Helen Lovatt

Helen V. Lovatt is Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham. She is known in particular for her work on Latin epic literature especially from the Flavian period.

Career

Lovatt studied at Millfield and then read Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where she was awarded her PhD in 2000 with a dissertation on Games and realities in Statius, 'Thebaid 6'. Lovatt lectured at Keele University before moving to a Junior Research Fellowship at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. In 2003 Lovatt joined the department of Classics at the University of Nottingham.

Lovatt's PhD work on the athletic games in Statius' Thebaid was published as Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics and Poetics in the Thebaid (Cambridge University Press, 2005). In the book, Lovatt interpreted Statius' work as a microcosm of the whole epic tradition. and a co-edited work Epic Visions (Cambridge University Press, 2013) with Caroline Vout which resulted from a conference in Nottingham in 2003.

Lovatt currently works on classical reception, particularly in detective and children's literature, resulting in her co-edited volume Classical Reception and Children's Literature: Greece, Rome and Childhood Transformation (I. B. Tauris, 2018) with Owen Hodkinson following a conference on the subject at the University of Wales, Lampeter in 2009. (2013) ed. with Caroline Vout Epic visions: visuality in Greek and Latin epic and its reception (Cambridge University Press). (2007) Statius, Orpheus, and the post-Augustan vates. Arethusa, 40(2), 145–163. (2006) The female gaze in Flavian epic: looking out from the walls in Valerius Flaccus and Statius. In Nauta, Ruurd Robijn; Dam, Harm-Jan Van; Smolenaars, Johannes Jacobus Louis (eds.) Flavian Poetry (pp. 59–78). BRILL. (2005) Statius and epic games: sport, politics and poetics in the Thebaid (Cambridge University Press). (2001) Mad about Winning: Epic, War and Madness in the Games of Statius' Thebaid. Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, (46), 103–120. (1999) Competing Endings: Re-Reading the End of the Thebaid Through Lucan. Ramus, 28(2), 126–151.