Books in the Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception series

To what extent did mythological figures such as Circe and Medea influence the representation of the powerful ''oriental'' enchantress in modern Western art? What role did the ancient gods and heroes play in the construction of the imaginary worlds of the modern fantasy genre? What is the role of undead creatures like zombies and vampires in mythological films? Looking across the millennia, from the distrust of ancient magic and oriental cults, which threatened the new-born Christian religion, to the revival and adaptation of ancient myths and religion in the arts centuries later, this book offers an original analysis of the reception of ancient magic and the supernatural, across a wide variety of different media - from comics to film, from painting to opera. Working in a variety of fields across the globe, the authors of these essays deconstruct certain scholarly traditions by proposing original interdisciplinary approaches and collaborations, showing to what extent the visual and performing arts of different periods interlink and shape cultural and social identities.

This volume sheds new light on a wealth of early 20th-century engagement with literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity that significantly shaped the work of anglophone literary modernism. The essays spotlight 'translation,' a concept the modernists themselves used to reckon with the Classics and to denote a range of different kinds of reception - from more literal to more liberal translation work, as well as forms of what contemporary reception studies would term 'adaptation', 'refiguration' and 'intervention.' As the volume's essays reveal, modernist 'translations' of Classical texts crucially informed the innovations of many modernists and often themselves constituted modernist literary projects. Thus the volume responds to gaps in both Classical reception and Modernist studies: essays treat a comparatively understudied area in Classical reception by reviving work in a subfield of Modernist studies relatively inactive in recent decades but enjoying renewed attention through the recent work of contributors to this volume. The volume's essays address work significantly informed by Classical materials, including Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Ovid, and Propertius, and approach a range of modernist writers: Pound and H.D., among the modernists best known for work engaging the Classics, as well as Cummings, Eliot, Joyce, Laura Riding, and Yeats.

Explores the way that artists, poets, dramatists, historians and scientists have responded to the Iliad during this time, considering how the myth of the Trojan War has been reimagined over the ages. Through a series of detailed case studies, this volume teases out several key themes from conflict to causes, heroism to hope.

Classics in Extremis reimagines classical reception. Its contributors explore some of the most remarkable, hard-fought and unsettling claims ever made on the ancient world: from the coal-mines of England to the paradoxes of Borges, from Victorian sexuality to the trenches of the First World War, from American public-school classrooms to contemporary right-wing politics. How does the reception of the ancient world change under impossible strain? Its protagonists are ''marginal'' figures who resisted that definition in the strongest terms. Contributors argue for a decentered model of classical reception: where the ''marginal'' shapes the ''central'' as much as vice versa - and where the most unlikely appropriations of antiquity often have the greatest impact. What kind of distortions does the model of ''centre'' and ''margins'' produce? How can ''marginal'' receptions be recovered most effectively? Bringing together some of the leading scholars in the field, Classics in Extremis moves beyond individual case studies to develop fresh methodologies and perspectives on the study of classical reception.

Offers discussion of themes such as spatiality, temporality and sovereignty in Latin literature, drawing upon key conteporary critical theorists. This title deals with the way that sovereign power regulates the movement of information and the movement of bodies through space and time.

Based on the author's dissertation (doctoral)--King's College, London, 2013.