A Companion to Classical Receptions E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1281

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Examining the profusion of ways in which the arts, culture, and thought of Greece and Rome have been transmitted, interpreted, adapted and used, A Companion to Classical Receptions explores the impact of this phenomenon on both ancient and later societies. * Provides a comprehensive introduction and overview of classical reception - the interpretation of classical art, culture, and thought in later centuries, and the fastest growing area in classics * Brings together 34 essays by an international group of contributors focused on ancient and modern reception concepts and practices * Combines close readings of key receptions with wider contextualization and discussion * Explores the impact of Greek and Roman culture worldwide, including crucial new areas in Arabic literature, South African drama, the history of photography, and contemporary ethics

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Half Title Page

Title Page

Copyright

Figures

Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Making Connections

Contest and Debate in Classical Reception Research

Themes and Approaches in This Book

Part I: Reception within Antiquity and Beyond

Chapter One: Reception and Tradition

Introduction

Reception and the Anacreontic tradition

Reception and the Homeric Tradition

Conclusions

Further Reading

Chapter Two: The Ancient Reception of Homer

Defining the Subject

Modes of Reception

Temporalities

Further Reading

Chapter Three: Poets on Socrates’ Stage: Plato’s Reception of Dramatic Art

Drama in Plato’s Dialogues

Plato and the Athenian Polis: Centre and Periphery?

Further Reading

Chapter Four: ‘Respectable in Its Ruins’: Achaemenid Persia, Ancient and Modern

The Formation of ‘Persia’

The Modern study of the Achaemenids

Further Reading

Chapter Five: Basil of Caesarea and Greek Tragedy

Christians and the Classics

The Theatre in Basil’s Treatise

The Theatre, Mimesis and Morality

Further Reading

Part II: Transmission, Acculturation and Critique

Chapter Six: ‘Our Debt to Greece and Rome’: Canon, Class and Ideology

Note

Further Reading

Chapter Seven: Gladstone and the Classics

The Classics and Gladstone

The Classics and Gladstonian Conservatism

The Classics and Gladstonian Liberalism

Further Reading

Chapter Eight: Between Colonialism and Independence: Eric Williams and the Uses of Classics in Trinidad in the 1950s and 1960s

Classics as the Height of Foolishness

The Aristotle Debate

Democracy and Elitist Knowledge

Conclusion

Further Reading

Chapter Nine: Virgilian Contexts

Virgil and the Victorians

Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: Virgil’s Eclogues, Culture and Politics

Conclusion

Further Reading

Part III: Translation

Chapter Ten: Colonization, Closure or Creative Dialogue?: The Case of Pope’s Iliad

Further Reading

Chapter Eleven: Translation at the Intersection of Traditions: The Arab Reception of the Classics

The Oriental Origins

Arabic Versions of the Classics

Classics in the Arab Renaissance

Egyptian Classical Scholarship

Arab Poetic reception of Greek Mythology

Classical Drama in Arab Theatre

Further Reading

Chapter Twelve: ‘Enough Give in It’: Translating the Classical Play

Introduction

Translating the Stage Play

The Spirit of the Original

Aeschylus and The Oresteia

Sophocles and the Common Man

Euripides and the New Realism

Conclusion

TRANSLATIONS USED Aeschylus

Sophocles

Euripides

Further Reading

Chapter Thirteen: Lost in Translation? The Problem of (Aristophanic) Humour

Translating Verbal Humour

‘Verbal’ and ‘Referential’ Humour

Translating Referential Humour

Translation Studies and the ‘Cultural Turn’

Humour Theory

Aristophanes’ Translators

Conclusion

Further Reading

Part IV: Theory and Practice

Chapter Fourteen: ‘Making It New’: André Gide’s Rewriting of Myth

Further Reading

Chapter Fifteen: ‘What Difference Was Made?’ Feminist Models of Reception

Further Reading

Chapter Sixteen: History and Theory Moses and Monotheism and the Historiography of the Repressed

‘Nothing That Ever Took Shape Has Passed Away’

Repression and Reception

Murderous Distortion and Solicitous Piety: History and Theory

Further Reading

Chapter Seventeen: Performance Reception Canonization and Periodization

Canonization

Periodization

Conclusion

Note

Further Reading

Part V: Performing Arts

Chapter Eighteen: Iphigénie en Tauride and Elektra: ‘Apolline’ and ‘Dionysiac’ Receptions of Greek Tragedy into Opera

De la Touche’s Play and Guillard’s Libretto

Iphigénie and Oreste

Chorus

Recognition

Hofmannsthal’s Elektra

Dionysiac Poetics

Hofmannsthal and Sophokles

Strauss’s Elektra: Strategy and Style

Further Reading

Chapter Nineteen: Performance Histories

Practising Performance Histories

Mapping the Oedipus with Mounet-Sully

Mapping Oedipus with Martha Graham

Oedipus Tyrannos as Outsider

Further Reading

Chapter Twenty: ‘Body and Mask’ in Performances of Classical Drama on the Modern Stage

The Heroic Mask and Body of Tragedy

The Chorus Mask and Collective Body

The Comic Mask and Grotesque Body

Practice-based Research

Note

Further Reading

Chapter Twenty-One: The Nomadic Theatre of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio: A Case of Postdramatic Reworking of (the Classical) Tragedy

A Radically New Artistic Climate

Contemporary Tragedy

Orestea (una commedia organica?) (1995)

Tragedia Endogonidia (2002–2004)

Further Reading

Chapter Twenty-Two: Aristophanes between Israelis and Palestinians

Aristophanes on the Israeli Stage

Multilayered Plot as Metaphor

A Multifaceted Conflict

Israeli Theatre in Its Socio-political Context

The War Over Home

Further Reading

Part VI: Film

Chapter Twenty-Three: Working with Film Theories and Methodologies

Using Film in Teaching and Learning

The Dynamics of Reception in Classics and Film

Locating Reception in Classics and Film Studies

Film as Meta-reception

Further Reading

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Odyssey from Homer to NBC: The Cyclops and the Gods

Rendition of the Cyclops Episode

Poseidon

Further Reading

Chapter Twenty-Five: A New Hope Film as a Teaching Tool for the Classics

Introduction: Myth and Film

Star Wars: An Oedipal Fantasy

The Crying Game: Bacchic Revels

Conclusion

Further Reading

Part VII: Cultural Politics

Chapter Twenty-Six: Possessing Rome The Politics of Ruins in Roma capitale

Italy’s Capital

Hare’s Rome

Note

Further Reading

Chapter Twenty-Seven: ‘You unleash the tempest of tragedy’ The 1903 Athenian Production of Aeschylus’ Oresteia

Introduction

The Players Offstage and the Greek Language Turned Protagonist

The Unbearable Foreign Identity of an Oresteia

The Greek, the Bad and the Ugly

A German Antigone

Conclusion

Further Reading

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Multicultural Reception Greek Drama in South Africa in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-first Centuries

Introduction

Hybridity and Language

Syncretism and Reconciliation

Comedy as Critique and Celebration

Contemporary Trends

Further Reading

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Putting the Class into Classical Reception

Further Reading

Part VIII: Changing Contexts

Chapter Thirty: Reframing the Homeric Images of the Odyssey in the Art of Derek Walcott and Romare Bearden

Further Reading

Chapter Thirty-One: ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’ SF and the Classics

The Fall of Rome

Myths of Greece

Alternative History

Note

Further Reading

Chapter Thirty-Two: Aristotle’s Ethics, Old and New

Introduction

Modern Virtue Ethics: the Action Guidance Problem

Modern Virtue Ethics: the Justification Problem

Further Reading

Chapter Thirty-Three: Classicizing Bodies in the Male Photographic Tradition

Heroes of a New Art

Poetic Visions

Further Reading

Chapter Thirty-Four: Homer in British World War One Poetry

Introduction

The Eastern Front: Gallipoli and Troy

The Western Front: Julian Grenfell’s ‘Into Battle’

The Western Front: Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg

Conclusion: Gallipoli Revisited

Note

Further Reading

Part IX: Reflection and Critique

Chapter Thirty-Five: Reception Studies Future Prospects

The history of Greek and Roman studies as reception study

Reception in Antiquity

Reception Theory

Future Paths

Reform in the Classroom: Interdisciplinary Opportunities

Live Reception: Classical Studies and Public Intellectuals

Note

Further Reading

Bibliography

Index

A Companion to Classical Receptions

Praise for A Companion to Classical Receptions

“It is impossible in a short review to do justice to every single contribution of this multifaceted volume. One of the many attractive features of this collection is that it offers not only innovative essays about the reception and translation of the most read authors of antiquity … but also expands the horizon of the reception studies by introducing into the discussion untraditional themes and providing original approaches to the concepts frequently discussed in the context of reception.”

The Classical Outlook

“This volume is an essential introduction to reception studies for both school and university students. Written in an accessible and engaging manner with useful sections for further reading.”

Journal of Classics Teaching

“… importantly, this volume exemplifies the recent boom in reception studies, and its potential to critique our subject and methodology.”

Greece and Rome

“Hardwick and Stray’s Companion pushes lingering worries about elitism and irrelevance right off the table. It offers bold reasons to treat classical studies as the cosmopolitan glue of the postmodern world. The book sparkles with the excitement that makes A Companion to Classical Receptions such an eye-opening delight.”

Times Literary Supplement

“A spectacular volume from the massive series of Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. The editors have pulled in a wider splay of trades and topics than any of their companions’ companions or their own now mushrooming rivals can boast.”

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

“There is sufficient careful scholarship, critical analysis, and contextualisation in this collection to warrant the claim that it provides a sophisticated and far-ranging overview of this burgeoning and dynamic field.”

Scholia

BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD

This series provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture. Each volume comprises between twenty-five and forty concise essays written by individual scholars within their area of specialization. The essays are written in a clear, provocative, and lively manner, designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.

ANCIENT HISTORY

PUBLISHED

A Companion to the Roman Army

Edited by Paul Erdkamp

A Companion to the Roman Republic

Edited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx

A Companion to the Roman Empire

Edited by David S. Potter

A Companion to the Classical Greek World Edited by Konrad H. Kinzl

A Companion to the Ancient Near East Edited by Daniel C. Snell

A Companion to the Hellenistic World

Edited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Late Antiquity Edited by Philip Rousseau

In preparation

A Companion to the Punic Wars

Edited by Dexter Hoyos

LITERATURE AND CULTURE PUBLISHED

A Companion to Classical Receptions

Edited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray

A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography

Edited by John Marincola

A Companion to Catullus

Edited by Marilyn B. Skinner

A Companion to Roman Religion

Edited by Jörg Rüpke

A Companion to Greek Religion

Edited by Daniel Ogden

A Companion to the Classical Tradition Edited by Craig W. Kattendorf

A Companion to Roman Rhetoric

Edited by William Dominik and Jon Hall

A Companion to Greek Rhetoric

Edited by Ian Worthington

A Companion to Ancient Epic

Edited by John Miles Foley

In preparation

A Companion to the Latin Language Edited by James Clackson

A Companion to Greek Mythology

Edited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone

A Companion to Sophocles Edited by Kirk Ormand

A Companion to Aeschylus

Edited by Peter Burian

A Companion to Archaic Greece

Edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees

A Companion to Julius Caesar

Edited by Miriam Griffin A Companion to Ancient History

Edited by Andrew Erskine

A Companion to Byzantium Edited by Liz James

A Companion to Ancient Egypt

Edited by Alan B. Lloyd A Companion to Ancient Macedonia

Edited by Joseph Roisman and Ian Worthington

A Companion to Sparta Edited by Anton Powell

A Companion to Greek Tragedy Edited by Justina Gregory

A Companion to Latin Literature

Edited by Stephen Harrison

A Companion to Ovid

Edited by Peter E. Knox

A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought

Edited by Ryan K. Balot

A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language

Edited by Egbert Bakker

A Companion to Hellenistic Literature

Edited by Martine Cuypers and James J. Clauss

A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its Tradition

Edited by Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam

A Companion to Horace

Edited by Gregson Davis

A Companion to Greek Art

Edited by Tyler Jo Smith and Dimitris Plantzos

A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman World

Edited by Beryl Rawson

A Companion to Tacitus

Edited by Victoria Pagán

A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East

Edited by Daniel Potts

This paperback edition first published 2011

© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (hardback, 2008)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to classical receptions / edited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray.p. cm. — (Blackwell companions to the ancient world)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4051-5167-2 (hardback: alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-4443-3922-2 (paperback: alk. paper) 1. Classical literature—History and criticism.I. Hardwick, Lorna. II. Stray, Christopher.

PA3009.C66 2008880.09—dc22

2007022246

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 10/12.5pt Galliard by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in Malaysia

1 2011

Figures

0.1 (frontispiece) The Sea God. 1977: collage with mixed media on board

0.2 (frontispiece) Odysseus Leaves Circe. 1977: collage on masonite

20.1 The masked figures of Oedipus and the chorus in the production of Oedipus Rex, directed by Tyrone Guthrie in 1955

20.2 Drawing inspired by Karolos Koun’s masked Oresteia in 1982

20.3 The masked figures of Socrates and Strepsiades in the production of Clouds, directed by Socrates Karantinos in 1951

21.1 Beginning of the second act of Choephoroi. From left to right: Pylades (wearing a steeple-crowned clown’s hat), Clytemnestra (lying on a bed), Orestes (trying out the mechanical arm that will help him to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus) and a resurrected billy-goat (referring to Agamemnon)

21.2 Choephoroi. Second act. Pylades (standing) and Orestes (sitting), in trying out the mechanical arm/device that will help Orestes to perform the killing of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra

22.1 An outside view of the Khan Theatre, Jerusalem, before reconstruction

22.2 Design of the reconstructed stage of the Khan Theatre, Jerusalem: from the programme for the Gala Premiere

22.3 Ziona and Yarden in their house on the borderline (scene 1, The War Over Home) 298

22.4 Lizy Strata and her followers demonstrating outside the Israeli parliament in The War Over Home

25.1 Jaye Davidson (as Dil) and Stephen Rea (as Fergus) in The Crying Game (1992), directed by Neil Jordan

25.2 Cillian Murphy (as Patrick ‘Kitten’ Brady) in Breakfast on Pluto (2005), directed by Neil Jordan

26.1 Goatherd at Trajan’s Forum

26.2 Victor Emmanuel Monument

26.3 Objects found during construction, 1874

26.4 Aurelian walls in Viale di Campo Boario with the Pyramid of Cestius

33.1 Eugen Sandow, by Henry Van der Weyde, 1889

33.2 Untitled, by Wilhelm von Gloeden, no date

33.3 Caino, by Wilhelm von Gloeden, 1905

Contributors

David W. Bebbington is Professor of History at the University of Stirling. He is the author of The Mind of Gladstone: Religion, Homer and Politics, 2005.

Sarah Annes Brown is Chair of the Department of English, Communication, Film and Media at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, England. As well as numerous articles and chapters on various aspects of classical reception, she is the author of The Metamorphosis of Ovid: From Chaucer to Ted Hughes (1999) and of Ovid: Myth and Metamorphosis (2005), and is preparing a volume of essays, Tragedy in Transition (co-edited with Catherine Silverstone). Her current projects include an article on Pygmalion and Queer Theory and a monograph on transhistoricism.

Felix Budelmann is a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is the author of The Language of Sophocles: Communality, Communication and Involvement (2000). His research interests include Greek drama and lyric, and their reception. He is currently working on a Greek lyric anthology.

Bryan E. Burns is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics, Wellesley College. He is an archaeologist specializing in Aegean prehistory, with publications on interregional exchange in the Late Bronze Age and Archaic periods. His research interests also include the construction of the prehistoric and classical body in the modern arts and scholarship.

Gregson Davis is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, and current Dean of Humanities at Duke University, Durham, NC. A native of Antigua in the anglophone Caribbean, he attended Harvard College (AB magna cum laude in Classics, 1960), and the University of California at Berkeley (PhD in Comparative Literature [Latin, Greek, French] in 1968). His publications on both Greco-Roman and Caribbean literary traditions include: Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse (1991) and Aimé Césaire (1997).

Freddy Decreus is a philologist, specializing in the reception of classical Antiquity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He works at the University of Ghent, where he is responsible for courses in Latin Literature, Literary Theory, Comparative Literature and Theatre History. His publications have addressed classical tragedy and the modern stage, mythology and modern painting, postmodernism and the rewriting of the classics, and feminism and the classics.

Catharine Edwards is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her book Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City (1996) focuses on ancient literary responses to Rome but also considers aspects of later responses. With Michael Liversidge, she edited Imagining Rome: British Artists and Rome in the Nineteenth Century (1996). She is also the editor of Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture 1789–1945 (1999).

Chris Emlyn-Jones is Emeritus Professor in Classical Studies at the Open University, Milton Keynes. Publications include editions and commentaries on a number of Platonic dialogues published by Bristol Classical Press: Euthyphro (1991, 2nd edn, 2002), Laches (1996), Crito (1999) and Gorgias (2004). Forthcoming (2007) is an edition, translation and commentary of Plato Republic Books 1–2 (Aris and Phillips). He has also published on Homer (Homer: Readings and Images, 1992, ed. with L. Hardwick and J. Purkis). He is currently working on a study of style, form and culture in Plato.

Ahmed Etman is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University; Chairman of the Egyptian Society of the Graeco-Roman Studies (ESGRS); Chairman of the Egyptian Society of Comparative Literature (ESCL). He has written a number of plays including: Cleopatra Adores Peace (1984, English tr. 2001, Italian 1992, Greek 1999, French 1999); The Blind Guest Restores his Sight (French tr. 2005); Al-Hakim Does Not Join the Hypocritic Procession (1988, Spanish tr. 2006); The Goats of Oxyrhynchus (2001 English and French tr. forthcoming); The Wedding of Libraries Nymph (2001, French and Italian tr. forthcoming); A Beautiful Woman in the Prison of Socrates (2004 French and English tr. forthcoming).

Michael Ewans is Professor of Drama and Research Facilitator in the School of Drama, Fine Art and Music at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is the author of Janáek’s Tragic Operas (1977), Wagner and Aeschylus (1982), Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck (1989) and the Everyman Classics complete set of accurate and actable translations of Aeschylus and Sophocles in four volumes, with theatrical commentaries based on his own productions. His most recent book, Opera from the Greek (2007) contains eight case studies in the appropriation of material from Greek tragedy and epic by composers from Monteverdi to Mark-Anthony Turnage. An edition of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, The Women’s Festival and Frogs will appear in 2011 from Oklahoma University Press, and will be followed shortly by Achamians, Knights and Peace.

Barbara Graziosi is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Durham University. She is the author of Inventing Homer (2002) and co-author, together with Johannes Haubold, of Homer: The Resonance of Epic (2005). Together with Emily Greenwood she hasedited Homer in the Twentieth Century: Between World Literature and the Western Canon (2007). She is currently working, together with Johannes Haubold, on an edition and commentary of Iliad 6 for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics.

Emily Greenwood is Associate Professor in Classics at Yale. She is the author of Thucydides and the Shaping of History (2006) and various articles on the reception of Classics in the Caribbean. She is co-editor, with Barbara Graziosi, of Homer in the Twentieth Century: Between World Literature and Western Canon (2007) and, with Elizabeth Irwin, of Reading Herodotus: Studies in the Logoi of Book 5 (2007). Her latest book Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century was published in 2010.

Edith Hall After holding posts at the universities of Cambridge, Reading, Oxford and Durham, Edith was appointed, in 2006, to a joint chair in Classics and Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is also co-founder and co-director of the Archive of performances of Greek & Roman Drama at Oxford. Her books include Inventing the Barbarian (1989), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre (2005, with Fiona Macintosh), The Theatrical Cast of Athens (2006) and The Return of Ulysses (2007).

Lorna Hardwick teaches at the Open University, Milton Keynes, where she is Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Reception of Classical Texts Research Project. She is the author of many articles and books on Greek cultural history and its reception in modern theatre and literature, including Translating Words, Translating Cultures (2000) and New Surveys in the Classics: Reception Studies (2003). She is particularly interested in how Greek and Roman material has been used in postcolonial contexts and is currently working on a monograph on the relationship between classical receptions and cultural change.

Stephen Harrison is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Oxford. He is the author of a commentary on Vergil Aeneid 10 (1991) and of Apuleius: A Latin Sophist (2000) and editor of several volumes including Texts, Ideas and the Classics (2001), A Companion to Latin Literature (2005) and Living Classics (2009).

Thomas Harrison is Rathbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Divinity and History. The Religion of Herodotus (2000) and The Emptiness of Asia. Aeschylus’ Persians and the History of the Fifth Century (2000), and the editor of Greeks and Barbarians (2002) and (with Ed Bispham and Brian A. Sparkes) The Edinburgh Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome (2006). He is now working on a study of the modern historiography of ancient Persia.

Johannes Haubold is Leverhulme Senior Lecturer in Greek Literature at Durham University. He is the author of Homer’s People: Epic Poetry and Social Formation (2000) and co-author, with Barbara Graziosi, of Homer: The Resonance of Epic (2005). He specialises on Greek epic and its relationship with Near Eastern literatures. Together with Barbara Graziosi, he is currently writing a commentary on Iliad 6.

David Hopkins is Professor of English Literature in the University of Bristol. Among his recent publications are (edited, with Paul Hammond) the Longman Annotated English Poets edition of John Dryden (5 vols, 1995–2005) and (edited, with Stuart Gillespie) vol. 3 (1660–1790) of The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English (2005). He has a special interest in English/classical literary relations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Rosalind Hursthouse After twenty-five years in the Philosophy Department of the Open University, Rosalind Hursthouse returned to her home department at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where she is now Professor. She wrote two course books on ethics for the Open University, Beginning Lives (1987) and Ethics, Humans and Other Animals (2000), as well as her definitive On Virtue Ethics (1999), and has published numerous journal articles on ethics and Aristotle.

Miriam Leonard is Lecturer in Greek Literature and its Reception at University College, London. Her research explores the intellectual history of classics in modern European thought from Hegel to Derrida. She is author of Athens in Paris (2005) and co-editor with Vanda Zajko of Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought (2006). She is currently writing a short book on How to Read Ancient Philosophy (forthcoming 2008) and working on a project on Greeks, Jews and the Enlightenment. She is also editing a collection on Derrida and Antiquity.

Fiona Macintosh is Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama and Fellow of St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. Her publications include Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama (1994) and with Edith Hall, Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914 (2005). Her edited volumes include Medea in Performance 1500–2000 (2000), Dionysus Since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium (2004), and Agamemnon in Performance, 458 BC to AD 2004 (2005).

Marianne McDonald is Professor of Theatre and Classics in the Department of Theatre at the University of California, San Diego, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a recipient of many national and international awards. Her published books include: Euripides in Cinema: The Heart Made Visible (1983); Ancient Sun, Modern Light: Greek Drama on the Modern Stage (1992); Sing Sorrow: Classics, History and Heroines in Opera (2001). Her performed translations include: Sophocles’ Antigone (1999); Euripides’ Children of Heracles (2003); Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus (2003–4); Euripides’ Hecuba, 2005; Sophocles’ Ajax, 2006; and versions: The Trojan Women (2000); Medea, Queen of Colchester (2003), The Ally Way (2004), and also … and then he met a woodcutter (2005: after Noh), which was awarded the San Diego Critics Circle award for ‘Best Play of 2005’.

Pantelis Michelakis is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol. His research interests are in early Greek literature and culture as well as in Greco-Roman drama and its ancient and modern reception. He is the author of Achilles in Greek Tragedy (2002) and Euripides’ ‘Iphigenia’ at Aulis (2006). He has also co-edited twocollections of essays, Homer, Tragedy and Beyond: Essays in Honour of P. E. Easterling (2001) and Agamemnon in Performance, 458 BC to AD 2004 (2005).

Joanna Paul is Lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Liverpool, having completed her doctoral thesis, ‘Film and the classical epic tradition’, at the University of Bristol in 2005. She is publishing articles on various aspects of cinematic receptions of antiquity, including adaptation and translation, and the films of Federico Fellini. Her current research project concerns modern receptions of Pompeii and its destruction.

James I. Porter is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine. He is author of Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future and The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on the Birth of Tragedy (both 2000) and editor, most recently, of Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome (2006). He has just completed The Origins of Aesthetic Inquiry in Antiquity: Matter, Experience, and the Sublime (forthcoming), and is at work on a sequel volume, Literary Aesthetics after Aristotle, in addition to a study on the reception of Homer from antiquity to the present.

Cashman Kerr Prince is Associate Professor of Classics, Wellesley College. He is trained in Classics and in Comparative Literature, holding degrees from Wesleyan and Stanford Universities as well as the Université de Paris VIII. He works on early Greek poetry, including didactic, larger questions of Greek poetics, and the reception of classical texts primarily in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

James Robson is Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University, Milton Keynes. His research interests include Aristophanes, humour theory, translation and Greek sexuality: he is co-editor of Lost Dramas of Classical Athens: Greek Tragic Fragments (2005) and author of Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (2006) and Aristophanes: An Introduction (2009). He is co-author of Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient (2010) and is currently working on books on Greek Language and Classical Athenian sex and sexuality.

Hanna M. Roisman is the Francis F. Bartlett and K. Bartlett Professor of Classics at Colby College, Waterville, Maine. She specializes in Early Greek Epic, Greek and Roman tragedy, as well as in Classics and Film. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters in her various fields, she has written Nothing Is As It Seems: The Tragedy of the Implicit in Euripides’ Hippolytus (1999), Sophocles: Philoctetes (2005). She is co-author with Fred Ahl of The Odyssey Re-Formed (1996), and with C.A.E. Luschnig, of Euripides’ Alcestis: A Commentary for Students (2003). She has also co-edited with Joseph Roisman several issues of the Colby Quarterly on Greek and Latin literature. She is currently working on the translation with notes, introduction and interpretative essay to Sophocles’ Electra.

Seth L. Schein is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis, and works mainly on Homeric epic, Attic tragedy, and institutional receptions of classical literature and culture. He has written The Iambic Trimeterin Aeschylus and Sophocles: a study in metrical form (1979), The Mortal Hero: an introduction to Homer’s Iliad (1984), and Sophokles’ Philoktetes: Translation with Notes, Introduction and Interpretive Essay (2003), and he edited Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays (1996). Currently he is working on an edition with commentary of Philoktetes and a translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia.

Christopher Stray has been Honorary Research Fellow in the Dept of Classics, University of Wales, Swansea, since 1989, and is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. His publications include Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England 1830–1960 (1998) and articles and books on the history of Classics, institutional slang, and examinations. He is currently working on an edition of the correspondence of Sir Richard Jebb and on a study of Classics in nineteenth-century Cambridge.

Gonda Van Steen is Cassas Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida. Her first book, Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (2000) was awarded the John D. Criticos Prize by the London Hellenic Society. She has also published articles on ancient Greek and late antique literature, on the reception of Greek tragedy, on Greek coinage, and on post-war Greek feminism. Her most recent books are Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire (2010) and Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands (forthcoming 2010).

Betine van Zyl Smit taught at the University of the Western Cape, the Rand Afrikaans University and Stellenbosch University in South Africa for more than thirty years. One of her main research interests is the reception of Greek and Roman literature in South Africa. She was appointed as a senior lecturer in the Classics Department of the University of Nottingham in 2006.

Elizabeth Vandiver is Associate Professor of Classics at Whitman College, Walla Walla, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She has published two books, Heroes in Herodotus: The Interaction of Myth and History (1991), and the first English translation of Cochlaeus’ biography of Luther in Luther’s Lives: Two Contemporary Accounts of Martin Luther (2002). Her third book, Stand in the Trench, Achilles: Classical Receptions in British Poetry of the Great War (2010) is published in the series Classical Presences. She has published articles on a variety of topics, including Catullus; Livy; classical reception; and translation.

Angeliki Varakis is Lecturer in Drama in the department of Drama, Film and Visual Arts at the University of Kent, Canterbury. She has a number of publications including ‘Research on the Ancient Mask’, Didaskalia (2004) and ‘The use of Mask in Koun’s stage interpretations of Birds, Frogs and Peace’ in Hall and Wrigley 2007 forthcoming Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–2005 AD: Peace, Birds, Frogs and has written the commentary and notes for the Methuen Student Edition of Antigone (2006) and Oedipus the King (2007). She has actively participated in a series of practice-based research projects involving the mask.

J. Michael Walton is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Hull and was founder/director of the Performance Translation Centre. He was General Editor of Methuen Classical Dramatists from 1988 to 2002, a series which includedthe whole of Greek Tragedy and Comedy in translation in thirteen volumes, with three further compilations including one of Roman Comedy. Twelve of his translations (several in collaboration with Marianne McDonald) from Greek and Latin are currently in print and have been performed widely in Britain and Ireland, America, Greece and Cyprus. The more recent of his seven books on Greek theatre include Euripides our Contemporary (2009), Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English (2006) and The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre, which he has edited with McDonald (2007).

Ruth Webb is Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, London, and Professeur Associé at the Université Paris X. She has published articles on post-classical Greek rhetoric and performance and is author of Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (forthcoming) and Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity (forthcoming).

Nurit Yaari is Senior Lecturer and chair of the department of Theatre Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She has published a book, French Contemporary Theatre 1960–1992 (1994), and edited several books in English and Hebrew: On Interpretation in the Arts (in English, 2000), The Man with the Myth in the Middle: The Theatre of Hanoch Levin (with Shimon Levy, in Hebrew, 2004) and On Kings, Gypsies and Performers: The Theatre of Nissim Aloni (in Hebrew, 2006). Her articles are published in international journals focusing on Ancient Greek theatre and its reception and on Israeli theatre. Since 1997 she has served as Artistic Consultant and Dramaturg for the Khan Theatre of Jerusalem.

Vanda Zajko is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol. Her recent publications include a chapter on women and myth in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Myth (2007), an essay entitled ‘Hector and Andromache: Identification and Appropriation’ in C. Martindale and R. Thomas (eds), Classics and The Uses of Reception (2006), Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought (ed. with Miriam Leonard, 2006) and Translation and ‘The Classic’ (ed. with Alexa Lianeri, 2008).

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank the contributors for their scholarship and flair. We also thank Al Bertrand of Blackwell for instigating the project along with Hannah Rolls and (especially) the energetic Graeme Leonard for their expertise in bringing the book to fruition. Special thanks to Carol Gillespie for her invaluable help at all stages of the work, and especially for keeping the contributors happy and the editors sane.

Figure 0.1The Sea God. 1977. Collage with mixed media on board. Photograph courtesy of Romare Bearden Foundation.

Art © Romare Bearden/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Figure 0.2Odysseus Leaves Circe. 1977. Collage on masonite. Photograph courtesy of Romare Bearden Foundation.

Art © Romare Bearden/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Introduction: Making Connections

Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray

The chapters in this book show how receptions of Greek and Roman texts, ideas, myths and visual and physical culture are at the centre of myriad debates. These debates not only investigate the historical features and subsequent impact of the ancient world but also cover related areas throughout the intervening periods – in education, artistic practice and public and private senses of cultural identity. By ‘receptions’ we mean the ways in which Greek and Roman material has been transmitted, translated, excerpted, interpreted, rewritten, re-imaged and represented. These are complex activities in which each reception ‘event’ is also part of wider processes. Interactions with a succession of contexts, both classically and non-classically orientated, combine to produce a map that is sometimes unexpectedly bumpy with its highs and lows, emergences and suppressions and, sometimes, metamorphoses. So the title of this volume refers to ‘receptions’ in the plural.

We have used the word ‘classical’ in its specific sense of reference to Greek and Roman antiquity. Additional volumes would be needed to do justice to the classical cultures of (for example) India or to the cultures of the ancient near east and their receptions. Neither have we attempted to probe the conception of the ‘classic’ in general in its relationship to matrices of receptions (for an approach to the last, see Lianeri and Zajko 2008). We have included chapters that discuss how Greek and Roman culture represents and is represented by non-western perspectives, both in antiquity (T. Harrison) and more recently (Etman, Yaari, van Zyl Smit). Each of these could also be the basis of a further volume. The chapters that discuss the interaction between Greek and/or Roman material and various contexts in western culture should not be read as identifying the origins and subsequent genealogies and importance of Greek and Roman material primarily with Europe. Ancient Greece, after all, was at the interface of west and east, and recent research in ancient history has established the cultural diversity of the ancient Mediterranean context (Davies 2002; Morris 1992; West 1997). The Romans not only drew on and refashioned Greek material but also engaged in cultural exchange across their empire, with effectsright up to the present day (see Maritz 2007 and Evans 2007 for African examples). The book also shows something of the sheer diversity of western receptions and distinguishes between the different traditions and contexts from which they have emerged. This extends to exploration of ways in which western and non-western literary and artistic strands converge and redefine each other (see Davis, this volume, ch. 30).

We hope our collection is not only cheerfully and creatively anarchic but also prescient in suggesting ways in which work in the field might develop in the future. There was no ‘party line’ in the invitations and guidance given to contributors. The aim has been to produce a volume that shows reception scholars actively at work. Contributors were asked to contextualize their discussions and to make their working methods transparent, but to avoid ‘surveys’ and to concentrate on texts, debates and trends which they judged to be of current and future importance.

In spite of the long-standing interest in the afterlife and influence of ancient texts in the field of classical learning, classical reception research as such is a fairly new area of prominence in anglophone scholarship, both within classics and in the relationship of the subject area with other disciplines (the influence of German scholarship both in Rezeptionsgeschichte and in theoretical approaches is of course extensive: see Martindale 2006). The relative newness of the specialism is reflected in the variety of backgrounds of the contributors. Some are distinguished scholars in classics or closely related fields who have developed their interest in reception as a result of questions prompted by their earlier research or in response to teaching new generations of students. Others are newer voices, some of whom have specialized in classical reception, including its theories and methods, in their doctoral and post-doctoral research. The work of early and mid-career researchers and teachers is already transforming the scope and practice of classical reception. We hope this mix of voices will enrich the debates inside and outside this volume and we only regret that the volume could not be even larger. (In a spirit of virtuous self-denial the editors sacrificed their own planned contributions.)

Contest and Debate in Classical Reception Research

The comparatively recent ‘mainstreaming’ of classical reception within classics has inevitably raised crucial questions about its theoretical bases, intellectual scope and relationship with existing specialisms such as the Classical Tradition, Intellectual History and Comparative Literature. In terms of working methods and theoretical frameworks, there has been intense debate about the relative merits of a variety of approaches (a study of the terms of abuse used might make an amusing and instructive article). Possible approaches include: starting from particular examples in order to draw out patterns and trends (condemned by some critics as ‘list-making’ or ‘positivist’); concentrating on the historical contexts of ancient and subsequent receptions (which may prompt charges of cultural materialism, a.k.a. covert Marxism, or of ignoring the text); emphasizing the formal and aesthetic or ‘transhistorical’relationships between the ante-text and its receptions (challenged for ignoring the social and political elements in the construction of judgements or for neo-Kantian idealism); charting the histories of particular texts, styles or ideas (attacked variously for privileging the influence of the ancient, for assuming that the meaning of the ancient is fixed or unproblematic or for replacing this with the ‘progress’ or ‘presentism’ of the modern); emphasizing the impact of receptions in shaping perceptions of the ancient texts and contexts (criticized for cultural relativism and denial of the autonomy and value of the ancient material).

Of course, all these summaries are over-simplifications of carefully argued positions. They also create false polarities in that much of the most interesting work operates against the grain of such perceived oppositions or in the spaces between them. Nevertheless, such shorthand does sometimes creep into reviews and conference debates, especially since doing classical reception has become more fashionable and the possibility of staking claims to desirable intellectual empires has increased. Of course, the arguments that take place are not always so reductionist (or so dismissive of the work of those with whom one does not agree) and the debates are becoming more sophisticated. There are indeed pressing issues to be addressed, not only in academia but also in the collaborative working relationships between researchers and arts practitioners (see further Harrison 2008).

There is also an embryonic debate that seems likely to gather momentum concerning the scope of the so-called ‘democratic turn’ in classical reception analysis. The ‘democratic turn’ covers a number of issues, both historical and philosophical. The first is that assumptions about the inherent superiority of ancient works were questioned and the independent status and value of new works accepted (see Hopkins, this volume, ch. 10, which situates reception issues firmly in literary debates from the late seventeenth century onwards). Second, research has tracked ways in which (partly through education) both the ancient and the newer works became better known among less privileged groups, with the newer sometimes acting as an introduction to the ancient. Third, the range of art forms and discourses that used or refigured classical material has been extended to include popular culture (with all the associated problems of conceptualization and association, see Steinmeyer 2007 and Hall, this volume, ch. 29). Furthermore, there has been extensive debate about the extent to which ancient texts and performance, especially in Greece, were products of democracy (Cartledge 1997; Goldhill 1990; Goldhill and Osborne 1999; Rhodes 2003) and about the resonances of ancient democratic processes and concepts to the modern world (Ober and Hendrick 1996). Conceptually, the notion of the ‘democratic turn’ is partly derived from the impetus given to reception studies from the theories of German scholars such as Jauss and Iser, particularly in the decisive role given to reader (and audience) response (for summaries see Hardwick 2003a ch. 1 and Martindale 2006). However, if readers and audiences do indeed have a role in the ‘construction of meaning at the point of reception’ (Martindale 2006) there are further questions to be asked about the relative importance of immediate response based on experience as against deferred and reflective response. It is also necessary to consider the relative status of the multiple meanings represented by the responses of unconnected individuals and the more consensual judgements arrived at amonggroups of different kinds (including the classically educated or ‘reception-orientated’ students or general readers or spectators; a ‘reception-friendly’ doctrine of the expert may yet see a revival).

This collection reflects the ‘democratic turn’ to the extent that it has been constructed on the basis that the activators of reception are many and varied and that we all gain from encountering examples from outside our own immediate areas of knowledge. This also entails a willingness to look at possible alignments of the history of scholarship with aesthetic and ideological trends outside academia and to view these alongside practice in art, literature, theatre and public discourse. So we hope that readers of this collection will want to create their own dialogues and debates, based not only on the chapters published here but also in comparison with other works of scholarship. For example, other volumes in the Companions series discuss a variety of contexts and insights for classical receptions. A Companion to the Classical Tradition (Kallendorf 2007) contains sections on the classical tradition in different historical and artistic periods from the middle ages to Modernism, as well as area studies of how classical material has been transmitted, interpreted and reworked in different places (including Africa, Central-Eastern Europe, Latin America and the United States). It also has a section on contemporary themes (including reception itself, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis and film), which in some respect serves to mutate classical tradition into reception. A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Gregory 2005) contains a substantial section on reception, ranging from issues of text and transmission within antiquity to modern translations.

It is significant that in many such books reception is kept in a separate section, usually at the end. This tends to artificially divide reception processes from analysis of the classical texts and contexts themselves and in particular to deny the dialogical relationships between reception and the analysis of the ancient contexts. A partial exception is the Cambridge Companion to Virgil, which puts chapters on reception at the beginning but, nevertheless, does divide them from the rest of the book (Martindale 1997). It remains to be see how Companions in preparation (for instance on themes such as Classical Mythology or on authors, such as Ovid, Catullus and Horace) will tackle the relationship between the ancient story or text and its transmission and dialogical reconstructions. It is sometimes said that reception sheds light on the receiving society but not the ancient text or context. Most people involved in reception would accept that on the contrary the relationship between ancient and modern is reciprocal (although they may disagree about how best to assess this) and some argue that classics itself is inevitably about reception (Martindale 1993 and Porter, this volume, part IX).

Thus there are significant revisions taking place in how the relationships between the classical tradition and classical reception are conceptualized and evaluated. The term ‘the classical tradition’ has in the past been used to focus on the transmission and dissemination of classical culture through the ages, usually with the emphasis on ‘influence’ or ‘legacy’ (Hardwick 2003a: ch. 1). This was sometimes combined with the assumption that classical works yielded a ‘meaning’ which could be grasped and passed on, as could the aesthetic and (sometimes) moral and political valuesof antiquity. As a result there was sometimes a misleading conflation between the values represented in the ancient context and those of the societies that appropriated them. One of the achievements of reception studies has been to examine this interface and to bring about a partial liberation from this confusion for both ancient and modern. Sensitivity to the possibility of a more dialogic relation between ancient and modern has also focused attention on the interface between tradition and reception. If it is accepted that tradition is not something merely inherited but is constantly made and remade (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983), then reception and tradition may be seen as related parts of an extended process. For example, it has been suggested that tradition becomes reception when alternative modes of interpretation and transmission are not only recognized but are positively expected to contest and change how classical material is perceived and used (Stray 2006). Put another way, reception becomes decisive when traditions intersect or are in conflict. This may be important when classical material interacts with non-classical or partly-classical material (for example in literary traditions).

A revisionist approach to the relationship between tradition and reception is explored by Johannes Haubold and Felix Budelmann in the chapter that begins this volume. They suggest that a desire for a ‘democratic turn’ is a poor reason for shedding the term ‘tradition’ in favour of ‘reception’ and on the basis of specific examples from antiquity and beyond they argue that the reciprocal relationship between the two is fluid, both in practice and in theory. Other chapters also promote reflection on this fluidity. Sometimes the question raised is also about the balance to be struck in reception analysis between diachronic and synchronic approaches. Transmission and the construction of meanings through time is emphasized in chronologically structured histories but each reception is also located synchronically in a wider context of lateral relationships that may extend across space rather than time or may be a common feature in a number of receptions, irrespective of timeframe. Once value is decoupled from one-directional transmission through time, then the cultural authority of the ancient work and hence of concepts such as ‘authenticity’ and ‘faithfulness’ is bound to be changed in some degree, although the question of how the reception relates to its Greek and/or Roman springboard is still vital. The dynamics of creativity in the work of artists and writers, both ancient and modern, also have implications for the relationship between reception and tradition in that writers and artists position themselves in relation to their predecessors and contemporaries and are deeply conscious of being part of a tradition (Sluiter 2000). Yet they also wish to transcend that tradition. How scholars model and discuss that process is at the heart of reception debates. This ‘meta-commentary’ on cultural practices also involves its own re-assessments of tradition and innovation in scholarly practice and is one of the underlying strands running through the book.

Themes and Approaches in This Book

We have grouped the chapters in parts that highlight key topics and themes in classical receptions. We could, of course, have used other groupings (period, provenance,genre, theory). We hope readers will enjoy making their own rearrangements to reflect other cross-currents.

After the introductory discussion of Reception and Tradition by Budelmann and Haubold, the rest of part I concentrates on reception within antiquity and its subsequent implications. The topics covered all introduce material which also fed into later conceptions of what antiquity was like and the moral values it should exert. Barbara Graziosi discusses the ancient reception of Homer in a chapter that relates not only to strands in the discussion by Budelmann and Haubold but also to Gregson Davis’ treatment of modern reframings of Homer. Chris Emlyn-Jones examines Plato’s reception of drama and the tensions between its place in the presentation of his dialogues and in the development of his thought and its subsequent interpretation. Tom Harrison’s analysis of Persia: Ancient and Modern juxtaposes the forms and contexts of ancient representations of Persia with modern responses, both in museum display and cultural politics. Ruth Webb picks up the theme of ancient attitudes to theatre and its popular manifestations and analyzes the impact of Christian and theological arguments.

Part II takes forward systematically some of the strands of transmission, acculturation and critique that emerged from the first part and considers these in the contexts of education and public policy. Seth Schein looks at conceptualizations of cultural debt as developed in college programmes in the USA, especially in respect of the association between cultural value and the construction of a common knowledge base for students of diverse origins. Emily Greenwood considers colonial education and the impact of classical figures and allusions on political discourse in the Caribbean. David Bebbington’s chapter turns the focus from society to the outstanding individual and discusses the reciprocal relationship between W.E. Gladstone’s work as a classicist and as a statesman while Stephen Harrison addresses the impact of Virgil’s poetry in educational, literary and public frames of reference from the nineteenth century to the present.

The relationship between classical material and the public sphere that emerged from part II is explored in different ways in part III, in which the focus is on the practices and effects of translation. David Hopkins examines the tensions between conceptions of translation, attitudes to it and the creation of new work. Ahmed Etman discusses the symbiotic relationship between Arabic poetry and drama and translation from classical languages. He suggests that in the Egyptian literary tradition there is an occidentalism in approaches to Greek and Roman texts that can be compared with the orientalism of western approaches to eastern culture (cf. T. Harrison’s discussion of constructions of Persia). Michael Walton also discusses drama translation, but from the point of view of audiences and staging and the gains and losses that arise from different approaches and criteria. James Robson’s chapter focuses on comedy. Using the concepts and methods of translation studies research, he examines how Aristophanes’ humour has been represented to different readers and audiences.

Part IV discusses the theory and practice of reception and provides an opportunity for readers to ‘stock-take’ on the extent to which theoretical perspectives affect the questions that are asked of classical receptions and thus the interpretative outcomes. Vanda Zajko reflects on the impact of feminist models of reception, relatingthese both to the successive ‘waves’ of feminism and to the female icons of the ancient world. Miriam Leonard examines the relationship between history and theory, arguing for theory to be firmly grounded in the historical contexts in which it originates and to be tested in those to which it is applied. In her case study she brings together psychoanalysis and the historiography of the repressed, adding Hebrew sources to the ancient world material discussed in this book. Pantelis Michelakis explains and evaluates methods in categorizing receptions, especially the dominant organizing ideas of period, canon and genre. His discussion gets to the heart of the tension between the need for organizing concepts and their effect on what is then considered, and how. Cashman Kerr Prince’s chapter on André Gide’s rewriting of myth engages with the impact of modernism on conceptions of the past. Gide foreshadows some current debates on the relationship between the use of myth in creative writing and the ensuing perceptions of antiquity and its figures that pass into public consciousness via reading.

In part V the focus shifts to the performing arts. Michael Ewans discusses Apolline and Dionysiac receptions of Greek tragedy in opera, with detailed attention to the relationship between poetry and musical form. Fiona Macintosh explores the potential of performance histories to illuminate decisive moments both in the reception of ancient plays and in the societies that are performing them and can profitably be read alongside that of Michelakis. Angie Verakis’ chapter describes the relationship between body and mask in the staging of modern performances and considers the extent to which this can communicate an experience analogous to that of the ancient theatre. Freddy Decreus pushes to their limits post-modern approaches to ancient drama with a discussion of post-dramatic reworking of ancient tragedy in avant-garde performances that also bears on the discussion of physicality in Verakis’ chapter. Finally, Nurit Yaari combines personal experience and academic analysis in her discussion of adaptation of Aristophanes into the very different traditions of Hebrew theatre and the highly charged political and cultural context of modern Israel. She demonstrates how classical drama can provide a field for practitioners and audiences to recognize and confront their own situations and dilemmas.

Part VI moves to film. The chapters by Joanna Paul and Hanna Roisman should stimulate debate because of their different starting points and the contrasts in their methods of identifying and evaluating the relationship between modern films and the ancient texts and contexts on which they draw (one primarily Roman and historical, one Greek and literary in emphasis). Roisman’s analysis of Classics and Film emphasizes how classical narrative can emerge from a post-classical art form. Paul approaches from the perspective of the cinematic inscription of classical material. Marianne McDonald’s chapter explores another possible starting point. She examines the potential of film as a teaching tool for engaging students’ interest in the ancient world and also for helping them to be more critically aware of their own by identifying and exploring some of the correspondences that will promote debate.

The cultural politics that is never far from reception analysis has been an underlying strand in a number of chapters and part VII turns to some key examples and approaches. Catharine Edwards’ chapter brings together material culture,imagination and politics in her discussion of the politics of ruins in Rome. Gonda van Steen considers the violent reception in Greece of the Oresteia of 1903, drawing out the traumatic relationship between the transformative power of performance and the cultural and political genealogies of drama in Greece itself. Betine van Zyl Smit’s discussion of cross-cultural performances in South Africa draws on the most recent research on the astonishing impact of translations and adaptations of classical drama, not only in the struggle against apartheid but also in the subsequent move in the new South Africa for the construction of new performance traditions that bring together the histories and cultures of citizens of all races. Finally in this part, Edith Hall introduces a new topic in classical reception by arguing that it should be concerned with class as well as culture. Stressing the linked classical roots of both ‘class’ and ‘classical’, she provides a series of questions to be addressed to the contents and contexts of receptions.

Part VIII addresses the theme of changing contexts and unexpected juxtapositions that underlay part VII. Gregson Davis discusses the mutually illuminating images of Odysseus in the work of Derek Walcott and Romare Bearden, thus contributing also to the themes of Caribbean receptions and cross-genre transplantation. Sarah Annes Brown turns the lens to science fiction and breaks new ground in her exploration of how the genre both draws on myth and changes it. Bryan Burns also examines classical material in a post-classical art form, contextualizing photography in terms both of aesthetic judgements and social values and practices and contributing to the volume’s discussion of physicality and the body. In a further foray across discipline boundaries, Rosalind Hursthouse then discusses the development of virtue ethics in contemporary moral philosophy, with special reference to the impact of the return to Aristotle’s texts as a starting point for changing the questions asked in modern philosophy and the categories used to explore them. Elizabeth Vandiver’s discussion of Homer in the poetry of World War One is also revisionist. She uses a wide range of examples to challenge previous judgements about the role of poetry in expressing and shaping rejection of the war (and by extension also contributes to current debates about how the war was regarded at the time, as opposed to subsequently). She argues that Homer receptions in the poetry of the war as a whole actually suggest that serving soldiers continued to support the ideals for which they thought they were fighting.

The volume ends with an impassioned polemic by James Porter in which he calls for teaching and research in classical reception to develop a fuller portfolio and to expand more positively into the sphere of public debate. In his chapter, which provides a provocative counterpart to that of Hursthouse, he calls for an increased role for the classically-orientated public intellectual in contributing to analysis and debate in areas of social, cultural and political identity and policy. Here we are back with the ‘democratic turn’ (Euben, Wallach and Ober 1994; Cartledge 2006).

Thus at a time of almost explosive expansion and variation in studies of classical receptions we hope that this collection not only offers a window on to a particular moment in time but that it will also provoke further debates in the wider world, as well as feeding into teaching and research. Work now in progress or planned is likely to add further dimensions to the issues raised here and to introduce new ones. Inparticular we expect to see more research on reception within antiquity, on the relationship between classical material and creativity (Harrison 2008; Rees 2008), on reception across genres, on alignments between scholarship and creative practice, on the role of the translator as mediator and activator (Lianeri and Zajko 2008) and on the cross-cultural genesis and impact of receptions. Work on classical metamorphoses in popular culture is posing questions about how perceptions of the ancient world are constructed in media and art forms that did not exist in antiquity and about the extent to which these resonate with the ancient forms. Another emerging field brings classical reception together with the history of education and of books – including textbooks (Stray 1994 and 2007).