Classics and the Uses of Reception

This landmark collection looks at the role reception plays, or could play, within the modern discipline of classics, and presents a wide variety of viewpoints on its value, use, and theoretical underpinnings. Contributions by scholars from Europe, the UK, and the USA illustrate a range of different approaches and methodological commitments, and employ material from many different fields, from translation studies to the visual arts, and from politics to performance. The volume as a whole offers readers an enriched theoretical understanding of reception and its uses, and makes the case for reception constituting a vital part of classics in the future.

List of Figures. Notes on Contributors. Introduction: Thinking Through Reception (Charles Martindale). 1. Provocation: The Point of Reception Theory (William W. Batstone). Part I. Reception in Theory. 2. Literary History as a Provocation to Reception Studies (Ralph Hexter). 3. Discipline and Receive; or, Making an Example out of Marsyas (Timothy Saunders). 4. Text, Theory, and Reception (Kenneth Haynes). 5. Surfing the Third Wave? Postfeminism and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Genevieve Liveley). 6. Allusion as Reception: Virgil, Milton, and the Modern Reader (Craig Kallendorf). 7. Hector and Andromache: Identification and Appropriation (Vanda Zajko). 8. Passing on the Panpipe: Genre and Reception (Mathilde Skoie). 9. True Histories: Lucien, Bakhtin, and the Pragmatics of Reception (Tim Whitmarsh). 10. The Uses of Reception: Derrida and the Historical Imperative (Miriam Leonard). 11. The Use and Abuse of Antiquity: The Politics and Morality of Appropriation (Katie Fleming). Part II. Studies in Reception. 12. The Homeric Moment? Translation, Historicity, and the Meaning of the Classics (Alexandra Lianeri). 13. Looking for Ligurinus: An Italian Poet in the Nineteenth Century (Richard F. Thomas). 14. Foucault’s Antiquity (James I. Porter). 15. Fractured Understandings: Towards a History of Classical Reception Among Non–Elite Groups (Siobhán McElduff). 16. Decolonizing the Postcolonial Colonizers: Helen in Derek Walcott’s Omeros (Helen Kaufmann). 17. Remodeling Receptions: Greek Drama as Diaspora in Performance (Lorna Hardwick). 18. Reception, Performance, and the Sacrifice of Iphigenia (Pantelis Michelakis). 19. Reception and Ancient Art: The Case of the Venus de Milo (Elizabeth Prettejohn). 20. The Touch of Sappho (Simon Goldhill). 21. (At) the Visual Point of Reception: Anselm Feuerbach’s Das Gastmahl des Platon; or, Philosophy in Paint (John Henderson). 22. Afterword: The Uses of "Reception" (Duncan F. Kennedy). Bibliography. Index.

Charles Martindale is Professor of Latin at the University of Bristol He has written extensively on the reception of classical poetry. In addition to the theoretical Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (1993), he has edited or coedited collections on the receptions of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, as well as Shakespeare and the Classics (2004). His most recent book is Latin Poetry and the Judgement of Taste: An Essay in Aesthetics (2005). Richard F. Thomas is Professor of Greek and Latin at Harvard University. His interests are generally focused on Hellenistic Greek and Roman literature, on intertextuality, and on the reception of classical literature in all periods. Recent books include Reading Virgil and His Texts: Studies in Intertextuality (1999) and Virgil and the Augustan Reception (2001). He is currently working on a commentary to Horace, Odes 4 and a coedited volume on the performance artistry of Bob Dylan.

Classics has a particular stake in critical thought that addresses the problem of our (as classicists and readers) historical alienation from the texts we read. ( Classics Journal Online , September 2009) "In this thought–provoking and pioneering volume, the editors have put together a diverse collection of essays, which amply reflect the range of work currently carried out under the umbrella of classical reception studies. There is refreshingly no ′orthodoxy′: instead, we are offered a stimulating series of questions, problems and possible solutions, which will help to provide much needed theoretical rigour to this emergent branch of classical scholarship." Fiona Macintosh, University of Oxford "A first–rate collection, with some of the most exciting and most rigorous of modern studies in classical reception." Mary Beard, University of Cambridge "[A] landmark collection ... The volume as a whole offers readers an enriched theoretical understanding of reception and its uses." Fabula "This body of work is not just a coordinated foray into someone else′s territory; students of classical reception are writing a collective autobiography and developing a new charter for our discipline." Bryn Mawr Classical Review