Edwin D. Floyd

  • Professor Emeritus
  • (Retired Spring 2014)

Dr. Edwin D. Floyd retired from the University of Pittsburgh at the end of the 2014 school year. We wish him well and thank him for his many years of teaching, scholarship and mentorship.

He joined the University of Pittsburgh faculty in 1966, having taught previously at the College of William and Mary. His areas of specialization are Greek poetry, Greek and Indo-European linguistics, and Sanskrit. All three of these areas are combined in his work on Indo-European poetic formulas in Sanskrit (Rig-Veda and Mahabharata) and in Greek. In the case of inherited formulas in Greek, there is of course a certain focus on Homer, but his work in this area also ranges from archaic lyric poetry through the Late Antique and Byzantine periods. Homer, Sappho, Parmenides, Pindar, Bacchylides, Sophocles, Nonnos, and Cometas are among the authors on whom he has published, along with Linear B, Greek phonology and morphology, and the importance of the pitch accent in Greek poetry.   

Education & Training

  • Ph.D., Princeton University