Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds

by Lorna Hardwick (Editor), Carol Gillespie

Classical material was traditionally used to express colonial authority, but it was also appropriated by imperial subjects to become first a means of challenging colonialism and then a rich field for creating cultural identities that blend the old and the new. Nobel prize-winners such as Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney have rewritten classical material in their own cultural idioms while public sculpture in southern Africa draws on Greek and Roman motifs to represent histories of African resistance and liberation. These developments are explored in this collection of essays by international scholars, who debate the relationship between the culture of Greece and Rome and the changes that have followed the end of colonial empires.

Genres: Nonfiction

440 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Lorna Hardwick is professor emerita of classical studies at the Open University. She is a leading authority on classical reception studies and has published several books and articles on the subject, as well being the first editor of the Classical Receptions Journal.

Reviews

[Phillip]

Like almost all collections of essays (especially conference proceedings), this was a mixed bag. Most of the essays didn't really do anything for me, providing readings of specific plays, novels, authors' oeuvres, or buildings/monuments. The main critical/theoretical goal of many of these essays seemed to be that Classics as a discipline have some kind of connection to contemporary culture. Many of the essays, especially in the first two sections, didn't (I feel) push the boundaries of postcolonialism, Classics, or adaptation theory. I'm not sure if this is how reception studies as a sub-discipline of Classics works since I am not familiar enough with reception studies scholarship, but I found this collection underwhelming on the whole.

That being said, there were some essays I found really intriguing, and which really pushed my thinking about postcolonialism, hybridity, Classics, and adaptation. Most of these really theoretically strong essays were in the third section of the book. For instance, thinking about the continuing influence of the Roman Empire as a postal network of dispersion and reception is really interesting for me as someone who studies adaptations of Greek drama, because my next question becomes 'what about the continuing influence of Greek texts, which never received the widespread dispersal and cultural dominance of Latin and Roman texts, but nonetheless remain some of the most powerful and resonant cultural images?'

[Carrie]

There are some really interesting theoretical concepts and discussions in the third section. A stand-out for me is Ika Willis's chapter “The Empire Never Ended” (pp. 329–348) about how the Roman empire dominated culturally through the written word and what that can mean beyond the Roman context. Overall, I found this a good academic read.