June 22, 2026
Contact: Janese Heavin, heavinj@missouri.edu
Photo courtesy of Brooke Veillon
As audiences rediscover one of humanity’s oldest stories with “The Odyssey” in theaters this summer, a University of Missouri alumnus is uncovering epics of his own.
Jordi Alonso, PhD ’21, is currently translating a newly discovered manuscript and the Latin poem “Columbus” into English — work that highlights the global reach and interdisciplinary strength of a Mizzou education.
Alonso earned a doctorate in English with a focus on Victorian literature at the College of Arts and Science, where he also immersed himself in the classics, including learning to write in ancient Greek. That combination, he said, ultimately shaped the kind of work he does today.
“Mizzou gave me the freedom to explore different interests at once,” he said. “The work I’m doing now — editing manuscripts, translating Latin poetry and writing about literary history — really comes out of that interdisciplinary training.”
Opening a lost conversation
Alonso’s work led him to an unexpected discovery in Rome. Last summer, he was searching the archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University for references to Jesuit poet Ubertino Carrara, whose poem “Columbus” retells Christopher Columbus’ journey to America.
That’s when he found a catalog entry for what appeared to be a book on poetry written by Carrara. When Alonso examined the volume more closely, he realized it was part of a sprawling manuscript called “Rhetorica,” a 22,000-word work on poetry, rhetoric and literary craft that had never been published.
“At that point, I understood that I wasn’t just reading a manuscript,” Alonso said. “Rather, I was the first scholar to work through the text in detail. That’s an odd and slightly surreal experience. Instead of joining an existing conversation, you have to start the conversation yourself.”
“Rhetorica” functions as a wide‑ranging handbook on poetry and persuasion in the 17th century.
“This was a period when poetry, rhetoric, history and even science were still closely connected, and writers were trained to think about language as something powerful and persuasive, not just decorative,” Alonso said. “More broadly, it helps us understand how people in the early modern world thought about persuasion, voice and imagination from which we might learn something ourselves.”
Where Homer meets the Americas
Centuries after Homer told the stories of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” — the epic tales about the Trojan war and the agonizing journey home — Carrara imagined Christopher Columbus stepping into a world shaped by the traditions of the classical epic.
His poem “Columbus” draws heavily from Virgil’s “Aeneid,” which was itself inspired by Homer’s works. But instead of chronicling Trojan warriors or lost heroes, Carrara sends Columbus across the Atlantic into a strange, uncertain world.
The poem features witches, nymphs and squadrons of sea creatures commanded by the goddess of Discord. Storms, supernatural interventions and fantastical landscapes unfold alongside moments of human vulnerability, including Columbus’ anxieties over the dangers and uncertainties about the voyage.
Even chocolate makes an appearance as a restorative remedy.
“Carrara is using the language of classical epic to describe a world that Europeans were still trying to understand at the time the poem takes place,” Alonso said. “These imaginative episodes show that exploration was seen as something almost mythic.”
By reframing Columbus through the lens of classical epic, Carrara reveals how Europeans imagined the Americas not just as geography but as mythic terrain.
“It reminds us that voyages, in the Jesuit mind, were emotional and cultural experiences,” Alonso said.
Resurrecting forgotten voices
Alonso’s discoveries have already drawn international attention. He has presented his research in the U.S. and Europe, including at the Society for Classical Studies, the Warburg Institute in London and the Classical Association Conference in Scotland.
He recently received a project development grant from the American Council of Learned Societies to continue studying “Rhetorica,” and he was selected as a 2027 summer fellow at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
But for Alonso, the most rewarding aspect of the work is far quieter.
“For me, the most satisfying part of the process is having a particularly good translation for a line you admire in the text,” he said. “You spend a long time trying to understand exactly what a passage means, and then you try to make it sound good in English. When a difficult passage finally works in translation, it’s incredibly satisfying.”
Translation also gives forgotten texts a second life.
“This may sound slightly sappy, but it also feels a bit like bringing a once-quiet voice back into the conversation,” Alonso said. “Some of these texts haven’t been read in centuries, and translation lets new readers encounter them for the first time.”
Without his time at Mizzou’s Graduate School — and working with professors such as Aliki Barnstone, Noah Heringman and John McDonald — Alonso said he might not have realized scholarship, translation and creative writing could coexist as a career.
“In a lot of ways, what I do now is still what I learned to do at Mizzou,” Alonso said. “And that was to read carefully, write clearly and be curious about texts that other people might have overlooked.”
