Conclusion

The transmission, interpretation, and cultural embedding of Greek and Roman material in outstanding works of literature and drama in postcolonial contexts has considerable implications for both. The emergence of literary figures who combine worldwide importance with deep local influence and whose work has been energized by engagement with classical material demonstrates that there is no single classical tradition, but rather a variety of migrations in which intersecting literary, dramatic, and cultural contexts sometimes clash and sometimes converge. Postcolonial contexts reveal both the appropriation of classical material by colonizers and its reappropriation to subvert, liberate, and create new work. The impact of classical traditions on the colonization and decolonization of the mind has been catalytic. The works created in the spaces where classical traditions and postcolonial perspectives can meet have added substance and examples to theoretical work in both fields. This is a relatively new strand in both artistic activity and research, but the evidence available to date suggests the need for approaches that not only use techniques of literary, performance, and contextual analysis but also develop lateral thinking and an appreciation of cross-genre exchange, the recognition of analogues, and collage, sometimes leading to the disruption of the conventionally recognized patterns of chronology and authority. Direct and extended engagement with classical texts and ideas in the original languages and contexts is no longer a core part of educational and cultural frameworks. The new and fluid traditions that have emerged in postcolonial contexts provide mediated representations of classical texts that will be significant in forming future perspectives on the ancient world as well as the modern one. Wilson Harris has commented in the forward to his odyssean novel The Mask of the Beggar that ‘‘European codes begin, it seems, to suffer a measure of transfiguration as they face faculties and creativities beyond their formal traditions’’ (Harris 2003: vii-viii). The creative intersections of the classical and the postcolonial are one aspect of this process.

FURTHER READING

The best follow-up to the discussion in this chapter is to read and/or view the classical rewritings by modern writers such as Seamus Heaney, Tony Harrison, Ted Hughes, Michael Longley, Femi (Osctfisan, Tom Paulin, Wole Soyinka, and Derek Walcott. For various approaches to contextualizing these rewritings, see McDonald (1992), McDonald and Walton (2002), and Hall, Macintosh, and Wrigley (2004). There is useful discussion of the analysis and critique of translations in France (2000), which has chapters on theory, historical development, and text types as well as language groups, ancient and modern. For specific focus on translations from classical languages, see Walton (forthcoming) and Hardwick (2000a). For discussion of translation in postcolonial situations, see Bassnet and Trivedi (1999). For an introduction to postcolonial theory, the best starting point is Azim (2001). For attempts to bring together classical receptions and traditions and postcolonial and other situations, see Wetmore (2002) and the chapters in Martindale and Thomas (2006) and Hardwick and Gillespie (forthcoming). For revision of the relationship between the concepts of classical tradition and reception, see Haubold (forthcoming), Haubold and Budelmann (forthcoming), and Martindale (chapter 20 in this volume).

A Companion to the Classical Tradition Edited by Craig W. Kallendorf Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd