Research Projects

Her post-doctoral project is Nonnos’ epic poetic production in the mid-fifth century CE at Panopolis of Egypt. Nonnos is the author of two epic poems, of the Dionysiaca, a mythological epic of forty-eight books poem, narrating the birth and achievements of Dionysus. Nonnos’ other poem, the Paraphrase of St. John’s Gospel is a reworking in epic hexameters of John’s Gospel in twenty-one books. Anna Lefteratou focuses on questions of readership of Nonnos’ mythological and Christian work in the mid-fifth century and attempts to analyse how a mythological and a Christian poem would have been received and appreciated by a mixed Christian and/or pagan audience. Currently she is also finishing her monograph based on her DPhil thesis, with the title Myth as metafiction in the Greek novel. She is also is co-editing together with I. Tanaseanu-Doebler and G. Ryser the forthcoming volume Reading the Way to the Netherworld. Education and the Representations of the Beyond in Later Antiquity, Goettingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.