John Jack Winkler

John J. Winkler (St. Louis, 11 agosto 1943 – Palo Alto, 26 aprile 1990) è stato un filologo classico, attivista, critico letterario e monaco benedettino statunitense.

Biografia

Dopo aver completato gli studi classici alla Saint Louis University nel 1963, si trasferì in Inghilterra dove si unì all'ordine benedettino presso l'abbazia di St. Lawrence at Ampleforth in cui rimase sino al 1966. Si trasferì nuovamente negli Stati Uniti e intraprese un incarico di docente presso la Saint Louis Priory School ove rimase sino al 1970 quando lasciò l'ordine benedettino. Si iscrisse al dottorato in filologia classica presso l'Università del Texas ad Austin presso la quale ottenne il titolo di dottore di ricerca nel 1974 con una tesi dal titolo In Pursuit of Nymphs: Comedy and Sex in Nonnos' "Tales of Dionysos". Intraprese in seguito la carriera accademica, divenendo professore (Assistant professor) all'Università di Yale dal 1974 al 1979 quando si trasferì all'Università di Stanford presso cui divenne professore ordinario nel 1979, ricoprendo tale ruolo sino al 1990, anno della sua morte a seguito di complicazioni dell'AIDS; gli sopravvissero il compagno David A. Braaten, la madre e quattro sorelle.

La sua attività di filologo e ricercatore si concentrò nell'integrare i metodi tradizionali della filologia classica con la riflessioni teoriche contemporanee, come la narratologia, gli studi di genere e queer. Gli ambiti in cui si distinse furono il romanzo greco e romano, l'investigazione della dimensione culturale della sessualità nel mondo greco e lo studio della mentalità magica antica. Winkler ebbe particolare cura di affiancare attività scientifica e attivismo politico, portando alla luce ambiti tradizionalmente sottostudiati nell'attività accademica precedente. In ricordo dell'innovazione e della forza della sua ricerca, viene assegnato a giovani ricercatori un premio annuale dedicato alla sua memoria:

Topics include (but are not limited to) those that Jack himself explored: the ancient novel, the sex/gender systems of antiquity, the social meanings of Greek drama, and ancient Mediterranean culture and society. Approaches include (but are not limited to) those that Jack’s own work exemplified: feminism, anthropology, narratology, semiotics, cultural studies, ethnic studies, and lesbian/gay studies.

Della sua rivoluzionaria attività accademica con particolare riferimento agli studi classici e della sue convinzioni politiche e sociali, l'American Philological Association Newsletter scrisse:

His publishing career lasted barely a decade, but in that time he revolutionized several fields of classical studies and promoted a variety of feminist, anthropological, narratological, and theoretical approaches to the study of Greek and Latin texts. Winkler's work distinguished itself from traditional classical scholarship by its avoidance of a high-culture approach to ancient texts and by its refusal of an authoritarian or mandarin style of academic writing. He was interested in popular, marginal, and non-canonical literature, such as folk narratives, melodramas, magical spells, and dream-books. Even his interpretation of the more dignified literary forms emphasized the different meanings they held for various groups within the local communities which produced them. He read Apuleius' The Golden Ass as one might read a detective story, emphasizing the relation between the author's literary gamesmanship and the reader's opportunities for free play. He treated Athenian drama not as high art but as a social practice. He championed an ethnographic approach to Greek sexual conventions, seeking to demonstrate the limited scope and selective enforcement of Greek sexual morality and to document the element of bluff that accompanied many ancient pronouncements about what was natural and unnatural in matters of sex. He described how Greek women resisted or evaded the brutal pressures of ancient patriarchy and sometimes managed to claim for themselves and their lives a measure of actual or spiritual autonomy. Winkler was not only a scholar. He was also a tireless, intrepid, and effective political activist, especially for feminist and gay causes within the academy. While an assistant professor at Yale, he helped to found a women's studies program at the university and to organize a Gay Rights Week; he was also a plaintiff in a landmark sexual harassment suit filed against the university on behalf of women as a class. That suit helped establish the legal principle that the sexual harassment of women by men is a form of sex discrimination, and it led to the institution of anti-harassment policies at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Winkler was possessed of an almost magical presence, which led people who had met him only once and very briefly to remember him thereafter with vividness, affection, and even awe. His complete openness, his warmth, his charm, his personal humility, his courageous and unapologetic advocacy for his beliefs, his love of storytelling, his playfulness, his vast erudition, his total lack of pretentiousness, and his utter personal transparency are all manifest to varying degrees in his writing, whose power to enchant and enthrall is still palpable to those who venture within range of its magical spell.

Opere

Libri

• Later Greek Literature (1982)
• Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's The Golden Ass (1985).
• The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (1990).
• Rehearsals of Manhood: Athenian Drama as Social Practice (1990).

Volumi editi

• Nothing To Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context, ed. with F. Zeitlin (Princeton, 1990).
• Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. with D. Halperin & F. Zeitlin (Princeton, 1990).
• Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, ed. with Susan A. Stephens (Princeton, 1993).

Selezione di articoli

• "Callimachus 260.66 Pf.," Classical World 72 (1978-9) 237–8.
• "Gardens of Nymphs: Public and Private in Sappho's Lyrics," Women's Studies 8 (1981) 63–89.
• "Geminos of Tyre and the Patron of Artemiodorus," Classical Philology 77 (1982) 245–48.

Collegamenti esterni

• (EN) John Jack Winkler, su Database of Classical Scholars, Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.