Classics in the Modern World

Abstract

Abstract This book investigates the notion of a ‘democratic turn’, a perspective applied to the ways in which Greek and Roman ideas, texts, and images have been absorbed, reworked, and communicated in the wider world in the modern period and have attracted the interest of recent research. The questions raised by the concept are historical and philosophical as well as artistic and political and they have been intensified (but not invented) by current scholarship on classical receptions. Research has tracked ways in which both ancient and newer works have become better known among less privileged groups, with the modern receptions sometimes acting as an introduction to the ancient. The range of media that use classical material has been extended (e.g. to visual arts as well as literature), often enabling mass consumption, and the independent status and value of new works has been increasingly accepted as providing a commentary on the ancient. Theoretical perspectives on reader and spectator response have widened the constituencies that are perceived to be involved in various phases of the construction of meanings and there have been extensive studies of the use of ancient material as a basis for counter-discourse or resistance in situations of political and cultural oppression (e.g. in the matter of gender). All these phenomena raise questions about the relationship between critical approaches in scholarship and cultural and political practices outside academia.

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