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, relating these 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 Andre 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 recfeption 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. In particular 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).
The role of myth in reception practice and analysis is becoming more prominent, as is excerpting and the role of the iconic figure as means of transmission and reinvention, especially when whole texts are not directly known by most readers and audiences (or indeed by the modern writers and artists who are creating the new works). This means that there are questions to be asked about what will be the ‘entry’ points in the future for people encountering the world of the Greeks and Romans for the first time and how those entry points will change perceptions of what that world was like and how it relates to the modern. Addressing these new kinds of ‘connections’ may involve further disruptions to conventional models of investigation and reviews of temporal relationships and formal structures. It will surely also require an increased focus on the nature and role of mediating texts, translations, rhetoric and allusions. There are exciting times ahead.
Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray
PART I
Reception within Antiquity and Beyond
World History
