In the second half of the nineteenth century, ancient sculptures of Venus became models for the ‘natural’ waistline. Drawings of the Venus de Medici or de Milo were popular in texts published by American dress reformers, who advocated for the rejection of corsets and tight-lacing. This article takes as its subject these drawings and their simultaneous signification of multiple bodies: a specific sculpture, an idealized form, the ‘natural’ form of any female torso, and the supposedly superior physicality of the ancient Greeks. It argues that the elision of these various bodies is facilitated by the treatment of ancient sculptures as ‘truth-to-nature’ representations — images that are simultaneously ideal and faithful to the form produced by nature. This understanding is encouraged by drawings of the statues, which imply the comparability of sculpture and body. In this way, the sculptures enter dress reform discourse, serving as both a faithful representative of a now-lost ancient body and a kind of visual lexicon by which living women might revive ancient aesthetic and moral perfection. As constructions of aspirational physical ideals, the sculptures and the drawings of Venus are enlisted in a developing and deeply charged visualization of white American womanhood.
{"title":"As Nature Formed It: Venus Sculptures and the ‘Natural’ Waistline in Dress Reform Discourse","authors":"H. Franks","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the second half of the nineteenth century, ancient sculptures of Venus became models for the ‘natural’ waistline. Drawings of the Venus de Medici or de Milo were popular in texts published by American dress reformers, who advocated for the rejection of corsets and tight-lacing. This article takes as its subject these drawings and their simultaneous signification of multiple bodies: a specific sculpture, an idealized form, the ‘natural’ form of any female torso, and the supposedly superior physicality of the ancient Greeks. It argues that the elision of these various bodies is facilitated by the treatment of ancient sculptures as ‘truth-to-nature’ representations — images that are simultaneously ideal and faithful to the form produced by nature. This understanding is encouraged by drawings of the statues, which imply the comparability of sculpture and body. In this way, the sculptures enter dress reform discourse, serving as both a faithful representative of a now-lost ancient body and a kind of visual lexicon by which living women might revive ancient aesthetic and moral perfection. As constructions of aspirational physical ideals, the sculptures and the drawings of Venus are enlisted in a developing and deeply charged visualization of white American womanhood.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/crj/claa015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46432899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While scholars have long noted the classical influences apparent in the style and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois, there has been little sustained discussion of the nature of these influences and their manifestations in his writings. This article seeks to correct that absence through an examination of the influence of Cicero’s Pro Archia poeta on Du Bois’s most well-known work, The Souls of Black Folk. Though Du Bois mentions many other authors in Souls, the Pro Archia is the only work of another author mentioned by name as a source for Du Bois’s thought. Extrapolating from this explicit reference to the Pro Archia as well as numerous other references to and influences by Cicero’s works throughout Du Bois’s oeuvre, I posit a two-fold influence of the Pro Archia on Souls as Du Bois draws upon the dual argument in Cicero’s work. First, Du Bois seeks to defend the civil rights of African Americans, drawing on Cicero’s argument for the legal status and citizenship rights of the poet Archias. Both Cicero and Du Bois go beyond mere legal argumentation, however, to provide a defence of the necessity of the liberal arts and a celebration of poets and their work.
{"title":"American Archias: Cicero and The Souls of Black Folk","authors":"David Withun","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While scholars have long noted the classical influences apparent in the style and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois, there has been little sustained discussion of the nature of these influences and their manifestations in his writings. This article seeks to correct that absence through an examination of the influence of Cicero’s Pro Archia poeta on Du Bois’s most well-known work, The Souls of Black Folk. Though Du Bois mentions many other authors in Souls, the Pro Archia is the only work of another author mentioned by name as a source for Du Bois’s thought. Extrapolating from this explicit reference to the Pro Archia as well as numerous other references to and influences by Cicero’s works throughout Du Bois’s oeuvre, I posit a two-fold influence of the Pro Archia on Souls as Du Bois draws upon the dual argument in Cicero’s work. First, Du Bois seeks to defend the civil rights of African Americans, drawing on Cicero’s argument for the legal status and citizenship rights of the poet Archias. Both Cicero and Du Bois go beyond mere legal argumentation, however, to provide a defence of the necessity of the liberal arts and a celebration of poets and their work.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/crj/claa016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44680211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses the first known mention of Pyrrhonian Scepticism in the English language, which occurs in Thomas Elyot’s 1540 Defence of Good Women. The article inquires into the sources of Elyot’s knowledge of Pyrrhonism and into his motivations for mentioning Pyrrhonists in a text on the social and political status of women. I conclude that, on the balance of evidence, the most likely source of Elyot’s ideas on Pyrrhonism is Galen’s De Temperamentis. Furthermore, I argue that the rejection of a straw man version of Pyrrhonism serves as a tool of authorial positioning for Elyot, and in particular as a means of reassuring his reader that the Defence is not intended ironically. Elyot chooses Pyrrhonism as a philosophical position representing bad faith arguments, and he likely does so because of the hostile treatment of Pyrrhonism in Galen’s works, and especially in De Temperamentis.
{"title":"Pyrrhonian Scepticism in Thomas Elyot's Defence of Good Women (1540)","authors":"Kosta Gligorijevic","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article discusses the first known mention of Pyrrhonian Scepticism in the English language, which occurs in Thomas Elyot’s 1540 Defence of Good Women. The article inquires into the sources of Elyot’s knowledge of Pyrrhonism and into his motivations for mentioning Pyrrhonists in a text on the social and political status of women. I conclude that, on the balance of evidence, the most likely source of Elyot’s ideas on Pyrrhonism is Galen’s De Temperamentis. Furthermore, I argue that the rejection of a straw man version of Pyrrhonism serves as a tool of authorial positioning for Elyot, and in particular as a means of reassuring his reader that the Defence is not intended ironically. Elyot chooses Pyrrhonism as a philosophical position representing bad faith arguments, and he likely does so because of the hostile treatment of Pyrrhonism in Galen’s works, and especially in De Temperamentis.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/crj/claa014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43079786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay traces a line of thought through post-Homeric receptions of Helen, taking as its primary case studies Euripides’ Helen and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Both plays feature Helen as a figure for articulating the phenomenological challenges that audiences face when viewing mimetic art on the stage. This essay argues that these profoundly metatheatrical plays use scenes of characters’ seeing the distinctive beauty of Helen to compare the power of theatrical spectacle to witnessing the supernatural.
{"title":"The Spectacle of Helen in Euripides’ Helen and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus","authors":"Dustin W. Dixon, John S. Garrison","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay traces a line of thought through post-Homeric receptions of Helen, taking as its primary case studies Euripides’ Helen and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Both plays feature Helen as a figure for articulating the phenomenological challenges that audiences face when viewing mimetic art on the stage. This essay argues that these profoundly metatheatrical plays use scenes of characters’ seeing the distinctive beauty of Helen to compare the power of theatrical spectacle to witnessing the supernatural.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/crj/claa005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42806659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent studies have pointed to the importance of Thomas Carlyle’s engagement with classical thought, especially Epicureanism and Cynicism. However, in these recent studies, Carlyle’s debts to Stoicism have received only passing attention. Previous scholars hardly considered the question at all, and those who did argued that Carlyle could never have accepted the passive withdrawal and indifference of the Stoics. By way of corrective, the current article offers a comprehensive account of Carlyle’s engagement with Stoicism, showing that he subscribed to an active interpretation of the latter that emphasized will, duty, and heroic action. Indeed, contemporaries were well aware of Carlyle’s debts to Stoicism, pointing out that his thought stood in stark contradiction to Christian doctrines of original sin. Thus, while Carlyle’s Stoicism was compatible with his hereditary Calvinism insofar as divine providence and duty were concerned, there was a significant contradiction regarding the question of sin. In this sense, Carlyle’s Stoicism made an important contribution to the ‘meliorist’ revolt against orthodox Christianity.
{"title":"Thomas Carlyle and Stoicism","authors":"Alexander Jordan","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Recent studies have pointed to the importance of Thomas Carlyle’s engagement with classical thought, especially Epicureanism and Cynicism. However, in these recent studies, Carlyle’s debts to Stoicism have received only passing attention. Previous scholars hardly considered the question at all, and those who did argued that Carlyle could never have accepted the passive withdrawal and indifference of the Stoics. By way of corrective, the current article offers a comprehensive account of Carlyle’s engagement with Stoicism, showing that he subscribed to an active interpretation of the latter that emphasized will, duty, and heroic action. Indeed, contemporaries were well aware of Carlyle’s debts to Stoicism, pointing out that his thought stood in stark contradiction to Christian doctrines of original sin. Thus, while Carlyle’s Stoicism was compatible with his hereditary Calvinism insofar as divine providence and duty were concerned, there was a significant contradiction regarding the question of sin. In this sense, Carlyle’s Stoicism made an important contribution to the ‘meliorist’ revolt against orthodox Christianity.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/crj/claa008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46521505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ravenna, the former grand capital of the late Roman and early Byzantine Empires and a popular modern UNESCO World Heritage site, is a city rarely included in major historical surveys of Italy during the Grand Tour. An exploration of period sources may reveal why: it was, for many centuries between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, a rundown parish town that was incredibly difficult to reach by conventional transportation. This article collates and deconstructs a number of Grand Tour sources in order to gain an understanding of Ravenna in the eighteenth century, and, further, an understanding of the contemporary attitudes towards post-Classical monuments and artwork. This exploration allows us to ask broader questions about Ravenna’s place on the Grand Tour. As a city with very little to offer in the way of Classical monuments, it slightly complicates our idea of classical reception on the Grand Tour and shows us how travellers navigated a place replete with late antique basilicas and Byzantine mosaics instead of marble sculptures and tombs.
{"title":"Ravenna on the Grand Tour: A View of Late Antiquity in the Eighteenth Century","authors":"B. Thomas","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Ravenna, the former grand capital of the late Roman and early Byzantine Empires and a popular modern UNESCO World Heritage site, is a city rarely included in major historical surveys of Italy during the Grand Tour. An exploration of period sources may reveal why: it was, for many centuries between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, a rundown parish town that was incredibly difficult to reach by conventional transportation. This article collates and deconstructs a number of Grand Tour sources in order to gain an understanding of Ravenna in the eighteenth century, and, further, an understanding of the contemporary attitudes towards post-Classical monuments and artwork. This exploration allows us to ask broader questions about Ravenna’s place on the Grand Tour. As a city with very little to offer in the way of Classical monuments, it slightly complicates our idea of classical reception on the Grand Tour and shows us how travellers navigated a place replete with late antique basilicas and Byzantine mosaics instead of marble sculptures and tombs.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/crj/claa011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48667658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1769, Johann Gottfried Herder describes a private reading experience of a remarkably paradoxical nature. He tells us that he can only read ‘his’ Homer properly when he hears Homer singing Greek, while silently reading and translating by means of his German thoughts and mother tongue. Herder’s performative reading is anchored in what I call aural philology, a method innovative in its emphasis on the aural dimension in reconstructively imagining historical epochs. It is one which demarcates cultural difference through practices of listening and their remediation into reading. The problem, for Herder, is how to constitute the particularity of the German people even in affective acts of reading that, however momentarily, suspend cultural differentiation through effects of presence. I distinguish Herder’s philology from Vico and others who emphasized the oral origins of the Homeric epic, along with recent theories of philology as an affective, aurally mediated process. The article is an alternative view on the role of media in enlightenment theories of literature and culture separate from Friedrich Kittler’s Discourse Networks 1800/1900. Herder’s aural philology identifies a moment in the history of aurality and cultural difference, one that does not move fixedly towards modernity.
1769年,Johann Gottfried Herder描述了一次非常矛盾的私人阅读体验。他告诉我们,只有当他听到荷马唱希腊语时,他才能正确地阅读“他的”荷马,同时用他的德语思想和母语默默地阅读和翻译。赫尔德的表演性阅读植根于我所说的听觉语言学,这是一种在重建想象历史时代时强调听觉维度的创新方法。它通过听力练习和对阅读的修正来划分文化差异。对赫尔德来说,问题是如何构成德国人的特殊性,即使是在阅读的情感行为中,也会通过存在的影响暂时中止文化差异。我将赫尔德的语文学与维科和其他人区分开来,维科和他们强调荷马史诗的口头起源,以及最近关于语文学作为一种情感、听觉中介过程的理论。本文是从弗里德里希·基特勒的《1800/1900话语网络》中分离出来的关于媒介在文学和文化启蒙理论中的作用的另一种观点。赫尔德的听觉语言学在听觉和文化差异的历史上确定了一个时刻,一个不会固定地走向现代的时刻。
{"title":"Aural philology: Herder hears Homer singing","authors":"Tanvi Solanki","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In 1769, Johann Gottfried Herder describes a private reading experience of a remarkably paradoxical nature. He tells us that he can only read ‘his’ Homer properly when he hears Homer singing Greek, while silently reading and translating by means of his German thoughts and mother tongue. Herder’s performative reading is anchored in what I call aural philology, a method innovative in its emphasis on the aural dimension in reconstructively imagining historical epochs. It is one which demarcates cultural difference through practices of listening and their remediation into reading. The problem, for Herder, is how to constitute the particularity of the German people even in affective acts of reading that, however momentarily, suspend cultural differentiation through effects of presence. I distinguish Herder’s philology from Vico and others who emphasized the oral origins of the Homeric epic, along with recent theories of philology as an affective, aurally mediated process. The article is an alternative view on the role of media in enlightenment theories of literature and culture separate from Friedrich Kittler’s Discourse Networks 1800/1900. Herder’s aural philology identifies a moment in the history of aurality and cultural difference, one that does not move fixedly towards modernity.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":"12 1","pages":"401-424"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/crj/claa007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49090839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1981, the Spanish playwright Luis Riaza published the play Medea es un buen chico (Medea is a Good Boy). In it, two male actors perform the main roles of Medea and the Nurse, who comment, with references to other fictional love stories, on the relationship between Medea and Jason. When Jason fails to arrive, the fiction is dismantled, revealing Medea’s identity as Jason’s rejected homosexual lover. Medea es un buen chico mixes elements of performativity, meta-theatricality, and myth in order to explore the limits of gender, sexuality, and the perceived social roles and norms they entail. This article explores how Riaza theatrically reflects on the social performativity of gender through the tragic character and story of Medea, her performance and subversion of her own gendered self, and her eventual rejection and social displacement.
{"title":"Medea is a Good Boy: performing, subverting, and unmasking tragic gender","authors":"Oliver Baldwin","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa012","url":null,"abstract":"In 1981, the Spanish playwright Luis Riaza published the play Medea es un buen chico (Medea is a Good Boy). In it, two male actors perform the main roles of Medea and the Nurse, who comment, with references to other fictional love stories, on the relationship between Medea and Jason. When Jason fails to arrive, the fiction is dismantled, revealing Medea’s identity as Jason’s rejected homosexual lover. Medea es un buen chico mixes elements of performativity, meta-theatricality, and myth in order to explore the limits of gender, sexuality, and the perceived social roles and norms they entail. This article explores how Riaza theatrically reflects on the social performativity of gender through the tragic character and story of Medea, her performance and subversion of her own gendered self, and her eventual rejection and social displacement.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":"12 1","pages":"486-501"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/crj/claa012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44254894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the twentieth century, ancient theatres acquired symbolic values through their excavation, restoration, and cultural reuse. While elsewhere in the Mediterranean comparable cases show an early and powerful engagement of a populace with their antiquities, in Spain national ideals did not automatically engage with classical culture. In the case of the Roman theatre of Merida, cultural and historical realities dictated a series of cultural events that repeatedly concerned collective memory. In addition to the main sequence of the unique occasions surrounding the 1933 and 1934 performances at the theatre, various other agencies had systematically focused on its exploitation from the 1910s. These initiatives were endorsed by numerous formal visits and cultural events that took place in the theatre, from as early as 1914. Through successive spectacles staged at the theatre, a cultural tradition emerged, while political agendas occasionally exploited its increasing popularity, right up to the Spanish Civil War.
{"title":"Collective memory and Spanish cultural politics: the revival of the Roman theatre of Merida (1910–35)","authors":"Vasileios Balaskas","doi":"10.1093/crj/claa004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/claa004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the twentieth century, ancient theatres acquired symbolic values through their excavation, restoration, and cultural reuse. While elsewhere in the Mediterranean comparable cases show an early and powerful engagement of a populace with their antiquities, in Spain national ideals did not automatically engage with classical culture. In the case of the Roman theatre of Merida, cultural and historical realities dictated a series of cultural events that repeatedly concerned collective memory. In addition to the main sequence of the unique occasions surrounding the 1933 and 1934 performances at the theatre, various other agencies had systematically focused on its exploitation from the 1910s. These initiatives were endorsed by numerous formal visits and cultural events that took place in the theatre, from as early as 1914. Through successive spectacles staged at the theatre, a cultural tradition emerged, while political agendas occasionally exploited its increasing popularity, right up to the Spanish Civil War.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":"12 1","pages":"470-485"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47300489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}