Antiquity Made Whole: Book Discussion with Leah Whittington

Leah Whittington (John P. Marquand Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature) will discuss her new book Antiquity Made Whole: The Renaissance Continuation of Ancient Literature. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026.
With responses from: 
· Gordon Teskey (Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature, Harvard University)
· Stephen Hinds (Professor Emeritus of Classics, University of Washington)
· Megan Heffernan (Associate Professor of English, DePaul University)
· Eric Weiskott (Professor of English, Boston College)
· Ann Blair (Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, Harvard University)

Introduced and moderated by Irene Peirano Garrison (Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, Harvard University)

Across the European Renaissance, ancient literature circulated in damaged, incomplete, and fragmentary forms. Missing lines, lost endings, and textual gaps were not obstacles to reading the classics; instead, they were invitations to fill in the blanks. Antiquity Made Whole uncovers a neglected literary archive of supplements and continuations, in which authors set out to restore and revive antiquity through creative means. Though often overlooked in studies of classical transmission and reception, supplements appeared in manuscripts and printed books wherever classical literature was studied and published between 1400 and 1700. These texts were closely tied to early classical scholarship, sharing methods and materials with textual criticism, translation, and imitation. By studying ancient writers such as Vergil, Plautus, and Cicero alongside the early modern authors who wrote in the gaps, from Maffeo Vegio to Thomas May, this book reveals how Renaissance readers understood preservation as an active, generative process. Situating supplements within the history of philology and classical reception, Antiquity Made Whole offers a new account of Renaissance classical culture and its afterlives, providing timely insight into contemporary debates about restoration, conservation, and the stewardship of the past.

Sponsored by the Mahindra Seminar on the Civilizations of Greece and Rome; the Harvard Early Modern Workshop; the Department of English; the Harvard Renaissance Colloquium.