Richard John Tarrant, is an American

classicist Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

and Emeritus Pope Professor of Latin at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. He is an expert on the textual criticism and the transmission of Latin poetry.

Career

A native of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, Tarrant was educated at

Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...

, where he obtained a BA in 1966. He then moved to

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and graduated with a

DPhil A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

from Corpus Christi College (1972). From 1970, he taught at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, taking up a position at Harvard University in 1982. In his time at the department, he served as its chairman (1988–94) and as the acting Dean of the

Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) is the largest of the twelve graduate schools of Harvard University. Formed in 1872, GSAS is responsible for most of Harvard's graduate degree programs in the humanities, social sciences, and natura ...

(1995-6). Tarrant has held visiting fellowships at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

and Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Selected publications

*''Seneca: Agamemnon'', Cambridge, 1977. *''P. Ovidi Nasonis: Metamorphoses'', Oxford, 2004. *''Virgil: Aeneid Book XII,'' Cambridge, 2012. *''Texts, Editors, and Readers: Methods and Problems in Latin Textual Criticism'', Cambridge, 2016.

References

Works Cited

*Oakley, S. P. (2016) Review of Tarrant (2016), ''Journal of Roman Studies'' 106, 360–1. *Tarrant, R. J. (2016) ''Texts, Editors, and Readers: Methods and Problems in Latin Textual Criticism'', Cambridge. Classical scholars of Harvard University 20th-century American male writers Living people American Latinists Year of birth missing (living people) Members of the American Philosophical Society {{US-academic-bio-stub