Robert Sonkowsky (September 16, 1931 - November 16, 2014) was a

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. He was an authority on

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

and the pronunciation of Golden Age Latin. His bachelor's degree was from

Lawrence College Lawrence University is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Appleton, Wisconsin. Founded in 1847, its first classes were held on November 12, 1849. Lawrence was the second college in the U.S. to be founded as a coeducation ...

(1954), and his PhD from the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...

(1958). He was an Honorary Member of the Center for Chronobiology in the Mayo Building, Medical School. Sonkowsky was a leading authority on and a performer of oral renditions of classical texts. He made the album ''Homer: The Death of Patroclus - Chapter XVI of the Iliad'' with

Folkways Records Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways. History The Folkways Records & Service ...

as part of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Numerous other recordings of his in classical

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and Latin are available on the Internet.

Selected publications

*''Performance of Literature in Historical Perspective'' ed. D. Thompson et al. (Univ. Press of America 1983) Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1–65): "Oral Performance and Ancient Greek Lit." and "Oral Interpretation of Classical Latin Literature." *"Euphantastik Memory and Delivery in the Classical Rhetorical Tradition," ''Rhetoric'' 78 ed. Brown and Steinmann, 1979, pp. 375–3?? *"Critical Edition of the Latin Rhetorical Treatise ''De Compositione'' by Gasparino Barzizza of Bergamo", ''American Philosophical Society: Year Book'', 1962, p. 629. *"Delivery in Ancient Rhetorical Theory," ''Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association'' 90 (1959), pp. 256–274.

References

External links

*
Home page of Professor Sonkowsky
Readings of Cicero, Catullus, Horace, Vergil.
''Reading Homer and the Death of Patroclus''Obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sonkowsky, Robert 1931 births 2014 deaths American classical scholars University of Minnesota faculty Lawrence University alumni