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Anastasia Bakogianni, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
The triumph of demotike: the triumph of Medea
This paper discusses a case study in which demotike as the democratic idiom of the
modern Greek language prevailed: in the 1997 production of Euripides' Medea
staged by the proponent of the theatrical establishment, the National Theatre of
Greece. This groundbreaking production of Euripides' popular play was based on
the fully embodied translation into demotike written by George Himonas. The
accessible language was one of the many bold components that enhanced the
stylized, but poignant performance style of the production. The pared down choice
of language was attuned to the stark production values of this Medea which,
however, also distanced the audience which relied on the familiarity of the
language to balance the surrealism of the other components of the performance.
The production was characterized by innovation: it was the director's, Nikaiti
Kondouri's, first time in charge of an ancient tragedy. It was also the first time that
Kariofillia Karambeti, the star of the production, took centre stage in an ancient
tragedy. The contemporary modern Greek audience knew her as the lead actress of
a popular Greek television show in which she infamously killed her lover. The show
was a dramatization of the scandalous novel The Yellow File (1956) by Karagatsis.
The director's choice of a popular actress to embody Euripides' heroine marked a
more popularizing tendency in modern Greek revivals of ancient drama. This trend
was also coupled with a willingness among actors and spectators to experiment
with new techniques and approaches; a truly democratic treatment of classical
Greek tragedy on the modern Greek stage.
Kate Bosher and Jordana Cox, Northwestern University, USA
Venus orta mari and Other Fantastic Advice
Chicago has been of interest to scholars of late 19 th and early 20 th -century
theatre in part because of Jane Addams' Hull House theatre, and Maurice Browne's
Little Theatre, two organizations that rejected the artistic and financial norms of
the commercial theatre. In the 1890s, Hull House produced Electra and a play The
Return of Odysseus in ancient Greek. Shortly thereafter, with a mandate of a
simplified, non-commercial theatre, Maurice Browne produced Trojan Women,
which he took on tour during the war years, funded in part by the anti-war
women's movement of Jane Addams. This history, which casts Greek plays in the
part of social conscience and rebel, has been discussed (MacDonald 1992,
Hartigan, 1995, Wiley 1999, Christiansen 2006). However, what has rarely been
noted is that the popular theatre against which the small arts movement reacted
also rooted itself in large part in antiquity.
If we include popular stagings of Classical myths and stories within the conceptual
framework of the democratic turn we are faced with a peculiar development.
Addams and Browne pioneered politically engaged productions of Greek tragedy
and, to some extent, laid the groundwork for the sort of productions my colleagues
discuss in the other two papers of this panel. Yet, at the same time, they rejected
the enormously popular, class-crossing, and gender-complicating genres of
burlesque, roman toga drama and melodramatic adaptations of Greek tragedy that
had dazzled and entertained for half a century.
From programs and scrapbooks in Chicago archives, I sketch the history of popular
mainstream plays based on antiquity and performed in Chicago between 1850 and
1930 and examine the relationship of these plays to their better known Little
Theatre and Hull House counter-parts.
Bracht Branham, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Nietzsche as Educator
My aim in this paper is to explore Nietzsche's conception of what the nature and
purpose of a humanistic education should be in the modern world. Specifically, I
will examine his unfinished critique of his own discipline -- classical philology -- and
ask why he chose not to include it in his second book, the Untimely Meditations.
Fiona Cox, University College Cork, Ireland
Ovidian Metamorphoses in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt has attracted an unusual degree of censure from readers who find her
work elitist because it is so full of information and literary references. She is
astonished by these complaints, since she is endlessly fascinated by the ways in
which her characters (especially her female characters) are shaped by their
educations and by their national cultural pasts. In Byatt's view the literary allusions
which crowd her writing energise the new work, ensuring that it is alive with
multiple meanings. She has expressed deep pleasure at the idea that certain
readers have turned to Tennyson, Milton or Virgil through having first encountered
them in her fiction. On this reading, far from being elitist, her work democratises
classical literature, bringing it to those who no longer have direct access to it
through their education. It is no accident that so many of her characters are
academics and writers – even, on occasion, classicists. This paper will examine
Byatt's use of Ovidian myths to which she alludes as she examines the dilemmas
and outlooks of several of her female characters. In particular I shall focus on her
response to the myth of Proserpina, as it is played out in the Frederica Quartet
(The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman) and on
her essay ‘Arachne'.
Robert Crowe, University of Bristol, UK
Penguin('s) Classics,
In this paper I will first set out the types of evidence for the popular reception of
classical publications by Penguin Books, before moving on to assess the role
classics—with heavy emphasis on the translations of ancient Greek and Latin texts
in the Penguin Classics series edited by E. V. Rieu (1945-64) and Betty Radice
(1964-1985)—played within any broader mission espoused (or not) by the
publishing house. Examining some of the critical issues involved in popular
translations of classical texts promises to be a fruitful and illuminating stimulus for
discussion within Classical Reception Studies about the interface of mass and elite
culture. A key question would be, what is the relation between Penguin's classics
list and the vague ideal to produce ‘the good, well-written and educational book'
(Allen Lane)? Also, to what extent does the fact that Penguin Books is (unlike the
BBC, for example), first and last, a business affect the way the books were created
for, and read by, the public?
Robert Davis, City University of New York, USA
Civilization versus Savagery at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
The subject of this paper is the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, which was attended
by almost 50% of the United States population. The Fair presented cultures from
around the world on a massive site, the core pavilions of which were largely
modelled after Greco-Roman design, and there were also many versions of classical
art, especially sculpture. It will be argued that, by aligning American (and Western)
progress with classical civilization, the planners of the Fair attempted to legitimize
American culture by placing it in opposition to the recreations of so-called primitive
cultures, such as the on-site Inuit villages. A wealth of print and photographic
evidence exists for how the public negotiated and interpreted a multitude of
historical and contemporary cultures within an educational and entertainment
context. By focusing on the design of the Fair and the (non-dramatic)
performances within its grounds, this paper will look at how fairgoers (who, during
the fair's six-month run, totalled twenty-seven million) responded to the living
villages both in terms of and against the White City. While the superiority of
classicism dominated the discourse of the Fair, most fairgoers flocked to the
Midway for its often dubious pleasures. In reading audience interaction with ancient
referents among plenitudes of contemporary subjects, I hope to show the complex
ways that Americans experienced contemporary classical culture. This paper will
argue that classicists and historians studying nineteenth-century World's Fairs—and
American culture at large— must read the concept of civilization in light of the
loaded cultural politics of receiving antiquity.
Dorota Dutsch, University of California Santa Barbara, USA
Projecting Lysistrata: Classical Drama and Political Activism
In January 2003, two New York actors, Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower, decided
to stage a reading of Aristophanes' Lysistrata to protest the US invasion of Iraq.
Thanks to electronic communication, the scope of the project expanded with
astronomical speed. On 03.03.03 not one but over a thousand readings were
staged in fifty-nine countries and all fifty states, raising $100,000 to assist war
victims. The Lysistrata Project counts as a spectacular instance of classical drama's
becoming a vehicle for contemporary political action.
My concern in the proposed paper is with the kind of reading that inspired and
enabled the project's success. I ask to what extent the Lysistrata 's status as a
cultural artifact produced in classical Athens was important to the organizers,
participants, and audiences of the multiple readings.
To explore this question I draw on the coverage of the Lysistrata Project in
international press, M.P. Kelly's documentary Operation Lysistrata (2006) and
Kathryn Bulme's play Accidental Activist (2007). Moreover, Ms. Blume has kindly
agreed to answer my questions about the motivation behind her and her
colleagues' choice of the play, their perceptions of the Lysistrata's original context,
and the role expert classicists played during their work on the project and
afterwards.
Ultimately my analysis of the Lysistrata Project offers an opportunity to consider
the place of learned interpretations of classical drama among other possible modes
of reception.
Mary-Kay Gamel, University of California San Diego, USA
Can ‘Democratic' Stagings of Modern Gerek Drama be Authentic?
Several contributions to the Eseminar that preceded this conference (see here for
Eseminar papers) raised the question of authenticity in receptions of ancient
drama. W e need to raise questions of the implicit theoretical models of reception
that underlie our work, and seek to broaden existing paradigms by
considering/developing a plurality of approaches.'
Contemporary aesthetic theorists distinguish between ‘historical' authenticity,
which tries to replicate the meaning of an earlier artefact in its original context,
and ‘expressive' authenticity, which tries to bring out the emergent ideas in
complex works of art. Instead of trying to recreate the purported original meaning,
later scholars and artists can look for meanings as yet unforeseen—and the more
various those scholars and artists are, the more varied the meanings they may
find.
Drama productions often involve participants with very different backgrounds, skills
and ideas. A collaboration in which all participants are encouraged to contribute
can increase more discovery of new meanings. Professional productions, often
dominated by star directors and actors, are often rigidly top-down, but academic
and community productions can explore more democratic rehearsal processes. And
productions which reflect the personal commitment of all the artists involved are
‘authentic' in terms of Sartrian ‘good faith.'
Audiences are as important as artists in creating the meaning of performance.
Ancient audiences scrutinized dramatic performances for their ethical, social and
political implications and responded vigorously. Modern productions which may
seem radically innovative, unfaithful, even subversive, but which powerfully engage
(intellectually and emotionally) a varied audience, create an experience which
resembles that of the ancient audience.
Finally, an authentic ‘democratic turn' in reception studies of ancient drama will
encourage scholars to consider a particular production's whole process of
development, not the just the final ‘product.'
Barbara Goff, University of Reading, UK
Classics in African Education
Work on the twentieth century reception of classics seems almost inevitably to
become implicated in a ‘democratic turn' simply because the century itself is
characterised by an enormous increase in the franchise. It is only in that much
maligned century that women in western countries obtain the vote, that the vote is
extended to young people in many western countries, and that, perhaps crucially
for our understanding of the century as a whole, the colonised countries of Africa
and Asia attain independence from the European powers. While it is well known
that classical epic and drama were redeployed by creative writers in postindependence cultures, this paper hopes to draw attention to a lesser-known
cultural and educational shift.
One of the narratives of independence in the African continent concerns the place
of classics in the education of Africans. The missionaries who helped to spearhead
colonialism in the nineteenth century perceived the classical languages as a sine
qua non for the ministry, and selected African converts were thoroughly trained in
Latin and Greek. Yet the acquisition of classics by Africans becomes deeply
controversial in later years, particularly in the early part of the twentieth century,
when there is a clear move to confine Africans to a more practical and vocational
education. This can be read in the Report of the Phelps-Stokes Education
Commission of 1922, where Latin is denigrated as a distraction from Africans'
‘natural' destiny. By 1945, however, the pressure for independence, and a
consequent turn to democratic values, can be read in the rhetoric of a further
educational commission. In the Report of the Elliot Commission on Higher
Education in West Africa, the classical languages and culture are heralded as a
shared heritage that can unite Europeans and Africans. They become testimony to
the common humanity which the Report is busy building in the face of colonialism's
end.
Kenneth W. Goings and Eugene O'Connor, Ohio State University, USA
The Classical Curricula at Black Colleges and Universities: Subtext for Self- and
Group-Affirmation
New and exciting scholarship demonstrates the ways in which free African
Americans, in the period before emancipation (1619-1865) appropriated what was
considered the ultimate in intellectual achievement, the classics, to argue for the
freedom of their brothers and sisters still in slavery and for their own full
citizenship. What our paper does is to extend this conversation by looking at the
ways in which the classics were used in black colleges and universities after
emancipation to continue the fight for full inclusion in the body politic.
We will discuss the courses and authors taught at historically black colleges. For
African American students, their teachers, their parents, and their community,
classical education held special significance as a tool of social and racial uplift in a
segregated society. Knowledge of the classics bolstered not only their self-esteem
but also their argument that, as intellectual equals, they should be full citizens of
the republic. The classics were also a ‘positive' non-slave link to the African past—
as opposed to a past that had been constructed by the larger society to demean
African Americans and make them feel second class. By establishing a link between
Africa and the classical world, African Americans could and did argue that if the
classical past was what distinguished white American and made them worthy of
citizenship, the same could be said for African Americans.
A broad look at the course catalogues we have collected, dating from the late
1860s to the 1940s, reveals the breadth and depth of the courses taught. Not
surprisingly, given the call for leaders who could speak in behalf of the race, the
catalogues across schools heavily favoured rhetoric, predominantly Cicero and
Demosthenes, as ‘Republican' models who spoke out against tyranny. The classics
were essential for the training of effective rhetoricians. It was the case for white
orators, too, but it had special urgency for educated African Americans who would
be delegated to speak out in behalf of the race. Indeed, the classical curriculum
provided a common locus for articulating a positive group identity and for
deliberating about social organization and political action.
Shelley Hales, University of Bristol, UK
Pompeii in the Crystal Palace : Comparing Victorian and Modern Virtual Immersive
Environments
This paper explores a JISC funded project to build a virtual 3D model in Second
Life, a popular multi-user online virtual world, of the Pompeian Court of the Crystal
Palace. The Court was a life-size model of a Pompeian house, housing a collection
of copies of paintings from recent excavations. It was part of a sequence of
reconstructions of past civilisations arranged in the Crystal Palace after it was
moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham by private speculators and opened in 1854 as
an encyclopaedic museum of the world. Like the Chicago World's Fair, the Palace
was an extraordinary showcase of nineteenth century knowledge and taste in which
huge audiences met the classical world within an eclectic environment of ancient
and modern. It was an ambitious social and educational experiment, which was
completely destroyed by fire in 1936. The paper will examine how the social and
educational experiences offered by the virtual model compare with the successes
and failures of the original Court, which was designed to educate audiences by
creating immersive environments deemed more appropriate for instruction than
crumbling ruins. Both environments take classics beyond the academy to interact
with new audiences in eclectic contexts. The project explores the experience of
inhabiting these modelled spaces examining the reception of the modelled
environment in both the Victorian and twenty first century context and presenting
some initial observations of responses to the project model by user groups and the
Second Life community.
Judith P. Hallett, University of Maryland, USA
Investigating American women's engagements with Greco-Roman antiquity, and
expanding the circle of ‘classicists'
My presentation focuses on an area of classical reception research that has recently
attracted substantial attention from both classicists and American intellectual and
cultural historians: the influential and as yet insufficiently appreciated role played
by American women, from the late 18 th century onwards, in both the academic
study of Greek, Latin and Greco-Roman antiquity and efforts that promoted
appreciation of the classical past among a wider public. It features as its case
studies representative attempts, successful and unsuccessful, by classicists to work
with American historians, and evaluate work by American historians, on these two
topics.
I distinguish between research on American women who learned and taught
classical languages, literatures and cultures in formal institutional settings and on
those who, in Caroline Winterer's words, sought to ‘immerse themselves in the
spirit of classical antiquity' outside of academe. I argue that these two classical
reception projects often address different kinds of questions and, accordingly,
require different kinds of scholarly expertise. To illustrate the importance of
‘synergetic scholarship' involving classicists and American historians, I have
selected biographies of two female educators regarded as ‘classicists': M. Carey
Thomas, president of the all-female Bryn Mawr College from 1885-1922; and Bryn
Mawr alumna Edith Hamilton, who, after serving from 1896-1922 as headmistress
of a college preparatory school for girls founded by Thomas, became a best-selling
author of books about classical antiquity. To illustrate problems arising when
classicists fail to understand, and collaborate with, American historians, I have
chosen a response to Winterer's The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the
Classical Tradition, 1750-1900 (2007. It uses archival evidence to document how
American women of this era embraced ‘classicism' as an inclusive cultural
movement rather than an exclusive academic pursuit: through reading groups and
study clubs, and—in the domestic, material cultural realm—furnishings, art and
fashion
Lorna Hardwick, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Against the Democratic Turn: Counter-texts; Counter-contexts; Counter arguments
This paper aims to raise some awkward issues and to provoke debate by looking
critically at some of the assumptions underlying claims that there has been a
‘Democratic Turn’. I start by reviewing some of the main counter-arguments
(drawing on contexts of transmission, interpretation and artistic production and
consumption). I then focus on the formal properties of some key texts from epic
and drama and discuss their problematic implications. I argue that claims about a
‘Democratic Turn’ may be largely aspirational, even masking complacency about
democracies and their institutions and deflecting attention from the potential of
classical texts to function as intellectual gadflies. The paper concludes by
suggesting how ‘democratic’ aspirations might be realised in ways that do justice
both to the densities and ambivalences of the texts and to their potential in
modern cultural politics.
Katherine Harloe, University of Reading, UK
We are all democrats today
This paper extends some of the reflections given in my response to the first round
of e-seminar discussions, in which I raised questions concerning the implicit force
of the term ‘democratic’ in the conference theme, the different meanings it has
been given by various participants, and the possibility that its use may close off
avenues of critical discussion rather than open them up. The extension of the
scope of classical reception studies (CRS) - or even of ‘classics’ as a discipline –
towwards a wider variety of responses to ancient ideas, texts and other cultural
forms is surely laudable, and those committed to this direction for humanistic study
should surely celebrate their commitment. Yet I wonder why so many of us
working in CRS wish to appropriate the term ‘democratic’ in order to characterise
our work, or our subjects, or ourselves. How does this relate to democracy’s
status as the hegemonic state form in the modern west and the consequent
impossibility, for most of us, of imagining viable alternatives? Does this make it a
promising term to transfer to classical reception studies, or may it confuse and
disguise more than it clarifies?
I shall also raise some brief doubts about the developmental narrative that seems
to be presupposed by the phrase ‘democratic turn’. Is this to be seen as a recent
development and if so, what does the metaphor imply about the practice of
classical reception studies – or of classics – prior to this? Several of the conference
contributions have the potential to complicate an view of classicism as, historically
and essentially, an elitist discourse. Celebration of present trends towards
inclusivity and plurality should not blind us to past critical elements in what is
sometimes still (to my mind, misleadingly) called ‘the classical tradition’.
Finally, I shall revisit the question, voiced already by many contributors to the
conference and e-seminars, for CRS to re-engage with theory of various kinds.
Notions of a ‘democratic turn’, however imperfect, are helpful in drawing attention
to the opportunities and challenges that face those working in this crossdisciplinary field.
John Hilton, University of Kwa-Zulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
The Reception of the Roman-Dutch Law of Treason in South Africa
‘The South African law of high treason was based not on English law but on Roman
Dutch antecedents, and defined high treason as a hostile intention to disturb,
impair or endanger the independence or safety of the state. The punishment was
death.' (Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom. Randburg: Macdonald Purnell,
1994:189)
Trials for high treason have a long and spectacular history in South African law.
The most famous of these is of course, the trial of 156 members of the antiapartheid resistance movement that took place between the years 1956 and 1961
referred to above in my lead quotation from Mandela's autobiography, but there
have been others: the Slagter's Nek Rebellion in 1815, the Makana revolt in 1818,
the Jameson Raid in 1896, the Bambata insurrection by Dinizulu in 1908, the Boer
rebellion in 1902, the Miner's Strike in 1922, and the subversive activities of the
Nazi Rob ey Leibrandt during the Second World War, among others. Over all of
these hangs the shadow of the lex Julia de maiestate and other Roman laws on
treason. This paper will investigate how the reception of the Roman law in South
Africa shaped the construction of the concept of treason at times of heightened
political tension.
Yana Sistovari (also known as Yana Zarifi), Artistic Director of Thiasos Theatre
Company. Thiasos
Re-animating Antiquity: Gardzienice Theatre's process into contemporary
performance
The Polish theatre group, Gardzienice Theatre is widely regarded as one of the
world's leading experimental theatre companies. Performance theorist, Richard
Schechner, considers them as constituting ‘the very heart and essence of Polish
experimental and anthropological performance…'
Led by Artistic Director, Wlodzimerz Staniewski for more than thirty years, from
their base in a small village in southeast Poland, the director and his ensemble
have developed a new stylistics of musical theatre which has been described as
‘ethno-oratorio'. It is a unique song theatre inspired by the expressive traditions of
indigenous culture and the musicality of the natural environment. The work
simultaneously engages with many of our current concerns – such as ethnicity,
identity and ecology whilst refuting that which Staniewski views as the
dispassionate qualities of postmodern art. The performance work evolves from a
deep training process which enables the actors to develop and refine their musical
and physical abilities to a high degree of articulacy. However, the shows also
appear to be truly populist, recognised and appreciated by isolated rural
communities around the world, from the Indians of the Taos Pueblo to the Hutsuls
of the Carpathian Mountains in the Ukraine. At the same time, Gardzienice's work
is appreciated by urban audiences in international theatre festivals worldwide. The
performances and training have also been filmed by leading Polish film makers and
several have been shown on Polish television.
Since 1999, Wlodzimierz Staniewski has turned to Ancient Greece as the primary
source for recent productions. In 2001, Metamorphoses was premiered in New York
It referred to Apuleuis' The Golden Ass as its subject matter while drawing on
fragments of Ancient Greek music to develop a musical frame which underpinned
the montage of images based on vase paintings, mainly from the 6th –4th centuries
B.C.
In this presentation Yana Sistovari will introduce audio-visual extracts from
Gardzienice’s Greek performances to illustrate how Staniewski creates a dancing
alphabet from ancient Greek vase iconography and musical fragments.
Dorinda Hulton, Exeter University, UK
The Silence of Eurydice: towards a new aesthetic for creating theatre in a conflict
zone
'The Silence of Eurydice' is a practice-as-research project based on the ‘minor'
character appearing at the end of Sophocles' Antigone who is unable to speak on
hearing of the death of her son. The project is planned to take place on either side
of the military border in Cyprus in May 2010 and aims to explore ways in which
creative artists can contribute to a growth in understanding between people of
different faiths and cultures.
In the project, fragments of the Cambridge translation of the play will be used as
an inspirational springboard for an exploration of democratic processes relating to
three principles that are rarely brought together when creating theatre in conflict
zones, namely: artistic representation of shared content and concerns; creative
artists from both sides of a conflict zone working together in non hierarchical ways;
and a multilingual approach that allows space for the voices of ordinary people to
be heard on a micro-political level.
In this presentation I will report on ways in which these democratic processes have
been explored on a small scale within the project, and influenced performance
work. The silent figure of Eurydice will be embodied through solo performance in
outdoor sites on both sides of the military border and be shared with local
audiences. Also, processes concerning multilingual form will be presented as indoor
performance to invited audiences of artists, academics and young adults. In these,
the solo performance of Eurydice will be counter pointed with video documentary of
first hand testimony from relatives of the dead on both sides of the military border.
Each spoken, sung, and/or written fragment of language will interweave with each
of the others - Greek, Turkish and English - this contemporary counterpoint
perhaps offering an alternative to the inherently democratic devices of the debate
and the simile within the original.
George A. Kovacs, Trent University, Canada
Truth, Justice, and the Spartan Way : Affectations of Democracy in Frank Miller's
300
The comic book industry was begun in the 1930s and produced fantasy fiction in
which characters fought to enforce (American) democracy. Yet these depictions are
problematic: Superman and Captain America articulate their democracy by beating
into submission America's foes, not by arguing for fair representation or carefully
monitored elections. The superhero, an elite enforcer rather than a petitioner for
social change, has been depicted in many recent graphic novels (Moore 's V for
Vendetta, Watchmen ; Miller's Dark Knight Returns) as antithetical to democracy:
agents of chaos, anarchy, and even fascism.
Miller's 300, published two years before 9/11, is replete with contradictions in its
depiction of democracy. It enhances – and further distorts – the ‘Spartan Mirage’,
positioning Leonidas and his Spartans as fearsome proto-democrats, despising the
Persians for the employment of slaves – denying by omission Sparta's own
employment of a large slave population. Miller imbues his Spartans with a hypermasculinity, fighting foes who are effeminate, foreign-looking, and sexually
deviant, further limiting the scope of inclusivity. Snyder's 2007 film adaptation
widens this Orientalist distrust of the Other (though it mitigates some of the
comic's misogynistic sentiment).
This paper explores how Miller's deployment of a Classical model toward an
explicitly democratic agenda articulates many of the contradictions inherent in the
current American political climate of fear.
Barbara Lawatsch-Melton, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Appropriations of Cicero and Cato in Colonial America and the Early Republic
The significance of classical receptions for the American Founders and nineteenth
century elites in the United States has received much scholarly attention during the
past twenty years. Even so, the emergence of Cicero and Cato as iconic figures,
the extent of their reach beyond the elites, and their role in the evolution of a
democratic political culture in the United States has not been fully explored. This
paper will outline how Cicero and Cato emerged as iconic figures in the eighteenth
century and continued to play a role within widely disseminated publications in the
nineteenth. Examining classical receptions among both elites and wider circles of
society, this paper will investigate the significance of classical icons in shaping the
foundational narrative, concepts of liberty, and ideals of leadership and civic
engagement. While exploring the role of classical receptions in the evolving
democratic culture, the paper will touch upon their significance for more recent
trends and receptions of the classics.
Graham Ley, Exeter University, UK
Aristophanes and the Skills of the Comic Actor
Michael Ewans is preparing a new set of translations of Aristophanes to go with his
collections of translations of Aeschylus and Sophocles, to which I and Greg McCart
also contributed. He follows two principles in this work, aiming to reproduce almost
all the original allusions and to track the jokes as far as possible, and also to
provide a script that works for actors because it has been put through a workshop.
We decided to look into a further question, which was how far a professional comic
actor might be able to handle the script as it stood, and activate it with his
established comic skills. To that end, we brought in a director with whom I work
regularly on research questions, Martin Harvey, and Mike Burns as the comic actor,
for a week's work on sections of the Ewans's translation of Acharnians, which was
preceded by two days of dramaturgical discussion between me and Martin Harvey.
The workshop raised and partly answered questions about comprehension,
allusion, topicality, comic skills and the ‘democratic turn' in Aristophanes ancient
and contemporary, and may be a slight step towards the greater emancipation of
Aristophanes in the modern theatre. My presentation will range over these issues
with a relatively light tread, incorporating responses from those involved, and
showing a selection from the recordings made of several stages of the workshop.
Aleka Lianeri, University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Conflicts of democracy and citizenship: Between the Greek and the roman Political
Legacies
The past thirty years or so have witnessed a renewed interest in the ancient
democratic traditions, which are evoked both in the field of classical studies and
the disciplines of cultural and political theory. This paper explores how this
democratic turn has been grounded in an entanglement of the Greek and the
Roman democratic heritages, which has produced an internally conflictual
genealogy of the democratic imperative. Heidegger identified this entanglement as
central to western democratic politics, when he wrote of the need to reflect on the
Roman transformation of Greece and the ways in which the legacy of the Greek
polis has come to be understood in Roman terms: ‘Since the time of the Imperium,
the Greek word ‘political' has meant something Roman. What is Greek about it is
only its sound.’ (Heidegger, M. Parmenides (Indiana UP, 199 2:45) However, this
act of appropriation has been neither final nor complete, but has manifested gaps
and inconsistencies inscribing a conflict into the centre of the western democratic
genealogy. The paper will discuss this conflict as constitutive of the relationship
between the modern notions of ‘people' and ‘citizenship'. Focusing on key moments
in the constitution of these concepts against the Greek and Roman legacies, from
Machiavelli through Rousseau to Grote, it will explore how the Greek democratic
heritage allowed the dissociation of the two categories and constituted an idea of
the ‘ demos ' that challenged the forms of normative prescription of sharing implied
by a Roman in origin idea of citizenship. From this perspective it will put forth an
idea of the demos that begins outside the realms of citizenship on the basis of the
exclusion of those who are deemed to be unworthy of the status of the citizen.
Steven Mailloux, Loyola Marymount University, USA
African-American Rhetoric, Christian Political Theology, and Classical Culture
In ‘The Race-Problem in America,' the Anglican minister Alexander Crummell told
the tale of how, as a boy of 13 in the 1830s, he heard the famous Southern orator
and statesman John C. Calhoun remark ‘that if he could find a Negro who knew the
Greek syntax he would then believe that the Negro was a human being and should
be treated as a man.' Later, the African-American classicist William S. Scarborough
was motivated by this racist comment in making his vocational choice and
authoring his textbook First Lessons in Greek. Scarborough was not alone in
embracing classical culture as a means for asserting intellectual equality and
achieving his political rights as an African American. Before and after the Civil War,
Black intellectuals and political leaders used a synthesis of Christian political
theology and Greco-Roman culture to perform their racial identities within a
democratic public sphere whose configurations were constantly shifting.
In this paper, I will examine how African-American intellectuals of the nineteenthcentury employed religious and classical rhetoric to negotiate their identities and
the contradictory responsibilities they felt to their race and to all humanity. In so
doing, they entered directly into the socio-political conflict between identitarian
particularism and Universalist humanism within a democratic polis set within a
transatlantic world. I will focus on the writings and speeches of two influential
Black intellectuals: Alexander Crummell, Du Bois's hero in Souls of Black Folk, an
Anglican missionary to Liberia, and later founder of the American Negro Academy
in the United States; and Edward Wilmot Blyden, a Presbyterian minister and
Crummell's classicist colleague at Liberia College, subsequently a Liberian cabinet
member and ambassador to England, as well as author of influential books such as
Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race.
Antony Makrinos, University College London, UK
In search of ancient myths: documentaries and the quest for the Homeric World
The expansion of the TV audiences over the last few years has caused made-fortelevision series and documentaries to set new aims in their digestion of Greek and
Roman world. Hollywood blockbusters introduced new audiences to Homer and
aided documentaries to open debates about its depiction and to create new
markets interested in exploring historical truth behind the stories. The Homeric
matrix has been omnipresent over the years and directors and audiences have
repeatedly assigned new meanings to it depending on current political and social
dynamics. Scholarly interest in the cinematic portrayal of the Homeric epics has
seen a recent resurgence and new unexplored viewpoints of the texts have come to
surface. What is the relationship between the cinematographic depiction of the
Homeric epics and its presentation by documentaries and how do the
documentaries influence our reception of Homer?
In this talk I will examine the study of the Homeric world by documentaries, the
way(s) in which they shape, transform or elaborate the views of modern (especially
young) audiences and their impact on education. The need for legitimisation of our
culture by the esteemed ancient cultures through a visual dialogue between
modern and ancient have led to the production of counter-narratives of the past.
These alternative narratives encourage modern interpretations of the ancient world
by practitioners and new audiences and seek to be authorised by the classicists.
Have the documentaries been successful in focusing away form the association of
the Homeric epics with the élite groups? How do classicists receive this persistent
search for the historical truth through fiction, and the leisure and education of
suspected and uneducated audiences? Why does the Iliad attract more the interest
of documentary makers than the Odyssey ?
The talk will examine the role of documentary as a part of modern education and
entertainment (ways of visualising the ancient, use of technological effects,
representation of War, etc.) and the differentiation of the visual representation in
comparison to the literary texts. The discussion will explore how and why
documentary making has changed popular conceptions of the classical world and
our reception of classical myth and history.
My methodology will be based on the examination of innovative techniques for the
visual digestion of the Homeric narrative by modern audiences (in situ visits,
archival research, archaeology, reconstructions and recreations actual or virtual,
computer graphics, interactive menus). Additionally, I will examine specific themes
which interest the practitioners and which associate with the literary texts or the
historical sources: the visualisation of gods and heroes, women in ancient societies,
use of technological effects and archaeology, religion and its impact. Overviews will
be organised chronologically and thematically, based on a series of case studies
selected to illustrate larger themes in the modern appropriations of the distant
past.
My objectives will be to investigate the notion of a ‘Democratic Turn’ in Homeric
receptions stimulated by the practice and the research of documentary making and
to evaluate the attempts to visualise and explore the Homeric world. I will aim to
show –in the course of selected case studies- how the ancient world has played an
essential role to the creation of highly-developed sets of cultural appropriations by
documentary and its audiences. This will also help to assess the relationship
between theory and practice and to explore the role of scholarship in documentary
making.
The Weapon of Oratory
Margaret Malamud, New Mexico State University, USA
Training in classical oratory and debate provided African Americans with a powerful
weapon to combat charges of racial inferiority and argue for their inclusion in the
civic realm. In this paper, I investigate the influence of classical oratory on
antebellum African American abolitionists and their uses of classical references in
their writings and speeches. As I demonstrate, Alexander Crummell, Frederick
Douglass, Henry Highlands Garnet, James McCune Smith and others drew on
classical models to justify their full inclusion in the nation. Caleb Bingham's
Columbian Orator profoundly influenced all of them.
The Columbian Orator was one of the most popular schoolbooks of the early
Republic and was in regular use up until the Civil War. Bingham's 1797 text is a
primer on oratory and it contains nearly a dozen speeches from classical sources or
on classical topics. In his reader, Bingham paraphrases Cicero's De Oratore —and
offers students pages on rules for speaking, including gesture, pronunciation,
harmonious cadence, and emphasis. Excerpts from Demosthenes, Cicero,
Quintilian, Caesar, Plato, and others illustrate rhetorical theory. Bingham's
rhetorical sections are specific in their recommendations and they direct the reader
to the appropriate classical authors for further study. Crummell, Garnett, and
Smith all used the Columbian Orator and Douglass avidly studied the pages of the
Columbian Orator while he was still a slave; its contents gave him the same
rhetorical weaponry as his white playmates and other readers like the young
Abraham Lincoln. Douglass later recounted that he cherished this book so much he
carried it with him as he escaped from slavery in 1838. As I show, Douglass and
other abolitionist orators mastered the skills discussed in the Columbian Orator and
present in classical oratory (the works of Demosthenes and Cicero were widely
available in translation): mimicry, political humor, and subversive theatrics. They
used classical rhetoric to bolster arguments for freedom and equality in the
American republic and to assail the romantic pretense of classical republicanism
and virtue advanced by Southern slave owners. They frequently punctuated their
oratory with classical references and used the classics both to critique white
America and to argue for African American emancipation.
Chris Ann Matteo, Stone Bridge High School, Virgina and Elton Barker, The
Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Crossing Boundaries through Digital Humanities: HESTIA and US Schools
Because a dedication to democratization is central to classical reception studies and
to outreach generally, we must also consider what is being done outside of the
academy to foster collaborations among researchers, teachers and the public. This
presentation describes the ‘lab school' collaboration between the HESTIA digital
mapping project and a US high school. Since the mid-1990's and the success of
searchable classics databases such as Perseus (Tufts), electronic texts and digital
media are now credible and authoritative learning resources about the classical
world. HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive) offers not
only digital mapping of Herodotus' geography, but also the ability for students to
interact with this geography through Google Earth. Because of its capacity to
access students who are already very competent in using digital media, the HESTIA
project enables students closer access to primary-source documents (the
geography, Herodotus' Greek text in both Greek and English) than their textbookbased study currently affords. At Stone Bridge High School (Ashburn, VA), classical
studies are taught both in the Latin classroom as well as social studies. In the
ninth-grade in the state of Virginia, ancient Greek history and geography is part of
the standards of learning for the state, and thus, indispensible in the curriculum.
Students in Matteo's Latin classes have already been using HESTIA since its launch,
and in early 2010 they will be presenting this digital resource to all students in the
ninth-grade as ‘student researchers'. An online survey of what students have
learned from HESTIA will deliver results to Barker and his team. Using Promethean
board technology, web-surveys and other digital communications, we hope that
this team-effort serves as a valuable test case for how we might foster more
collaboration between the academy and the public.
Alexandre G. Mitchell, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, UK
Democracy and popular media: classical receptions in 19th and 20th centuries
political cartoons: statesmen, mythological figures and celebrated artworks
There is much debate today on who reads classics. I approach the problem from a
different perspective, that of visual humour, which I studied in depth in the ancient
Greek context (Greek Vase Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour CUP. 2009).
The previous study, of the social and political functions of humour within a
democratic context, and based on the most popular and cheap art form in archaic
and classical Greece, Greek pots, has given me the tools to pursue a new project.
The cheapness of the product, the huge market available and the need to please
customers to sell the artefacts, the wide-ranging possibilities of visual humour, and
the democratic context, all pointed me in the direction of freedom of expression
and popular art forms. This was for ancient Greece … what about 19th and 20th
century democracies? In 1874, R. Buss wrote: ‘Had caricature and photography
existed in past centuries, how delighted should we be to behold an Alexander, a
Nero, a Caesar, or any other be-praised blood-shedder of public liberty, transfixed
by the etching-needle of a Gillray or a Cruikshank! Without civil and religious
liberty, joined to an unshackled press, caricature cannot exist; thus it becomes, by
its free exercise, a sure exponent of the degree of freedom enjoyed in any
country’. There are some who assume that only the elites had/have access to
classics, but what should we make of the many hundreds of caricatures in
prominent newspapers, propaganda leaflets, from the 19 th century to today,
which use classical references, whether they are visual myths, events or
statesmen, and much more, to mock current affairs? Did everyone understand the
references? Who was/is mocked? The contemporary politician, or Herakles? More
importantly, why would a cartoonist need a reference to Herakles, Caesar or the
statue of the Laocoon to mock a 19 th or 21st century politician? Does everyone
understand these references today? Newspapers: the material is cheap, paper, it
has to ‘please’ the public, at least in its design if not in the info rmation it contains;
newspapers thrive in democracies. Are certain newspapers more ‘high brow’ than
others? Do they change over time? Political cartoons, as individual and powerful
images, crystallise a number of different gazes all within a democratic context.
Jo Paul, University of Liverpool, UK
The Democratic Turn in (and through) pedagogy: a case study of the Cambridge
Latin Course
The pedagogical systems and material used in teaching Classics (broadly
conceived) are important vehicles for spreading familiarity with the ancient world.
As receptions of the past themselves, they are the first point of access to antiquity
for many people, and may set out actively to encourage participation among a
diverse range of audiences. Moreover, they can determine the nature of those
audiences' ongoing engagements with the past, thereby influencing subsequent
‘classical receptions', and a more general understanding of the social and political
relevance of the ancient past. The importance of pedagogy in constructing notions
of a ‘Democratic Turn' will here be examined through a case study of the
Cambridge Latin Course (CLC), focusing on two central issues. Firstly, how do the
CLC's origins – closely connected to the spread of comprehensive education in the
late 1960s, and other ‘democratising' moves in education – help us to understand
changing views of Classics as an elitist subject? Secondly, how do its methods
(innovative at the time in their use of cognitivism and inductive learning theories)
also contribute to the CLC's role as a potential catalyst for a ‘Democratic Turn'?
These, along with its exploitation of material culture, and now digital technologies,
have increasingly enabled students (in ever broader constituencies) to ‘inhabit' and
claim ownership of antiquity in new and interesting ways. Simultaneously, though,
the content of the CLC, with its narratives of slave-owners and dutiful women –
and the ensuing debates around them – perfectly demonstrate the pitfalls in trying
to communicate ‘undemocratic' histories to a consciously pluralistic audience.
Careful consideration of how the CLC was devised, developed, and used
(worldwide, as well as in the UK) thereby allows us to confront some of the most
critical issues regarding who uses the ancient past, for what purposes, and with
what consequences.
Nancy S. Rabinowitz, Hamilton College, USA
Expansion of Tragedy as Critique
I would define the ‘democratic turn’ as an opening up of classics to a wider
audience and a wider set of participants, including women, men and women of
color, and men and women from a broader class background. While conservative
critics blamed the left for the death of classics, the performance of Greek tragedy
in the late twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries arguably owes much to
feminism and progressive politics in general (see Dionysus since 69). Indeed, the
democratic turn seems to have become encourage growth in performances of
tragedy.
The paper I propose will intersect with the democratic turn in specific by showing
how tragedy has been used to undermine claims by the U.S. and UK that the war
in Iraq was politically democratic, that is, bringing democracy to the people of Iraq.
I will take as my example the ways in which anti-war activists have used tragedy
as a vehicle to criticize the American empire and its expansionism in the 21 st
century. Specifically, I will focus on the interweaving of gender analysis and antiwar sentiments in recent performances of Euripides' Trojan Women and Hekabe. In
the build-up to the current war in Iraq, women's subordinated roles in orthodox
Islamic Afghanistan helped to authorize the attack on Afghanistan (Rabinowitz
2005). The Greek plays on the Trojan War theme, through the treatment of Helen,
facilitate an analysis of the present situation. These particular plays (as well as the
Medea) offer ample opportunity to comment on aggression and revenge and their
consequences; they also offer a vehicle for analyzing women's role in wartime.
Though neither Trojan Women nor Hekabe are among the canonized Euripidean
plays, productions have proliferated because they offered an opportunity to
comment on the anti-democratic and imperialist War in Iraq.
Michele Valerie Ronnick, Wayne State University, USA
Terra Incognita : Classical Studies and People of African Descent
Until the early 1990's classical scholars were oblivious to the Greek and Latin
curricula taught to students of African descent in Europe (as in the case of Juan
Latino in sixteenth century Spain), in various British colonies (as in the case of the
18 th century Jamaican Francis Williams and the Canadian H.A. A. Hartley, born in
19 th century Trinidad) and in the United States to hundreds of students in colleges
and universities mainly black but also white. Today portions of the pedagogical
evidence are being pieced together by various scholars, but the concatenation of
social, political and intellectual factors that caused this ‘oversight' still needs a full
investigation. And because this work demands facility with the complexities of
several disciplines, each of which are entwined with various racialized and
politicized (mis)understandings about the history of black people, the question of
black classicism remains in many ways a terra incognita.
One terrible consequence of this has been a widespread unawareness of significant
cultural patterns revealed in the lives of these classically trained students. Thus the
life and works of William Sanders Scarborough who rose out of slavery in Georgia
to become American's first professional classicist of African descent have been
made available to us only in the last five years. W.E.B. DuBois's classical education
is not widely known; nevertheless, he, 16 years younger than Scarborough, later
acknowledged that he would not have been admitted to Harvard with this training.
The writer Ralph Ellison was condemned as a man led astray by Homer and
Eurocentric values. But these men, seen by many for years as anomalies, were
working in fact within a larger tradition of classicism, specifically black classicism.
They profoundly shaped black intellectual endeavor in arts and letters, and laid the
philological foundation for work in modern languages and linguistics. Democracy
depends on knowing the achievements of all its peoples. Academic integrity
demands it. Such is the argument of my paper.
Michael Simpson, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Labour and the Classics: Plato and Crossman in Dialogue
Long before the current Labour Government had a closing appointment with
electoral nemesis, the New Labour project was criticised for the lack of a
philosophical dimension. The same stricture had been levelled at Harold Wilson's
Labour administrations of the 1960s. Yet Wilson 's cabinets have generally been
deemed a galaxy of talent, and they were, as it happens, equipped with several
philosophically literate members, of whom most had a classical background. Denis
Healey is an exemplary instance. The most classically furnished of all, however,
was Richard Crossman, political diarist, journalist, broadcaster, self-styled political
scientist, and accredited scholar of Greek philosophy. Other roles in Crossman's
profile were those of WEA lecturer and populariser of Plato and Socrates.
The broad question behind this paper is: Did the collective classical hinterland
behind some members of the Labour Movement bear on its progressive,
democratic, even radical edge at mid-century? The narrower question that I pose
and answer here is: How did Crossman's popular writings and radio broadcasts on
Plato and Socrates, especially his Plato Today (1937), play into any such
radicalism?
My answer consists of three elements: that this work is a critique of common and
uncommon factors in Plato's Republic, fascism, communism and contemporary
British society; that it seeks, by its own admission, to re-establish democracy on a
clearer conceptual and historical basis, crucially against the looming spectre of
fascism; and that it helps to clear the philosophical ground for Karl Popper's The
Open Society and its Enemies (1943). Building on this answer and on Melissa Lane
's Plato's Progeny: How Plato and Socrates Still Captivate the Modern Mind (2001),
I further propose that Crossman's dialogue with Plato is one beginning for a
Socratic future of socialism, potentially international in scope, in which power
might be made to speak truth to itself.
Elena Theodorakopoulos, Birmingham University, UK
Three novels about Catullus and Lesbia
Counting the Stars (2008) by Helen Dunmore, The Floating Book (2003) by
Michelle Lovric, and The Key (1988) by Benita Kane Jaro are novels about Catullus
which concentrate substantially on his relationship with Lesbia. While The Key is in
some aspects rather more scholarly than the other two novels, all three are not
aimed at specialists, and target a relatively mainstream market of readers of
historical fiction. All three seem also to accept the identification of Lesbia with
Clodia Metelli- and to some extent also to go along with some of the misogynistic
interpretations which cling to Clodia. All three authors also have translated some of
Catullus' poetry and integrated their own translations in the novels with varying
degrees of success. Because of this, the three works are not ‘just' historical genre
fiction, but must be read as more serious responses to the poetry itself, rather than
as mere perpetuations of the romantic mythology of Catullus and Lesbia. I will also
compare the novels with related, and roughly contemporary, fictions by male
authors (e.g. Clodia (1999) by Rob erto de Maria or The Venus Throw (1998) by
Steven Saylor), and will scrutinize in particular the extent to which they all exclude
the bawdier, more aggressively Roman and perhaps rather alienating side of
Catullus in favour of the lyrical romantic poet more in keeping with much popular
and scholarly reception.
Elena Theodorakopoulos, Birmingham University, UK and Fiona Cox,
University College Cork, Ireland
Colonising the ‘provinces of masculine knowledge': women's writing and classical
reception today
This paper maps out the terms of our project: we introduce the unprecedented
range and quantity of classical reception undertaken by women writers in the past
few decades, and outline some of the reasons and motivations for it. We examine
some prominent examples, and question the connection between feminist critical
theory and practitioners' creative output. We address the questions we put in our
e-seminar opening statement: to what extent does the increasing dominance of
women's creative re-writing of Classics constitute a ‘democratic turn'? Are some
themes or genres of classical literature are excluded at the expense of others? Are
the preoccupations of women readers and writers as tyrannical in their way as
those of earlier exclusive groups? How problematic is it that women writers turning
to Classics have also tended to benefit from an elite education?
Hara Thliveri, Pedagogical Institute, Ministry of Education, Athens, Greece
The use of language in the reception of ancient Greek drama in Modern Greece
from the liberation of the nation to the first quarter of the 20th century
Hara Thliveri will discuss the development of modern Greek productions of classical
plays, the ideological significance of the choice of language, and the introduction of
demotike into revival tragedy at the beginning of the twentieth century. These
developments resulted in a more democratic and ultimately a more performative
approach to modern productions of classical theatre. Throughout the second half of
the nineteenth century, modern Greek performances of revival tragedy were
‘rational' productions, which were driven by a philological approach. These
performances were mere illustrations of the ancient texts which failed to appeal to
the general public.
The beginning of the twentieth century brought important changes and productions
began to take on a more performative character. Konstantinos Christomanos at the
Nea Skene company and Thomas Oikonomou at the Royal Theatre were among the
first of a new modern Greek generation of professional stage directors who
experimented with stage translations of ancient drama in more vernacular registers
of the demotic language. The democratization process of the language, which was
embraced by prominent modern Greek authors such as Kostis Palamas, fostered a
genuine revival of ancient tragedy and the emergence of a living and accessible
stage spectacle. The Delphic Festivals of Angelos and Eva Sikelianos in 1927 and
1930 presented Aeschylean drama in demotic translations and cultivated all other
performative aspects of genuine outdoor productions for mass audiences (scenery,
costumes, music, choreography etc.).
Martina Treu, IULM, Milan
Back to the demos. An ‘anti-classical' approach to Classics?
As a theatre practitioner and a teacher, I work between two areas, theatre an
school, already treated respectively by Joanna Paul and Shelley Hales (Session 2)
and Dorinda Hulton (Session 3). I propose, therefore, to gather together in one
Panel –’Classics, theatre and School’ – those who share interest and experiences in
those areas, in new methodologies of pedagogy where classical plays are written
and staged in schools.
We could compare problems, solutions, methods, case studies of adaptations and
production, in different countries, in order to understand how these experiences
work. We could ask ourselves, more specifically, what could possibly mean
‘democratic' in such cases. Could we somehow bring theatre ‘back to demos' (i.e.,
to make it available to younger, wider, less educated audiences)? Could a school
become a community theatre and aim at a ‘democratic' model? Could this ‘turn'
involve all members and what contribution can they give? And if the ‘demos' of
ancient Athens somehow reflected itself in tragedies and comedies, is such an
identification still possible today?
I can bring as case studies to discussion the Takkuligey Project (Senegal) and
Teatro delle Albe (Italy). Their unconventional and non-hierarchic ‘method' includes
the re-writing and staging of classic plays. Their main pedagogical targets are
‘difficult' subjects, mostly students, in poor and marginal areas.
Could such experiences happen in other contexts and how could they affect the
perception of classics, but also, in turn, change the whole idea and definition of
‘classics'? If we work together on these matters we could have a hint of what
classical theatre could be tomorrow and if a ‘democratic turn' is actually taking
place, or is about to happen, inside and outside schools.
Angeliki Varakis, University of Kent, UK
‘Aristophanes in Performance as an all-inclusive event': audience participation and
celebration in the modern staging of Aristophanic comedy.
Karolos Koun's Aristophanic productions were rooted in Greece's live rural
celebrations and folk traditions which were formed on the basis of audience
participation. The director offered his Greek audience an equivalent mode of
performance which helped them experience Aristophanes from a common
perspective that was not imposed but natural to both the actor's and spectator's
way of life.
In addressing the issue of classical reception in modern performance, the aim of
this paper will be to explore the way in which Greek directors, such as Karolos
Koun, have dealt with the systematic opportunities the Aristophanic plays provide
for audience participation and improvisation. These occur through the comic
characters' frequent aside remarks, the parabasis and recurrent celebratory rituals.
Such theatrical occurrences affect the audience's perception of the comedy by
making them an active ingredient of the performance.
The democratic principle of audience participation which is inherent in Aristophanic
comedy seems particularly relevant to the entire notion of ‘the democratic turn' in
classical receptions by allowing both performers and audiences to take an active
role in the performance experience of re-inventing the classical play. Although
some may argue that in Aristophanic comedy many verbal remarks or ancient
festive occasions seem far removed from the world of the spectator in order to
prompt an exciting audience response, the reality of the performance might
suggest otherwise. For example, the actual effect of an actor's gaze on an audience
member during his aside remarks, or the live sound of music, song and dance
inspired by familiar traditions may be more than enough to eliminate the cultural
distance between a notional past and an immediate presence. In the realm of
performance, there are many parameters that shape the meaning of the play and
the issue of updating topical references may in fact seem irrelevant when it comes
to conveying something of Aristophanes' vitality. This resides mainly in the
dynamic atmosphere of the performance rather than the thematic content of the
comedy
Amanda Wrigley, Northwestern University, USA
Broadcasting the ‘Nation's Cultural Wealth': Ancient Greece on BBC Radio in the
Two Post-World War Periods
This paper offers a consideration of the ways in which the numerous BBC Radio
programmes which drew substantially on ancient Greek literature, myth and
history were presented as an important part of the Corporation's wider cultural
mission in the two post-war eras. The reception of the ‘nation's cultural wealth'
amongst listeners will also be brought into discussion in order to evaluate the
extent to which and the ways in which the intentions behind broadcasting policy
and programme-making were in tune with the audience. Under the leadership of
John Reith, from 1922 BBC Radio's cultural project was driven by an almost
‘missionary' zeal which echoes late-19c socialist movements which were concerned
with the social and educational conditions of the masses: Reith believed that
broadcasting had the potential to unite society and at the same time elevate
educational, artistic and even moral standards. By contrast, during the second half
of the 1940s through to the end of the 1950s—a period known as the ‘golden age'
of radio—the self-avowed ‘high cultural' Third Programme aimed its erudite
programming at the culturally educated listener rather than the ‘aspirants' who
actually composed a great part of its audience. The BBC's radio programmes which
drew on Greek antiquity—and others which drew on many other aspects of the
nation's ‘cultural wealth', such as poetry readings and dramatic productions of
Shakespeare—are documented to have been heard by a wide and decidedly nonspecialist public. The rich evidence that exists for the ways in which the public
engaged with these programmes encourages reflection on the impact and
importance of the BBC's cultural and educational project in these two periods.