Benedek Kruchió

Born in Hungary and raised in Austria, Benedek Kruchió studied Classics at the University of Vienna (B.A.), Humboldt University of Berlin (M.A.), and the University of Cambridge (Ph.D.). Before joining Yale, he was a Research Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge, and taught in London (KCL) and Heidelberg.

 

Kruchió specialises in Greek literature from the imperial period and late antiquity, roughly between the second and sixth centuries C.E.

 

His current book project, The Aethiopica of Heliodorus: multiperspectival narration and ancient reading communities, seeks to bridge the gap between formal analysis and discursive approaches to literature: Building on an in-depth narratological analysis of antiquity’s most virtuosic love novel, Kruchió explores hypothetically—in acts of ‘interpretive roleplay’—how the different reading communities of late antiquity might have approached this challenging text: Platonist philosophers, the rhetorically educated élite, and Christians.

 

Other current projects include the edited volume Imperial allegory: reading across cultural and medial divides (with Jonas Grethlein), a journal cluster on the concept of Interface Interpretation (with Lea Niccolai), and a book on The life and passion of Galaction and Episteme, a Christian sequel to Achilleus Tatius’s erotic novel (with Nina Braginskaya).

 

In future, Kruchió hopes to shift his focus—at least partially—to less ‘prosaic’ literature: A commissioned piece on imperial Greek poetry and allegory will serve as a first test drill for a next monograph project.