Leonard Gethin
Thesis Title:
The problem of oral composition in the Vedas and Avesta: What kind of a thing is an Indo-Iranian poetic formula?
Supervisor(s):
Educational Background
MA in Historical Linguistics and Indo-European Studies (University of Vienna) | Thesis: ‘Text and its performance on the eastern Silk Road: A catalogue of sound and music in the Khotanese corpus’
BA in Persian and Study of Religions (SOAS, University of London)
Research interests
I am interested in Indo-Iranian languages and poetics and the performance cultures that, presumably, surrounded very early texts. My doctoral research concerns the use of formulaic phrases in the Vedas and Avesta—thinking about these within frameworks of oral composition and ritual performance. Previously, I have worked on Middle Iranian, in particular Khotanese. My research is funded by the Lorne Thyssen Doctoral Scholarship, associated with the Ancient World Research Cluster at Wolfson College.
