A Companion to Classical Receptions / Edition 1

by Lorna Hardwick, Christopher Stray

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781444339222
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	12/13/2010
Series:	Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World , #123
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.60(h) x 1.30(d)

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).

Read an Excerpt

Click to read or download

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

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“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, Fall 2008)

"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, Autumn 2008)

"…importantly, this volume exemplifies the recent boom in reception studies, and its potential to critique our subject and methodology." (Greece and Rome, Vol 55 No. 2 2008)

"The scale of this enterprise is such that the complete collection will compete with established reference works … and should prove useful." (Scholia Reviews, 2008)

"Hardwick and Stray's Companion pushes lingering worries about elitism and irrelevance right off the table. Companion 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, October 2008)

"Bursting-at-the-seams … 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)

Editorial Reviews

"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)

 

From the Publisher