Claude Calame

Claude Calame (born in Lausanne 1943) is a Swiss writer on Greek mythology and the structure of mythic narrative from the perspective of a Hellenist trained in semiotics and ethnology as well as philology. He is a professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Lausanne and Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris.

Among his works, several have been translated into English.

• Les Chœurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque, 2 vols. (Rome:L'Ateneo and Bizzarri), 1977. Tr. as Choruses of Ancient Women in Greece: their morphology, religious roles and social functions (Lanham, MD:Rowman and Littlefield), 1996. In Spartan feminine liturgies Calame detected initiative scenarios in rites of passage interpreted as survivals of archaic "tribal' initiations.
• The Craft of Poetic Speech in Ancient Greece (Cornell), 1995.
• I greci e l'eros (Rome), 1992; tr. as L'Éros dans la Grèce antique, (Paris:Belin), 1996 and The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece (Princeton), 1999.
• Thésée et l'imaginaire athénien, (Lausanne:Payot "Sciences humaines"),1991, 2nd ed. 1996, examines the emergence of a complex new interpretation of archaic traditional materials in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE: "his analysis brings to light how ritual and institutional elaboration accompany the emergence of a national heroic mythology" observed Philippe Borgeaud in an extended review of the revised edition .
• Mythe et histoire dans l'antiquité grecque: la création symbolique d'une colonie (Lausanne:Payot), 1996. Tr. as Myth and history in ancient Greece: the symbolic creation of a colony, 2003
• Poétique des mythes en Grèce antique, (Paris:Hachette), 2000 Tr. as Greek Mythology : Poetics, Pragmatics and Fiction, 2009
• Philippe Borgeaud, Claude Calame and André Hurst, "L’Orphisme et ses écritures. Nouvelles recherches", Revue de l'histoire des religions 4/2002
• Masks of Authority: Fiction and Pragmatics in Ancient Greek Poetics, (Cornell, "Myth and Poetics Series"), 2005, collects articles first published between 1986 and 1997.