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
Table of Contents:
List of Figures ix
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xviii
Introduction: Making Connections 1
Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray
Part I Reception within Antiquity and Beyond 11
1 Reception and Tradition 13
Felix Budelmann and Johannes Haubold
2 The Ancient Reception of Homer 26
Barbara Graziosi
3 Poets on Socrates’ Stage: Plato’s Reception of Dramatic Art 38
Chris Emlyn-Jones
4 ‘Respectable in Its Ruins’: Achaemenid Persia, Ancient and Modern 50
Thomas Harrison
5 Basil of Caesarea and Greek Tragedy 62
Ruth Webb
Part II Transmission, Acculturation and Critique 73
6 ‘Our Debt to Greece and Rome’: Canon, Class and Ideology 75
Seth L. Schein
7 Gladstone and the Classics 86
David W. Bebbington
8 Between Colonialism and Independence: Eric Williams and the Uses of Classics in Trinidad in the 1950s and 1960s 98
Emily Greenwood
9 Virgilian Contexts 113
Stephen Harrison
Part III Translation 127
10 Colonization, Closure or Creative Dialogue?: The Case of Pope’s Iliad 129
David Hopkins
11 Translation at the Intersection of Traditions: The Arab Reception of the Classics 141
Ahmed Etman
12 ‘Enough Give in It’: Translating the Classical Play 153
J. Michael Walton
13 Lost in Translation? The Problem of (Aristophanic) Humour 168
James Robson
Part IV Theory and Practice 183
14 ‘Making It New’: André Gide’s Rewriting of Myth 185
Cashman Kerr Prince
15 ‘What Difference Was Made?’: Feminist Models of Reception 195
Vanda Zajko
16 History and Theory: Moses and Monotheism and the Historiography of the Repressed 207
Miriam Leonard
17 Performance Reception: Canonization and Periodization 219
Pantelis Michelakis
Part V Performing Arts 229
18 Iphigénie en Tauride and Elektra: ‘Apolline’ and ‘Dionysiac’ Receptions of Greek Tragedy into Opera 231
Michael Ewans
19 Performance Histories 247
Fiona Macintosh
20 ‘Body and Mask’ in Performances of Classical Drama on the Modern Stage 259
Angeliki Varakis
21 The Nomadic Theatre of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio: A Case of Postdramatic Reworking of (the Classical) Tragedy 274
Freddy Decreus
22 Aristophanes between Israelis and Palestinians 287
Nurit Yaari
Part VI Film 301
23 Working with Film: Theories and Methodologies 303
Joanna Paul
24 The Odyssey from Homer to NBC: The Cyclops and the Gods 315
Hanna M. Roisman
25 A New Hope: Film as a Teaching Tool for the Classics 327
Marianne McDonald
Part VII Cultural Politics 343
26 Possessing Rome: The Politics of Ruins in Roma capitale 345
Catharine Edwards
27 ‘You unleash the tempest of tragedy’: The 1903 Athenian Production of Aeschylus’ Oresteia 360
Gonda Van Steen
28 Multicultural Reception: Greek Drama in South Africa in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-first Centuries 373
Betine van Zyl Smit
29 Putting the Class into Classical Reception 386
Edith Hall
Part VIII Changing Contexts 399
30 Reframing the Homeric: Images of the Odyssey in the Art of Derek Walcott and Romare Bearden 401
Gregson Davis
31 ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’: SF and the Classics 415
Sarah Annes Brown
32 Aristotle’s Ethics, Old and New 428
Rosalind Hursthouse
33 Classicizing Bodies in the Male Photographic Tradition 440
Bryan E. Burns
34 Homer in British World War One Poetry 452
Elizabeth Vandiver
Part IX Reflection and Critique 467
35 Reception Studies: Future Prospects 469
James I. Porter
Bibliography 482
Index 533
About the Author :
Lorna Hardwick is Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Reception of Classical Texts Research Project at the Open University. Her publications on Greek cultural history and its reception in modern theatre and literature include Translating Words, Translating Cultures (2000), New Surveys in the Classics: Reception Studies (2003) and (co-edited with Carol Gillespie) Classics in Post-colonial Worlds (2007).
Christopher Stray is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wales, Swansea. He is the author of Classics Transformed: Schools Universities, and Society in England 1830-1960 (1998), and editor of The Owl of Minerva (2005), Classical Books (2007) and Remaking the Classics (2007).
Review :
"This variegated and sizeable volume has for me been stimulating and informative, a pleasure to read for review . . . The ‘future paths' he proposes seem to me to amount to different configurations of intellectual history, so no surprises there; but his clear statement of the opportunities offered by reception studies in the classroom is admirable, and his call for ‘a new kind of classicist-academic: the engaged public intellectual' is visionary. " (Translation and Literature, 2011)
