Classics and the Uses of Reception

This landmark collection presents a wide variety of viewpoints on the value and role of reception theory within the modern discipline of classics.

• A pioneering collection, looking at the role reception theory plays, or could play, within the modern discipline of classics.
  
• Emphasizes theoretical aspects of reception.
  
• Written by a wide range of contributors from young scholars to established figures, from Europe, the UK and the USA.
  
• Draws on material from many different fields, from translation studies to the visual arts, and from politics to performance.
  
• Sets the agenda for classics in the future.

List of Figures Notes on Contributors Introduction: Thinking Through Reception 1
Charles Martindale

1 Provocation: The Point of Reception Theory 14
William W. Batstone

Part I Reception in Theory 21

2 Literary History as a Provocation to Reception Studies 23
Ralph Hexter

3 Discipline and Receive; or, Making an Example out of Marsyas 32
Timothy Saunders Copyrighted Material

4 Text, Theory, and Reception 44
Kenneth Haynes

5 Surfing the Third Wave? Postfeminism and the Hermeneutics of Reception 55
Genevieve Liveley

6 Allusion as Reception: Virgil, Milton, and the Modern Reader 67
Craig Kallendorf

7 Hector and Andromache: Identification and Appropriation 80
Vanda Zajko

8 Passing on the Panpipes: Genre and Reception 92
Mathilde Skoie

9 True Histories: Lucian, Bakhtin, and the Pragmatics of Reception 104
Tim Whitmarsh

10 The Uses of Reception: Derrida and the Historical Imperative 116
Miriam Leonard

11 The Use and Abuse of Antiquity: The Politics and Morality of Appropriation 127
Katie Fleming

Part II Studies in Reception 139

12 The Homeric Moment? Translation, Historicity, and the Meaning of the Classics 141
Alexandra Lianeri

13 Looking for Ligurinus: An Italian Poet in the Nineteenth Century 153
Richard F. Thomas

14 Foucault’s Antiquity 168
James I. Porter

15 Fractured Understandings: Towards a History of Classical Reception among Non-Elite Groups 180
Siobhán McElduff

16 Decolonizing the Postcolonial Colonizers: Helen in Derek Walcott’s Omeros 192
Helen Kaufmann

17 Remodeling Receptions: Greek Drama as Diaspora in Performance 204
Lorna Hardwick

18 Reception, Performance, and the Sacrifice of Iphigenia 216
Pantelis Michelakis

19 Reception and Ancient Art: The Case of the Venus de Milo 227
Elizabeth Prettejohn

20 The Touch of Sappho 250
Simon Goldhill

21 (At) the Visual Point of Reception: Anselm Feuerbach’s Das Gastmahl des Platon; or, Philosophy in Paint 274
John Henderson

22 Afterword: The Uses of “Reception” 288
Duncan F. Kennedy

Bibliography 294

Index 325

?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

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.

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.