Books in the Classical Presences series

This volume is a major, ground-breaking study of the modernist E. E. Cummings' engagement with the classics. It explores the significance of Cummings' Harvard training as a Classicist to his development as a poet and to his published work, and also contains an edition of new, previously unpublished material by Cummings himself.

This volume focuses on the adaptation of Greek tragedy between 1970 and 2005 in order to interrogate the relationship between tragedy and postmodernism; analysis of a range of adaptations from this period demonstrates intertextual engagements with prototype texts that have much in common with the main ideas expressed in poststructuralist thought.

The Irish Classical Self considers the role of classical languages and learning in the construction of cultural identities in eighteenth and nineteenth century Ireland. Focusing in particular on the "lower ranks" of society, it explores this unusual phenomenon through analysis of contemporary writings and records of classical hedge schools.

This volume explores performances of Greek tragedies in Germany since 1800 as responses to particular political, social, and cultural milestones, shedding light on how, in a constantly changing political and cultural climate, they influenced the evolving cultural identity of the educated middle class over that period.

This is an edition of over 300 never-before-printed English translations of ancient Greek and Latin verse, selected from the surviving manuscripts of a 200-year period. They reveal a far broader, deeper, and richer culture of classical translation than previously apparent, with radical implications for classical reception and literary history.

In the eyes of posterity, ancient Rome is deeply flawed; yet its faults have not only provoked censure but also inspired wayward and novel forms of thought and representation. This volume is the first to examine this phenomenon in depth, demonstrating that the reception of Roman "errors" has been far more complex than sweeping denunciation.

The dissemination of classical material to children has long been a major form of popularization with far-reaching effects. This volume explores the reception of classical antiquity in childhood from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries in Britain and the United States, focusing on myth and historical fiction in particular.

Mythographies-texts that collected and explained ancient myths-were indispensable tools of literary engagement during the European Renaissance. This volume focuses on neglected English mythographies written between 1577 and 1647, revealing a unique English take on the genre and unfolding the significant role myth played in broader culture.

Reception studies has profoundly transformed Classics and its objects of study: while canonical texts demand much attention, works with a less robust Nachleben are marginalized. This volume explores the discipline from the perspectives of marginality, canonicity, and passion, revealing their implications for its past and future development.

The Classics were core to Victorian and Edwardian public school curricula, yet texts with sexual content were regularly expurgated. This book explores the nexus between the Classics, sex, and education through the writings of schoolmaster Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge, which explore homoerotic desires and comment on Classical education of the time.

This unique volume summarizes and reflects the work of a leading voice in the history of Classics in Britain, bringing together both previously published articles, now newly revised, and never before published work in an unparalleled overview of the history and sociology of classical education and scholarship between 1800 and 2000.

Transcending traditional studies of single translations or particular translation traditions in isolation, this is the first volume to offer a critical overview of Virgil's influence on later literature through the translation history of his poems, from the early modern period to the present day, and throughout Europe and beyond.

This first in-depth study of the reception of ancient Greek drama in Israeli theatre over the last 70 years offers ground-breaking analysis of a wide range of translations, adaptations, and new writing, and how performances of these works were created and staged at key points in the development of Israeli culture.

Romans in Victorian literature are at once pagan persecutors, pious statesmen, pleasure-seeking decadents, and heroes of empire: this volume examines how these manifold and often contradictory representations are deployed in a range of ways in the works of authors from Thomas Macaulay to Rudyard Kipling to create useable models of masculinity.

No figure has had a more global impact than Alexander the Great: his reception in the literary cultures of early modern Britain and Southeast Asia shaped early global literary networks. This study uses the parallel traditions of the Alexander Romance to trace cultural convergences and imperial rivalries.

Sappho is a towering figure in Western culture. This volume takes new steps in scholarship by focusing on Sappho's influence on Roman authors, and explores not only a critical phase in Sappho's reception history, namely that of ancient Rome, but also central Latin texts, which have had great influence on post-classical cultures, up until today.

Examining a range of contemporary fictional works that adapt Greco-Roman myths of the descent into the underworld, from novels and comics to children's culture, this volume reveals the ways in which the catabasis narrative can be manipulated by storytellers to reflect upon postmodern culture, feminist critiques, and postcolonial appropriations.

Classicisms in the Black Atlantic explores how black authors and artists in the Atlantic world have shaped and reshaped the cultural legacies of classical antiquity from the aftermath of slavery up to the present day to represent black voices and experiences, often revealing in the process effaced black presences in classical antiquity.

Drawing on a cognitive poetics approach to reception studies, this volume examines the use of spatial metaphors - palimpsest, map, and fractal - to organize the classical past for preteen and adolescent readers, arguing that these reflect different modes in children's literature and encourage different cognitive effects in readers.

Introducing a largely neglected area of existing interactions between Greco-Roman antiquity and media theory, this volume brings together a range of interdisciplinary studies to address the question of why interactions in this area matter and how they might be developed further.

Classical reception in early modern Europe is often perceived in modern scholarship as being dominated by engagements with Greece and Rome. The essays in this volume aim to challenge this prevailing view by collectively arguing for the significance and familiarity of the ancient near east to early modern Europe as part of a wider classical world.