Richard Thomas

Hard Rains and Ancient Odysseys

Richard Thomas, a Harvard professor of Greek and Latin for nearly 20 years, is as at ease discussing the work of Bob Dylan as he is that of Virgil and Homer. In fact, he discovered Dylan's music around the same time he did the classics—as a teen in New Zealand during the Sixties. The languages provided intellectual challenge, the music inspiration during formative years (Blood on the Tracks, he attests, is "the most important album for coming of age in my generation").

But these days the study of Dylan's lyrics and performance have become every bit the scholarly pursuit. Thomas shares this endeavor with Harvard Summer School students in the seminar Bob Dylan: The Lyrics in Their Literacy, Cultural, and Musical Contexts. He also teaches Harvard courses on classic works by the likes of Ovid, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace.

For many years, Thomas' exploration of the classics and the Sixties icon were independent of each other, but in the past decade, he says, Dylan's music and lyrics have become more relevant to his own study of Greek and Roman literature. "Dylan's complete integration and renovation of the literary and musical traditions that feed into his songs seem parallel to that of the Roman poets in particular," he says. "His creativity essentially has the ingredients of tradition and originality that make all layered literature endlessly evocative and meaningful."

Course links:
ENGL S-37U Summer Seminar—Bob Dylan: The Lyrics in Their Literary, Cultural, and Musical Contexts
LATI S-106a Virgil, Eclogues and Georgics

CV:
Chair, Professor of Greek and Latin, Harvard University
BA and MA, University of Auckland
PhD, University of Michigan

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