Martin Litchfield West | |
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 | |
| Born | 23 September 1937 |
| Died | 13 July 2015 (aged 77) Oxford, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
| Occupation(s) | Professor, academic and author |
| Known for | Classics scholar |
| Honours | OM |
Martin Litchfield West, OM FBA (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar.[1] In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 2014.[2]
West wrote on ancient Greek music, Greek tragedy, Greek lyric poetry, the relations between Greece and the ancient Near East, and the connection between shamanism and early ancient Greek religion, including the Orphic tradition. This work stems from material in Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic, as well as Greek and Latin. West also studied the reconstitution of Indo-European mythology and poetry and its influence on Ancient Greece, notably in the 2007 book Indo-European Poetry and Myth (IEPM).
West also produced an edition of Homer's Iliad for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, accompanied by a study of its critical tradition and overall philology entitled Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad. A further volume on The Making of the Iliad appeared ten years later, and one on The Making of the Odyssey was published in 2014.
- ^ Fowler 2018, p. 116: "He identifies himself as a literary historian and philologist."
- ^ Fowler 2018, p. 119.