Alex Purves

Greek literature, primarily from the archaic and classical periods; space and landscape in early Greek epic and prose tradition; embodiment and repetition in Greek epic; the senses; the sea in early Greek poetry; Homeric reception; tiny, minute or immaterial words and things in Sappho's poetry.

“'The Utopian Perfectibility of the World in Reverse': William Kentridge, Jim Porter, and Book 7 of the Iliad,” in Mario Telò, ed., The Philology of the Future (forthcoming 2026). “Under the Skin: Literary Criticism and the Leech in Horace’s Ars Poetica,” in Jonas Grethlein, Casper de Jonge, and Thomas Kuhn-Treichel, eds., Musa Inversa: Dialogues Between Criticism and Literature in Greco-Roman Antiquity (forthcoming 2026). “The Problem with Now: Sappho, Alcman, and the Lyric Present,” in C. Bloomfield & E. Hall, eds., Time, Tense and Genre in Ancient Greek Literature, Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2025). “Iliad 22” in J. Ready, ed., Oxford Critical Guide to Homer, Oxford University Press (2024): 254-63. “Homer and the Simile at Sea,” Classical Antiquity 43.1 (2024): 97-123. “Up in A