Helen Bacon

Helen Hazard Bacon (March 9, 1919 – November 9, 2007) was professor of classics at Barnard College. She was known in particular for her work on Greek tragedy, especially Aeschylus. Bacon was also well known for her work on classical themes in the poetry of Robert Frost and in the mythological writing of Edith Hamilton. Bacon was president of the American Philological Association in 1985.

Career

Bacon spent her childhood first in Berkeley and then in Florence where her father, the poet Leonard Bacon, and her mother, the painter Martha Stringham Bacon, had settled amongst a group of fellow artists. The family returned to the United States in 1932 and Bacon went on to read classics at Bryn Mawr College, gaining her BA in 1940.

In 1942 Bacon paused her graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley (1940–1941) and Harvard University (1942) to join the United States Naval Reserve as a Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). She worked in the Navy's Communications Annex in Washington, D.C. where she was a cryptanalyst decoding Japanese radio communications. Bacon was one of a number of classicists employed by the Navy in this field of work, including her Bryn Mawr College professor, Richmond Lattimore. Bacon was known as "Bake" by her colleagues.

Following World War II, Bacon returned to graduate studies at Bryn Mawr College and completed her PhD in 1955 with a dissertation entitled "Barbarians in Greek Tragedy", which was published by Yale University Press in 1961.

Bacon then taught at Smith College from 1953 to 1961. Bacon spent the rest of her career at Barnard College, where she taught classics from 1961 to her retirement in 1989. During this time, Bacon was a director of the American Philological Association (1976–79) and became president in 1985, the third woman elected as president.

Work

In her presidential address to the American Philological Association in 1985, Bacon talked about her "lifelong preoccupation with the importance of the esthetic and literary features of Plato's work". The content summary note for the Helen H. Bacon Papers, held at the library of Barnard College, describes her work as focusing on Aeschylus, Plato, Vergil, and Apuleius and the comic novel on the classical side, but including work on Robert Frost and Edith Hamilton which is more properly categorized as classical reception studies. An obituary in scholarly journal The Classical World, written by Nancy Felson, Deborah Roberts, and Laura Slatkin described her as "well ahead of her time", a "pioneer", and "anticipat[ing] subsequent directions in the field", on account of Bacon's engagement with literary theory and psychoanalytic theory.

Selected publications

“Mortal Father, Divine Mother: Aeneid IV and VIII,” in Poets and Critics Read Vergil, ed. Sarah Spence (New Haven: Yale UP, 2001) pp. 76–85

“The Poetry of Phaedo,” in Cabinet of the Muses: Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, ed. Mark Griffith & Donald J. Mastronarde (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990) pp. 147–162

“Aeschylus and Early Tragedy,” in Ancient Writers: Greece, ed. T.J. Luce (New York: Scribner's, 1982)

“In- and Outdoor Schooling: Robert Frost and the Classics,” American Scholar 43,4 (Autumn 1974) pp. 640–9

“Socrates Crowned,” Virginia Quarterly Review 35 (1959) pp. 415–30 The Sibyl in the Bottle (1958)