Dr Boris Kayachev
SFI-IRC Pathway Research Fellow
Having received a doctorate in Classics from the University of Leeds in 2013, I went on to hold research fellowships in Trondheim (2016), Dublin (2016–18), Moscow (2019), Oxford (2019–21) and Basel (2022), and in 2023 I am thrilled to be back at Trinity.
Much of my work has focused on anonymous poetry (the subject of my 2021 edited volume), in particular the Appendix Vergiliana: I have published commentaries on the Ciris (2020) and the Lydia (2023), and two more are forthcoming on the Dirae and the Moretum. Reflected in my recurrent use of the commentary format is an interest in exploring and appreciating individual ancient texts in all their complexity, from textual criticism and linguistic exegesis to issues of genre and contexts of production. I have worked on the traditions of epic (in connection with the Ciris) and bucolic (in connection with the Lydia, the Dirae and the Moretum), and am keen to explore didactic poetry as a genre of non-fiction (in connection with Columella, Res Rustica 10). Besides the Appendix Vergiliana, my text-critical interests now include Columella and Valerius Flaccus. My commentary work has also kindled an interest in systematic exploration of the poetic language: of the semantic and stylistic nuances of Latin poetic vocabulary on the one hand, and on the other, and more generally, of how utterances are articulated in Latin poetry. This latter interest is what has brought me back to Trinity, where I work on the project Enjambement in Latin poetry: prosody, pragmatics and word order (funded by the Irish Research Council within the framework of the SFI-IRC Pathway programme), with a focus on Plautus, Terence, Virgil and Valerius Flaccus.
Selected Publications
- Lydia, a Poem from the Appendix Vergiliana: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, OUP, 2023).
- ‘Emendations in the Dirae and the Lydia’, Classical Quarterly 72 (2022), 703–18.
- ‘Emendations in Columella, De re rustica book 10’, Classical Quarterly 72 (2022), 255–68.
- ‘Non-discontinuous adjective-noun phrases in Latin poetry: preliminary observations’, Journal of Latin Linguistics 21 (2022), 1–22.
- (ed.) Poems without Poets: Approaches to Anonymous Ancient Poetry (Cambridge, CCJ suppl. 43, 2021).
- ‘Love and poetry in Virgil’s sixth eclogue: a Platonic perspective’, in T.S. Thorsen et al. (eds.), Greek and Latin Love: The Poetic Connection (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2021), 105–23.
- Ciris, a Poem from the Appendix Vergiliana: Introduction, Text, Apparatus Criticus, Translation and Commentary (Swansea, CPW, 2020).
- ‘Catalepton 9 and Valgius Rufus’, in T.E. Franklinos, L. Fulkerson (eds.), Constructing Authors and Readers in the Appendices Vergiliana, Tibulliana, and Ouidiana (Oxford, OUP, 2020), 83–95.
- ‘Hunt as war and war as hunt: Grattius’ Cynegetica and Virgil’s Aeneid’, in S. Green (ed.), Grattius: Hunting an Augustan Poet (Oxford, OUP, 2018), 97–114.
- ‘Narrative focalization and the historical present in Catullus 64’, Classical Quarterly 67 (2017), 522–7.
- ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named: Aratus in Virgil’s third eclogue’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 109 (2017), 339–52.
- (with M. Shumilin) ‘Four poems ascribed to Gallus (AL 914–17): the history of the text’, Materiali e Discussioni 78 (2017), 195–225.
- Allusion and Allegory: Studies in the Ciris (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2016).
- ‘Catalepton 9 and Hellenistic poetry’, Classical Quarterly 66 (2016), 180–204.