Professor Monica Gale

Professor In Classics

I studied Classics in Cambridge and went on to hold posts at the University of Newcastle and Royal Holloway, University of London, before joining the staff at Trinity College Dublin in 1998.

Research Interests

My research centres on the poetry of the Late Roman Republic and the Augustan period (especially the works of Catullus, Lucretius, Virgil and Propertius), with a particular focus on issues of genre and intertextuality. I am interested in the ways in which relationships between literary texts serve to create meaning, and in poetic self-representation, with reference both to literary predecessors and to generic convention. Other areas in which I have a particular interest include Greek and Roman didactic poetry and the uses of myth in ancient literature. I am currently working on a commentary on the complete poems of Catullus for the Cambridge 'Greek and Latin Classics' series.

Research Supervision

I am happy to supervise doctoral work in most areas of Latin literature, especially Late Republican/Augustan poetry; Roman Epicureanism; gender and sexuality in Roman culture.

Selected Publications

'otium and voluptas: Catullus and Roman Epicureanism’, in S. Yona and G. Davies, Epicurus in Republican Rome: Philosophical Perspectives in the Ciceronian Age (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 87–108
‘Plagues and the Limits of Didactic Authority: Lucretius and Others’, in J.S. Clay and A. Vergados, Teaching through Images: Imagery in Greco-Roman Didactic Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 205–30
(ed., with J.H.D. Scourfield) Texts and Violence in the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
‘“te sociam, Ratio…”: Hunting as Paradigm in the Cynegetica’, in S.J. Green (ed.), Grattius: Hunting an Augustan Poet (Oxford University Press, 2018)
‘Name Puns and Acrostics in Didactic Poetry: Reading the Universe', in L.G. Canevaro and D. O’Rourke (edd.), Didactic Poetry: Knowledge, Power, Tradition (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, forthcoming 2018)
‘Aliquid putare nugas: Literary Filiation, Critical Communities and Reader-Response in Catullus’, in R.L. Hunter and S.P. Oakley (edd.), Latin Literature and its Transmission (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 88–107
‘Virgil’s Caesar: Intertextuality and Ideology’, in J. Farrell and D.P. Nelis (edd.), Augustan Poetry and the Roman Republic (Oxford University Press, 2013), 278–96
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura V, edited with translation and commentary (Oxford: Aris and Phillips, 2009)
(ed.) Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre, Tradition and Individuality (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2004)
Lucretius and the Didactic Epic (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2001)
Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Teaching

My teaching is mainly in the areas of Roman literature and culture. In addition to Latin language, and a range of literary texts from Catullus to Pliny the Younger, I teach a number of courses focussing on Roman thought and society; themes include Gender and Sexuality, Humans and Other Animals, and the culture and ideology of the Ciceronian Age.