Homepage Jacqueline Klooster

Current Position

I was educated at at the Classics department of Amsterdam University where in 2001 I obtained my MA and in 2009 my PhD under supervision of Prof. Dr. Irene de Jong and Prof. Dr. A.M. van Erp Taalman Kip. (Poetry as Window and Mirror, Hellenistic Poets on predecessors, Contemporaries and Themselves).

Since april 2009, I am employed as a Postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Ancient Greek. Below you will find a description of the project I am currently working on. This research-project forms a part of the NWO-funded project coordinated by Irene de Jong on Space in Ancient Greek Narrative. For more information on the project and its other participants, see the link to the wiki-site below.

Website Space in Ancient Greek Narrative, Amsterdam

Poetry as Window and Mirror: Positioning the Poet in Hellenistic Poetry

This book (a revised version of my PhD thesis, published by Brill, Leiden 2011) aims to contribute to the picture we have today of how Hellenistic poetry functions by combining observations on imitation of poetic models and interaction between contemporary poets. Whereas numerous studies before this one have concentrated on the complex relation that Hellenistic poets have with the literary past, hardly any full-scale study has focused on the way these poets interact among contemporaries, and the role that choosing a poetic model and affiliation may actually play in the relations between contemporaries. Contending that the courtly society in which many poets strove to position themselves among their colleagues is vitally important, I show that the creation of allegiances and oppositions is often a  survivalstrategy, not merely the expression of esthetic preferences for which it has traditionally been taken.


Brill website

Winnaar ABG-VN essayprijs 2012

Mijn essay "Niemand en de Eeuwige Terugkeer" won de essayprijs 2012 uitgeschreven door de Academische Boekengids en Vrij Nederland (2500 euro en publicatie). Het essay is te lezen onder de onderstaande link. 

Essay ABG/VN essayprijs

Research Project: The World on a Scroll: Space in Hellenistic Poetry

One of the defining characteristics of Hellenistic Poetry is its literariness. All poets from the age of the great Alexandrian Library engage deeply with the works of predecessors, on all levels, vocabulary, plot-structure, characterization and modes of description. It is in particular this last topic this research-project will be focusing on. Zanker’s influential claim that Hellenistic poetry constantly aims at “pictorial realism” (1987) has already been contested by some scholars. Indeed, although visual directness (enargeia) does appear to belong among Hellenistic poetry’s main concerns (cf. Otto 2008), it is clear that a striving for realism does not explain certain remarkable aspects of the descriptions of spaces we find in Hellenistic poetry. A case in point is Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos, in which the landscape, fleeing the expectant mother Leto, massively takes to its heels. Where do such implausible, and even impossible representations derive from, and how may they be explained in the learned atmosphere of the Alexandrian Library? A study of literary conventions and their use and abuse byerudite and witty poets like Callimachus will show that spatial descriptions in Hellenistic poetry are deeply influenced by poetical ideas about representation and its limits such as we find them fromAristotle through the rhetorical treatises and the medieval scholia. The study will focus in particular on Callimachus, but will also draw upon material from contemporary poets like Theocritus and Apollonius.