Dr Abigail Buglass
Writer, Translator, Lecturer
Abigail Buglass is a Classicist working mainly on Latin literature, especially poetry, and its subsequent reception from antiquity up to modernity. She is also a translator currently working on verse translations of Lucretius’ epic poem the De Rerum Natura. Please explore the site or get in touch to learn more.
Publications
Research and Articles
What Plagues Can Teach: a view from ancient Rome
September 17, 2020
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This article, published on Medium, looks at ancient plague narratives, including Lucretius’ devastating plague story found at the end of his epic poem ‘On the Nature of the Universe’ as well as its later reception in Camus’ 1942 novel La Peste, to consider what we can learn about anxiety and the importance of collective thinking in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lucretius’ Journey to the Underworld: poetic memory and allegoresis
November 26, 2019
This contribution to the edited volume, A Quest for Remembrance (editors M. Scherer & R. Falconer) explores the ways in which Lucretius uses the concept of a heroic journey to Hell to his own philosophical purpose. It considers some of the ways that this appropriation of descent myths changes the epic landscape. The chapter considers the relationship between memory and underworld stories, not only the role that memory plays within the narratives themselves but also the the power of the shared, collective memory that each reader brings to a well-worn trope.
A Note on Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 3.361
May 1, 2014
A conjecture made by Lambinus in 1565 proposes replacement of difficilest (present in the three authoritative manuscripts O, Q and V) at 3.361 with desiperest. Although commonly printed until the end of the nineteenth century (including in Lachmann’s famous edition and Heinze’s edition of Book 3), in the twentieth century the conjecture fell out of favour; the manuscript reading of difficilest has been kept by editors since 1900. But with this consensus there are problems, and there are several reasons for preferring Lambinus’ conjecture. The proposed revival of Lambinus’ conjecture has since been printed by E.J. Kenney in the new edition of his Cambridge Green and Yellow commentary of DRN Book 3, and accepted by M.F. Smith, editor of the Loeb, and D.J. Butterfield, editor of the new Oxford Classical text.
Professional Bio
About Abigail
Dr Abigail Buglass is a Lecturer in Latin Literature at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. Her research is centred on ancient poetry and how it is read and received into modernity. She has particular interests in the radical poetry of the Roman poet Lucretius. She was formerly Lecturer at Christ Church, University of Oxford; and before that a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. Abigail has held visiting fellowships at Columbia University, New York, and Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich.