Key papers in Classics
Pofolia’s corpus holds 87 papers from the Classics subfield (2012–2025). The list below starts with the most cited.
Most cited
Ranked by citation count. Because citations accumulate over time, this list naturally leans towards work published a few years ago; for where the field is now, see “recently added”.
Rabelais and his world
2020 · FWCI 691.58 · 3,437 citations
Rabelais's work integrates themes of "uncrowning" and "carnivalesque" imagery, drawing from both living popular traditions and ancient scholarly rituals like the Saturnalia.
Information, Natural Law, and the Self-Assembly of Rhythmic Movement
2015 · FWCI 61.95 · 1,294 citations
This 1987 work successfully explains wrist-pendulum oscillations using physical representations, introducing new physics-based concepts to biology.
Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe
2017 · FWCI 52.59 · 822 citations
This study examines the broad sweep of pre-industrial Europe's popular culture from 1500-1800, analyzing how the attitudes and values of ordinary people shaped and were shaped by societal conditions.
Alliance Formation in Civil Wars
Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2012 · FWCI 27.12 · 456 citations
Contrary to common assumptions, the primary driver of alliance formation and disintegration in civil wars is not shared identity, but rather the relative power distribution between and within warring groups.
King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care
2023 · FWCI 43.94 · 400 citations · Open access
King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, a key Anglo-Saxon text, provides invaluable data for understanding ninth-century West-Saxon grammar.
The Faiss Library
IEEE Transactions on Big Data · 2025 · Q1 · SJR 1.00 · FWCI 7380.20 · 386 citations
Faiss is a new toolkit for efficient vector similarity search, designed to handle the massive scale of embeddings required by rapidly growing AI applications.
The Implications of Literacy
Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021 · FWCI 7.72 · 357 citations
Medieval and early modern literacy didn't replace oral traditions but created a new interdependence, with written texts acting as a crucial reference system even when not physically present.
The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2013 · FWCI 19.82 · 348 citations
This book proposes a new framework for understanding medieval aesthetic values, grounding them in sensory and emotional experiences rather than solely symbolism or theology.
Categories of Medieval Culture
2025 · FWCI 9.32 · 345 citations
This book reconstructs medieval culture by analyzing how people of the era perceived their world, as reflected in their vernacular and Latin literature.
The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints
The European Legacy · 2014 · Q2 · 338 citations
The Golden Legend, a collection of saints' lives, was the second most widely read book in the late Middle Ages, surpassed only by the Bible.
Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network
Nineteenth Century Contexts · 2016 · Q2 · 327 citations
This book proposes an "invigorating inversion" of formalism, arguing that formalist analysis, rather than being a fixed or static concept, is dynamic and can be understood through four interconnected modes: whole, rhythm, hierarchy, and network.
Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire
Harvard University Press eBooks · 2018 · FWCI 62.95 · 323 citations
This work explores how the Seleucid Empire's imposed formal temporal structures, like the Seleucid Era year count, clashed with and were resisted by diverse indigenous temporalities in the Hellenistic East.
The Byzantine Republic
Harvard University Press eBooks · 2015 · FWCI 62.26 · 266 citations
This work argues that the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire was fundamentally a republic, not a Christian theocracy, with power exercised by and for its Greek-speaking citizens who identified as Roman.
Sons of Hellenism, fathers of the church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the vision of Rome
Choice Reviews Online · 2012 · 247 citations
This paper analyzes the complex intellectual and political rivalry between Emperor Julian and Gregory of Nazianzus, two prominent figures of the 4th-century Roman Empire.
The Golden Legend
Princeton University Press eBooks · 2012 · FWCI 41.37 · 246 citations
The Golden Legend, a compilation of saints' lives compiled around 1260 by Jacobus de Voragine, was one of the most widely read books in the late Middle Ages.
Medieval English Literature
2016 · FWCI 5.23 · 224 citations
This abstract outlines the structure and content of a collection of essays on Medieval English Literature, covering topics from romance and Chaucer to religious texts.
The Land of the Elephant Kings
Harvard University Press eBooks · 2014 · FWCI 7.73 · 222 citations
This work examines how the Seleucid Empire, built on Alexander the Great's Asian conquests, unified diverse territories despite lacking ancestral ties to them.
History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850
Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2015 · FWCI 10.10 · 222 citations
This study argues that early medieval Frankish identity was pivotal in shaping a distinct Western concept of ethnicity, shifting from viewing ethnicity as the 'Other' to a perception of chosen Christian peoples.
Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance
Harvard University Press eBooks · 2014 · FWCI 33.79 · 221 citations
Renaissance poets and philologists, rather than scientists, were key in reviving Lucretius's atomism theory.
Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade
Princeton University Press eBooks · 2014 · FWCI 21.61 · 212 citations
This seminal 1925 work argues that the destruction of antiquity's civilization was caused not by Germanic invasions, but by the Arab conquest of Mediterranean trade routes in the 7th century.
Recently added
The Faiss Library
IEEE Transactions on Big Data · 2025 · Q1 · SJR 1.00 · FWCI 7380.20 · 386 citations
Faiss is a new toolkit for efficient vector similarity search, designed to handle the massive scale of embeddings required by rapidly growing AI applications.
Categories of Medieval Culture
2025 · FWCI 9.32 · 345 citations
This book reconstructs medieval culture by analyzing how people of the era perceived their world, as reflected in their vernacular and Latin literature.
Origins of Natural Rights Language: Texts and Contexts, 1150–1250
2024 · FWCI 20.46 · 147 citations
Twelfth-century humanistic jurisprudence, particularly the writings of medieval Decretists, may be a better origin point for natural rights theories than later nominalism or early capitalism.
Beowulf and the Appositive Style
University of Tennessee Press eBooks · 2024 · FWCI 4.62 · 131 citations
The appositive style in Beowulf allows the poet to convey a Christian interpretation of pagan life by highlighting dual meanings of words, resolving narrative tension.
King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care
2023 · FWCI 43.94 · 400 citations · Open access
King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, a key Anglo-Saxon text, provides invaluable data for understanding ninth-century West-Saxon grammar.
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