Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Reception Down Under

by Marguerite Johnson (Editor)

Overview

Leading and emerging, early career scholars in Classical Reception Studies come together in this volume to explore the under-represented area of the Australasian Classical Tradition. They interrogate the interactions between Mediterranean Antiquity and the antipodean worlds of New Zealand and Australia through the lenses of literature, film, theatre and fine art.

Of interest to scholars across the globe who research the influence of antiquity on modern literature, film, theatre and fine art, this volume fills a decisive gap in the literature by bringing antipodean research into the spotlight. Following a contextual introduction to the field, the six parts of the volume explore the latest research on subjects that range from the Lord of the Rings and Xena: Warrior Princess franchises to important artists such as Sidney Nolan and local authors whose work offers opportunities for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis with well-known Western authors and artists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350021242
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	03/21/2019
Series:	Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Marguerite Johnson is Professor of Classics in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia. She is the author of Ovid on Cosmetics (Bloomsbury, 2015), co-editor (with Harold Tarrant) of Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator (Bloomsbury, 2012) and co-author (with Terry Ryan) of Sexuality in Greek and Roman Society and Literature: A Sourcebook (2005).
Marguerite Johnson is Honorary Professor (Classics and Ancient History) at The University of Queensland. She is an interdisciplinary cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, and a comparative cultural analyst, emphasising literary-informed cultural paradigms, underpinned by the theoretical praxes of both gender and post-colonial theories. Her research explores themes in sexualities, gender, and the body, particularly the erotic poets Sappho, Catullus and Ovid, and myths and fables, Eros, and gender in the works of Plato. Key publications include Sexuality in Greek and Roman Literature and Society: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2022); as editor, Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Reception Down Under (Bloomsbury, 2019); Ovid on Cosmetics: Medicamina Faciei Femineae and Related Texts (Bloomsbury, 2016); as co-editor with Harold Tarrant, Alcibiades and the Socratic Lover-Educator (Duckworth, 2012).

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Contributors

Introduction (Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia)

Part 1: The Colonial Past – Classical Influences in White Australasia
1. Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, Australia): Black Out: Classicizing Indigeneity in Australia and New Zealand
2. Rachael White (University of Oxford, UK): Australia as Underworld: Convict Classics in the Nineteenth Century

Part 2: Theatre – Then and Now
3. Laura Ginters (University of Sydney, Australia): Agamemnon comes to the Antipodes: The Origins of Student Drama at the University of Sydney
4. John Davidson (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Salamis and Gallipoli: The Campaigns of Phillip Mann
5. Michael Ewans (University of Newcastle, Australia) and Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, Australia): Wesley Enoch's Black Medea
6. Jane Montgomery Griffiths (Monash University, Australia): What Women Critics Know that Men Don't

Part 3: Poetry and Classical Echoes in New Zealand
7. Geoffrey Miles (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): James K. Baxter and the Gorgon Moon
8. Anna Jackson (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Clodia Through the Looking Glass

Part 4: Fictionalizing Antipodean Antiquities
9. Nicolas Liney (University of Oxford, UK): Parilia Poscor - David Malouf Remembers the Parilia (Fasti 4.721)
10. Elizabeth Hale (University of New England, Australia): Imaginative Displacement: Classical Reception in the Young Adult Fiction of Margaret Mahy
11. Babette Pütz (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Classical Influences in Bernard Beckett's Genesis, August, and Lullaby
12. Anne Rogerson (University of Sydney, Australia): Displaced Persons and Displaced Narratives in S. D. Gentill's Hero Trilogy

Part 5: Australasia, Greece and Rome - Paper and Canvas
13. Sarah Midford (La Trobe University, Australia): Painting Anzacs in an Epic Landscape: Greek Myth, the Trojan War and Sidney Nolan's Gallipoli Series
14. Melinda Johnston (independent scholar) and Thomas Köntges (University of Leipzig, Germany): Of Heroes and Humans: Marian Maguire's Colonization of Herakles' Mythical World

Part 6: Antiquity on the Australasian Screen
15. Ika Willis (University of Wollongong, Australia): Temporal Turbulence: Reception Studies(') Now
16. Hannah Parry (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Classical Epic in Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth Trilogies
17. Leanne Glass (University of Newcastle, Australia): Shifting Paradigms in Ben Ferris' Penelope

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

This is a timely book, given current debates about teaching 'western civilisation' in our universities. It represents a coming-of-age particularly in Australian classical reception studies, and it will surely be a stimulus to bring less descriptive and more theoretically innovative approaches to bear on the myriad forms of classical reception that saturate Australasia.” —The Classical Review

“Marguerite Johnson has curated a formidable and impressively diverse collection of essays … The volume showcases a rich variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, and has the added benefit of presenting familiar classical materials in distinctly unfamiliar contexts, replete with their own unique social and cultural pressures and local systems of scholarship.” —Greece & Rome

“A well-rounded study highlighting the importance of Greco-Roman history and culture for many Australians and New Zealanders, from convicts to colonisers, ranging from novelists to poets to painters and film-makers. This is exemplary Classical Reception practice.” —Maxine Lewis, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Auckland, New Zealand

From the Publisher