Horace’s odes,” Fratantuono says. “Similarly, my Catullus article was born out of my 2006 Catullus seminar.” The project is just the sort of collaboration that helps OWU students develop their professional reputations before they’ve graduated—and a fine example of faculty mentorship.

– Gretchen Hirsch