Dr Alastair Daly
IRC Postdoctoral Fellow
A lifelong Dubliner, I received my doctorate from TCD in 2024. My PhD research was funded by an IRC Postgraduate Scholarship (2019-2023). My thesis offers a new reading of Apollonius’ Argonautica by attending to the influence of comic literature and to the use of humour, aspects not normally considered in studies of epic poetry. While many students of the Argonautica have commented in passing on Apollonius’ wit, my research goes against the grain by making humour an integral part of the poem’s aesthetic and by placing comedy on an equal footing with the other genres (e.g. tragedy and lyric) which are appropriated in Apollonius’ generically polyphonic epic.
I am delighted to be back in the Classics Department here at Trinity for an IRC Postdoctoral Fellowship under the mentorship of Dr Martine Cuypers. I will be writing a monograph based on my thesis with the tentative title Playful Epic: Apollonius' Argonautica and comic literature. I am also currently editing with two colleagues (Lisa Doyle and Jeremy Lam) a volume on Argonautic literature arising from a workshop hosted here in TCD in June 2023.
My other interests are comedy, mime, parody, iambic poetry, and especially Apollonius' contemporary Herodas.
I would be very happy to hear from anyone interested in dicussing, or collaborating on, the question of humour in epic poetry.
Selected Publications
- “Putting Phryne’s clothes back on: Posidippus fr. 13 KA revisited.” Phoenix (2025)
- “Throwing Jason Off the Scent: ἀμαλδύνω and the Lemnian odour in Apollonius’ Argonautica.” Mnemosyne 77.4 (2024), 572-588.