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In March 2021, the IMAGINES Project – an international and interdisciplinary research network for the modern reception of antiquity in the visual and performing arts – held their seventh conference online. The event focused on PLAYFUL CLASSICS, and was hosted from Göttingen University by the organizers Juliette Harrisson, Antje Kuhle and Martin Lindner.
The keynote by Dunstan Lowe on „The Danger of Seriousness: Play and the Future of Classics“ outlined the potential of researching classical reception as a creative process. The following sections brought this to life with in-depth treatments of the underlying mechanics of constructing and deconstructing, playful learning, the „Faces of Antiquity“, forms of interaction and national/nationalistic traditions. The programme combined scholarly contributions with presentations and workshops by various artists and open discussion elements.
The shift to an online format allowed the participation of an unusually international audience, while the interactive elements – including a thematic game as a continuous side event – especially encouraged a large number of students to participate actively. Therefore, this conference report will not just summarize the content of the event, but also provide a student perspective on attending a conference on classical reception – a research area which is mostly neglected in the teaching curriculum.
Caesar’s visit to the ruins of ancient Troy in Lucan’s Bellum Civile book IX is an invented story which deals with important metaliterary themes such as poetic fama and the poetry’s eternalizing function. Lucan’s narrative also reveals the instrumental nature of Caesarean and Augustan propaganda: the Neronian poet highlights some contradictions of the Aeneid, showing the failure of the political project celebrated by Vergil.
Epistula 46 is an invitation, written under the name of Paula and Eustochium, for Marcella to go to Bethlehem, by all means with the aim to stimulate positive interest in the Holy Land for a wider public and to inspire the urge to travel and sojourn. The narrative defines pilgrimage not only through biblical references but also familiarizes it through references to ancient pagan practices and pagan literature and makes it compatible with the lifestyle of Rome’s urban elites. While biblical references predominantly propagate Palestine’s spiritual appeal as a site of centuries-long salvation events, references to the classics – often combined with the expression or the stimulation of emotions – put the region’s social and intellectual appeal to the fore. The use of pagan literature, in which the traditions of educational travel of a cosmopolitan elite, the social utopia of aristocratic recessus, and not least the pleasure of otium aestheticised through literature are prefigurated, shapes Palestine in particular fashion as a place of longing. Especially the appeal of Bethlehem thus only forms through the combination of spiritual-intellectual visio and emotionally attractive social utopia, through conjunction of spelunca Christi and bucolic idyll.
Megan Whalen Turner’s series The Queen’s Thief (1996 – 2020) centres on the political intrigues in a group of countries which are at once very like – but also very unlike – Bronze Age and archaic Greece threatened by a powerful Persian Empire. The first book in the series, The Thief (1996), begins as a political adventure haunted by stories of the gods. When those gods directly influence the action, the narrative changes from present political intrigue to a fantasy from the distant past. The mythology in The Thief reflects, imitates and distorts archaic Greek creation myths – stories about how the earth and sky were formed, the divine pantheon and heroes. I examine the presentation of this divine pantheon against the narratives about the gods in Hesiod, the Homeric hymns and Homer’s epics. I evaluate how the supernatural element interacts with the largely political narrative of The Thief. In so doing, I explore how the text blends a ‘classical supernatural’ with a world that is like – but in many ways very unlike – Bronze Age and archaic Greece.
This paper analyzes a specific section of Martial’s Apophoreta (Book 14), the ‘list’ of fourteen literary works that the poet-persona suggests to the reader as potentially suitable presents to give to friends on the occasion of the Saturnalia. It focuses strictly on the literary aspects of the poems and their underlying carnivalesque poetics. This includes an assessment of the logic of the poems’ arrangement and alleged inconsistencies. It is suggested that the section be read as a complex statement of Martial’s on various works and genres of Greek and Roman literature. The last couplet of the section (14.196), a certain Calvus’ work ‘On the use of cold water’ (De aquae frigidae usu), which is unidentifiable, receives particular attention, for previous scholarship has wasted a lot of ink on guessing what kind of work this may have been, thereby losing touch with the rich (meta-)poetics the couplet actually conveys.
Welch ein Anblick für die Welt", notierte Joseph Goebbels geschockt in seinem Tagebuch. "Ein geistig zerrütteter zweiter Mann nach dem Führer. Grauenhaft und unausdenkbar." Da war Rudolf Hess soeben zu seinem mysteriösen Flug nach England aufgebrochen, um im Alleingang Frieden zu stiften. Wer war dieser von Rätseln umgebene Mann, der wie ein Schatten Hitlers wirkte, in Nürnberg zu lebenslanger Haft verurteilt wurde und nach seinem Tod in Spandau zu einer Ikone der Neonazis werden sollte? Manfred Görtemaker legt die erste grundlegende Biographie vor, die mit neuen Quellen einen präzisen Einblick in die Chefetage des NS-Regimes ermöglicht. Der Potsdamer Zeithistoriker Manfred Görtemaker hat fast zwanzig Jahre lang an dieser akribisch recherchierten Biographie gearbeitet. Erstmals konnte er ca. 4.100 Briefe und 50.000 Blatt Schriftwechsel aus dem Hess-Nachlass im Berner Bundesarchiv auswerten, mit einer Sondergenehmigung die Papiere von Lord Selkirk of Douglas, dem Sohn des Duke of Hamilton, zu dem Hess nach Schottland flog, einsehen sowie eine beeindruckende Zahl von weiteren bislang unerschlossenen Archivalien heranziehen. Das Resultat ist das Lebensbild des Mannes, der von Anfang an mit Hitler durch dick und dünn ging, dessen wachsende Machtfülle wie ein Alter Ego verwaltete und über dessen Einfluss als "Stellvertreter des Führers" sich kein Rivale Illusionen machte. Manfred Görtemaker konnte als Erster Briefe und Schriften aus dem Nachlass von Rudolf Hess auswerten Hitlers treuester Paladin in einer präzisen biographischen Rekonstruktion Eine exemplarische Studie darüber, wie jemand zum Nazi wird
Demagogen dichten
(2022)
Manipulative rhetoric is a common issue in ancient sources. As the issue of political populism and rhetoric still attracts a high degree of interest among a wide range of people, the author, a singer-songwriter, attempts to ‘revive’ these ancient sources and to adapt them into a lyrical/musical format for modern audiences, in order to test different strategies of manipulation and gauge the reactions of modern audiences. The following article describes the process of adapting and performing two of these experiments, as well as the results and feedback from audiences. The ancient case studies chosen for this are Thucydides’ description of how Alcibiades lead the Athenians into a fatal expedition to Sicily, and Xenophon’s blames of two public orators for executing Athenian generals after the battle of Arginusae through their manipulative speeches.
Roms Metamorphosen im Exil
(2020)
In this article, we want to elucidate and contrast the exilic fates rendered in Ovid’s exilic elegies and in Lucan’s Bellum Civile. While Ovid’s persona undergoes a slow development towards acceptance of the exilic condition by ‘refounding’ a second Rome in Tomi, Lucan’s Pompey gradually severs himself from Rome, culminating in him dying far from home apparently without regrets. Both characters try to transfer the concept of Rome to new entities. However, they are not able to escape Rome’s grasp: Pompey is killed by a Roman mercenary in Egypt, Naso’s Roma secunda is in the end only a reproduction of the exul’s irrevocably Roman fate.
Echnaton, Nofrete und die neu gebaute Hauptstadt Amarna beschäftigen nicht nur Archäologen und Ägyptologen, sondern sie sind seit langem Themen der Religions- und Kunstgeschichte, jetzt auch der Sozialgeschichte. Seit dem Fund der Tontafeln (1887) mit der Korrespondenz des Königs und der deutschen Ausgrabung von 1911-14 sind die Diskussionen über die Amarnazeit nicht abgerissen. Die Publikation stellt die Lebensräume der Stadtbewohner (Stadt, Umland, Gebäude) vor, zeichnet die Lebensbilder bedeutender Persönlichkeiten und beschreibt die Weltbilder dieser Zeit, die sich in Kunst und Religion widerspiegeln.
Laocoon Relooké
(2021)
This article focuses on the reception of the ancient statue of Laocoon in the arts and popular culture of the 21st century. It looks into why this icon has remained continuously present in the public’s collective imagination and covers, in particular, the recapturing of this motif by four contemporary painters : Richard Wallace (2002), Ron Milewicz (2005), Gilles Chambon (2008), Kent Monkman (2008). The article examines as well the new meanings associated with its treatment and finally explores the way our contemporary world deals with the notion of monument and the concept of academicism.
Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings employ traditional races from fairy tales: elves, men and dwarves. These peoples are differentiated principally by their dominant desires, but also by their speech, diet, and realms. I argue that these three races are significantly inspired by the three aspects that characterize the Republic’s tripartite soul—logistikon, thumoeides, and epithumetikon—along with their respective principal desires: desire for truth, greatness, and material goods. For Tolkien, therefore, these races have a corporate or political psychology that explains who they are as peoples in the history of Middle-earth. I offer a comprehensive view of the major races, connecting the dwarves with the appetitive artisans of the Republic, humans with the honour- and glory-seeking auxiliaries, and elves with the ruling guardians. This treatment explains the artisanal dwarves, as well as the battle-loving men (and women) of Rohan and Gondor, and the nostalgic, ‘anamnetic’ condition of exile that distinguishes the elves. Indeed, the condition of elves in many descriptions recalls a Platonic philosopher returned to the Cave, as well as the Neo-Platonic sagacity pictured in the biographies of Plotinus and Proclus.
Legolas in Troy
(2022)
The Lord of the Rings movies were a cinematic phenomenon, extremely popular. They are not often considered as works of Classical Reception. These films’ influence on subsequent ancient world movies has been understudied, and undervalued. A common model of cinematic Greece and Rome in the twenty-first century looks solely back to Gladiator. Undoubtedly Gladiator, and its commercial success, is important to how ancient world movies developed; but focussing solely on Gladiator does not explain a move away from Roman history towards Greek mythology, culminating in a flurry of movies about Greek mythological heroes. Lord of the Rings is an overlooked factor. Already in Troy two LOTR stars are in key roles, and the battle scenes seek to imitate those of Jackson’s trilogy. 300 mythologizes far beyond Frank Miller’s graphic novel, adding several monsters; LOTR’s influence is at play here. LOTR’s influence was one factor in a complex process that saw ancient world movies change in the twentyfirst century. LOTR fed into an atmosphere that moved ancient world movies towards Greece, away from Rome, through promoting the appeal of a combination of epic and the fantastic.
This article analyses the eroticized power dynamics that Ovid stages in the Metamorphoses. It argues that 1) erotic desire functions in Ovid as a synonym of the desire for power; 2) that the transformations of gods can be read as a metaphor of the powerful subjecting the powerless to their will; 3) that metamorphosed humans can be regarded as notional monuments to divine power; and 4) that, by parading the self-evident fictionality of his transformation tales (including, most notably, the story of Julius Caesar’s apotheosis in Book 15), Ovid allows his readers, at least for the duration of the reading process, to experience a modicum of freedom.
„An Herrn Prof. A. Wlosok“
(2020)
In contrast to other European countries, female professors of Classical Philology have been severely underrepresented in Germany. This article wants to shed light on Antonie Wlosok (1930–2013), the first or second woman to hold a Chair of Classical Philology in Germany. How can Wlosok’s work at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz be described, considering especially the very male-dominated academic world? Based on testimonials from the university archives and selected publications, this essay aims to give insights to this question, highlighting current debates about women in academia.
Sophocle sur Netflix
(2023)
The paper focuses on two recent occurrences of a Sophoclean drama on screen, Electra in the romantical movie Marriage Story, and Philoctetes in an episode of the mainstream medical series New Amsterdam, both productions currently available on the popular streaming service Netflix. The case studies explore the mechanisms of the use of these dramas and their significance in both productions, showing that they are partly used for their “classical” authority, are deeply integrated within the scenarios, and help to design the narratives, the characters and their (social and personal) relationships.
Resurrecting the Argo
(2023)
This paper analyses the relationship between the figure of the Argo (ship and character) and the supernatural in the mythic fantasy of Robert Holdstock’s Merlin Codex. It shows how Holdstock’s re-writing of the Argonautica draws on various versions from the Argonautic tradition, including Euripides’ Medea, Apollonius, Valerius Flaccus, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Treece and the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts. It sets Holdstock’s Argo alongside other representations, as divine herself, possessed by divinity, and a channel of communication with the divine, and in the context of Holdstock’s previous work, particularly Mythago Wood, Lavondyss and Merlin’s Wood. The paper argues that Holdstock uses the Argo as a reflection of myth itself, a version of the forest in Mythago Wood, as well as a metapoetic image for the challenges and complexities of adapting a well-known story, bringing multiple mythological traditions (Arthurian, Finnish and Argonautic) together. It reflects on Holdstock’s relationship to the ancient genres of epic and tragedy, as well as Argo as plot facilitator and mechanism of transformation and transition. Holdstock’s relationship with ancient literature is richer and deeper than previously acknowledged; his self-conscious plays reveal a deep understanding of the polymorphous nature of mythical traditions.