Editors’ Note

Abstract

Editors’ Note Aimee Pozorski and Maren Scheurer Teaching W.S. Merwin’s 1978 translation of Euripides’s Iphigeneia at Aulis earlier this spring revealed striking similarities between the concerns of the Ancient Greeks and our own. Threats of illness, autocratic leaders, and interminable wars are just three examples that come to mind, now over a year into the most recent global pandemic. The circumstances surrounding the production of this special issue on Roth and Scandal read like scandals themselves—at least if we go back to the Ancient Greek meaning, where σκάνδαλον could refer to a “trap” or a “stumbling block”: our long-anticipated seminar on the topic for the American Comparative Literature Association conference in Chicago was cancelled due to the pandemic; further, the authors in these pages balanced their commitment to Roth scholarship with home schooling, quarantining, videoconferencing, securing vaccination appointments for aging parents, and recovering from COVID-19—all in a political climate leading to despair and bureaucratic inefficiencies making our public health crises all the more scandalous. But if the Greeks teach us about scandal, they also teach us about the opposite: arete, or excellence. Despite the scandalous circumstances and pressures under which this volume came together, there was always a focus on excellence—from archival research to revision and editing to the organization required to keep all of the pieces moving forward, together. We thank especially Maggie McKinley, who collected these essays and conceived of this remarkable topic at the very beginning of this process, and we thank Jessica Rabin, who has been here with us at the very end of the process with her extraordinary copy-editing skills—and who has been here since the very first issue of Philip Roth Studies, 1.1. In the Merwin edition of Iphigeneia, William Arrowsmith suggests that arete, like its opposite, bad faith, “can be taught—taught by the liberating contagion of example” (xi). And while, in 2021, we may recoil when we see [End Page 1] the word “contagion,” it is clear from this excellent volume that arete can be taught from the examples of Maggie, Jessica, and all of the authors in these pages who kept at their craft despite the riotous atmosphere and virus spreading just outside our doors. WORK CITED Arrowsmith, William. “Editor’s Foreword.” Euripides: Iphigeneia at Aulis, translated by W.S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr., Oxford UP, 1978, pp. v–xiii. Google Scholar Copyright © 2021 Purdue University