Cillian O'Hogan

I grew up in Dublin and started learning Latin at 17 because I was planning to become a Celticist; I became fascinated with Latin poetry and ended up taking two degrees in Classics at Trinity College Dublin and at the University of Toronto (where I finally managed to pick up Old Irish). After some years working at Waterloo, the British Library, and the University of British Columbia, I returned to Toronto and joined the Centre for Medieval Studies in 2018. 

I am interested in Latin of all periods, but my research mostly focuses on metrical poetry produced between 300 and 1000 CE. I also have a strong interest in manuscript studies (Latin and Greek) and regularly teach codicology. My third major area of research is the reception of classical and late antique literature in the Middle Ages, and I am especially interested in the later reception of Virgil’s Georgics, Lucan’s De Bello Civili, and the works of Prudentius.

Right now I am writing a book on Latin poetry and the literary canon in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, as well as beginning a new long-term project (funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant) on the transmission and reception of Prudentius in the Middle Ages. 

One of the great joys of working at CMS is the opportunity to teach, read, and learn about a very diverse range of Latin alongside our wonderful students. In recent years I’ve taught advanced seminars on Prudentius and his reception, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, Medieval Latin Epic, and Medieval Latin lives of the authors, as well as alternating teaching Latin I and Latin II, in which we cover texts ranging in time from late antiquity to the early humanists. In Latin II in the fall of 2023, we’ll read Augustine of Hippo, Eugenius of Toledo, Lupus of Ferrières, and Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. 
 

Current Courses

• MST1001F (Medieval Latin II)
• MST1023 (Early Medieval Latin and Greek Poetry)