Prof. Dr. John Magee – Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

Prof. Dr. John Magee

University of Toronto
Classical Philology, Medieval Studies

External Senior Fellow
September 2013 – July 2014

Last Update: 31.08.2014

Curriculum Vitae

Born 1955, San Francisco, USA; 1978 B.A., History, Classics, and Music, University of California at Berkeley; 1986 Ph.D., Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; 1986-1992 Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, Columbia University; 1991-1992 Research Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities; 1992-1995 Associate Professor, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, und Senior Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto; 1994-1995 Research Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; 1995-1999 Associate Professor, Department of Classics and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; since 1999 Professor, Department of Classics and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; 2000-2003 Research Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; 2008-2013 Director, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; since 2009 Associate Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

Selected Publications

“Preliminary Observations on the Textual Tradition of Boethius’ First Peri Hermeneias Commentary,” J.L. Fink, H. Hansen, A.M. Mora-Márquez (hrsg.), Logic and Language in the Middle Ages: A Volume in Honour of Sten Ebbesen (Leiden-Boston, 2013), pp. 13-25
“On the Composition and Sources of Boethius’ Second Peri Hermeneias Commentary,” Vivarium 48 (2010), 7-54
“Boethius’ Anapestic Dimeters (Acatalectic), with Regard to the Structure and Argument of the Consolatio,” A. Galonnier (hrsg.), Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs: Actes du colloque international de la Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, 8-12 juin 1999) (Louvain-Paris, 2003), pp. 147-69
Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii De divisione liber: Critical Edition, Translation, Prolegomena, and Commentary(Leiden-Boston-Cologne, 1998)
Boethius on Signification and Mind (Leiden-NY-Copenhagen-Cologne, 1989)

FRIAS Project

Calcidius, In Platonis Timaeum commentarius und Boethius, In Aristotelis Peri Hermeneias librum commentarii editio prima

I am pursuing two research projects at FRIAS. (a) The first is the completion of a volume on Calcidius. From the prosopographical point of view, Calcidius is something of a phantom: a translator and commentator of Plato’s Timaeuswho appears to have been active in fourth century CE but is otherwise unknown. His work was first translated into a modern language (Italian) in 2003, and then (French) again in 2011. I am completing a bilingual (Latin-English) edition, with notes and introduction, for the Dombarton Oaks Medieval Library, Harvard University Press. (b) The second project is a critical edition of Boethius’ first commentary on Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias. Boethius wrote the commentary, along with his larger second one on the same treatise, ca. 513-515 CE, and it survives today in twenty-eight manuscripts of the late-8^th through 13^th centuries. The extant tradition is among the oldest of all for Boethius, which presents particular challenges and opportunites for the textual critic. With this text we have the clearest view of the fortune of Boethius’ works between the late-6^th and 9^th centuries, and one of the tasks is to extract from it Boethius’ earliest draft translation of the Greek original.