{"title":"Correction to: Placing ‘moderns’ in a ‘classic’ series: the case of J. M. Dent’s Everyman’s Library","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad017","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134908419","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}
Abstract This article analyses the remarkable translation of Aesop’s Fables produced by the Chinese literatus-turned-cultural-impresario Lin Shu [林紓; 1852–1924] at the turn of the twentieth century. Collaborating with colleagues proficient in English, which he himself was not, Lin translated the Fables into elegant Classical Chinese. This article examines the preface to the translation, which uses Aesop’s status as an enduring classical figure in Western education to argue for the continuing relevance of Classical Chinese in newly constituted school curricula. More importantly though, this article probes at the voluminous epimythia Lin composed for most of the fables in the collection. Written immediately after the humiliating Boxer Protocol, these present a feisty critique of Western imperialism in China. They range in topic from China’s lack of cultural self-confidence to comparative reflection on the status of enslaved Africans in the antebellum USA. A confident and wilful reader of texts, in Lin’s hands the Fables become a foil for razor-edged polemic. His translation is surely one of the most culturally significant in the Fables’ long and murky textual history, and represents an overlooked monument of classical reception in an East Asia teetering on the violent edge of modernity.
{"title":"‘The words of a nation worn down by cares’: classical wisdom and modern crisis in Lin Shu’s <i>Aesop’s Fables</i>","authors":"Benjamin Porteous","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses the remarkable translation of Aesop’s Fables produced by the Chinese literatus-turned-cultural-impresario Lin Shu [林紓; 1852–1924] at the turn of the twentieth century. Collaborating with colleagues proficient in English, which he himself was not, Lin translated the Fables into elegant Classical Chinese. This article examines the preface to the translation, which uses Aesop’s status as an enduring classical figure in Western education to argue for the continuing relevance of Classical Chinese in newly constituted school curricula. More importantly though, this article probes at the voluminous epimythia Lin composed for most of the fables in the collection. Written immediately after the humiliating Boxer Protocol, these present a feisty critique of Western imperialism in China. They range in topic from China’s lack of cultural self-confidence to comparative reflection on the status of enslaved Africans in the antebellum USA. A confident and wilful reader of texts, in Lin’s hands the Fables become a foil for razor-edged polemic. His translation is surely one of the most culturally significant in the Fables’ long and murky textual history, and represents an overlooked monument of classical reception in an East Asia teetering on the violent edge of modernity.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135967692","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}
Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier’s design for the Temple of Providence in Warsaw, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s capital, is the earliest known evidence of European fascination with the Parthenon as a model for modern commemorative architecture. However, it was this proposal’s specific political context which makes it especially interesting from the perspective of classical reception studies. It was an artistic reaction of an aristocratic philhellene to the destructive tendencies of the French Revolution on the eve of the Bourbon monarchy’s abolition. The choice of the Parthenon was expressive of Choiseul-Gouffier’s admiration for the idealized heritage of ancient aristocratic republicanism and its alleged relevance to the political culture of the modern ‘republic’ of Poland-Lithuania.
Auguste de Choiseul Goufier为波兰立陶宛联邦首都华沙普罗维登斯神庙设计的作品，是已知的最早证据，表明欧洲人对帕特农神庙着迷，认为它是现代纪念建筑的典范。然而，正是这一提议的具体政治背景使其从古典接受研究的角度来看特别有趣。这是贵族贵族对波旁王朝废除前夕法国大革命破坏性倾向的艺术反应。帕台农神庙的选择表达了Choiseul Goufier对古代贵族共和主义理想化遗产的钦佩，以及其与波兰-立陶宛现代“共和国”政治文化的相关性。
{"title":"Commemorative Architecture, Periclean Athens and the Polish Revolution of 1791: Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier’s Parthenon-Inspired Temple for Warsaw","authors":"Mikołaj Getka-Kenig","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier’s design for the Temple of Providence in Warsaw, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s capital, is the earliest known evidence of European fascination with the Parthenon as a model for modern commemorative architecture. However, it was this proposal’s specific political context which makes it especially interesting from the perspective of classical reception studies. It was an artistic reaction of an aristocratic philhellene to the destructive tendencies of the French Revolution on the eve of the Bourbon monarchy’s abolition. The choice of the Parthenon was expressive of Choiseul-Gouffier’s admiration for the idealized heritage of ancient aristocratic republicanism and its alleged relevance to the political culture of the modern ‘republic’ of Poland-Lithuania.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42517475","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 examines the classicisms of the influential Jamaican writer, Claude McKay. Taking as paradigmatic an allusion to the myth of Laocoön in Banjo, it analyses McKay’s troubling of the classical notion of translatio imperii et studii throughout his work. Consistently rejecting imperium, McKay nevertheless embraced classical studium as a potential source of racial uplift and new creative expression. He resists both hegemonic Euro-American classicisms which appropriated Greco-Roman antiquity to authorize their imperial projects and simplistic Afrocentric classicisms which relocated imperial fantasies in Egypt and Ethiopia. However, McKay still admired the cultural legacies of Greco-Roman and African ancient civilizations. Freely and selectively enlisting these various, often-contradictory, classical traditions, McKay’s vagabond classicisms attacked empire, in all its forms, while reaffirming the aesthetic and social potential of decolonized and heterogeneous antiquities.
{"title":"Claude McKay’s vagabond classicisms: empire, uplift, and antiquity","authors":"Ben Gregson","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad016","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the classicisms of the influential Jamaican writer, Claude McKay. Taking as paradigmatic an allusion to the myth of Laocoön in Banjo, it analyses McKay’s troubling of the classical notion of translatio imperii et studii throughout his work. Consistently rejecting imperium, McKay nevertheless embraced classical studium as a potential source of racial uplift and new creative expression. He resists both hegemonic Euro-American classicisms which appropriated Greco-Roman antiquity to authorize their imperial projects and simplistic Afrocentric classicisms which relocated imperial fantasies in Egypt and Ethiopia. However, McKay still admired the cultural legacies of Greco-Roman and African ancient civilizations. Freely and selectively enlisting these various, often-contradictory, classical traditions, McKay’s vagabond classicisms attacked empire, in all its forms, while reaffirming the aesthetic and social potential of decolonized and heterogeneous antiquities.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49546605","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}
Abstract Sophocles’ Antigone has been the subject of numerous adaptations. Among these are two xiqu (Chinese opera) adaptations of Antigone, Hebei bangzi (Hebei clapper opera) Thebes City (2002) and jingju (Peking opera) Mingyue and Zihan (2015). This article compares these two works and the different ways that they adapt the text. The first strategy for adaptation is ‘hybridization’ in which the work is adapted and transformed according to local generic conventions and expectations, but a number of foreign elements remain. A second strategy is ‘indigenization’ in which the work is thoroughly assimilated into the local cultural form, and there are effectively no foreign elements. Both these strategies can be observed in looking at these Chinese adaptations of Antigone. After comparative discussion of the two xiqus, the article focuses on Thebes City, looking at the way that it combines the history and culture of ancient China with ancient Greece as well as the way in which it engages with Chinese culture through its depiction of ghosts. This element is singled out because it provides a mature example of hybridization at work. From discussions of these productions of Antigone, three key points emerge. The first is that adaptions of Greek drama in xiqu privilege creativity and performability over fidelity to an original text. The second is that when operatic conventions of xiqu are observed, the work is more likely to succeed. This seems to be the case with the tremendous local success of Thebes City. Thirdly, it is worth observing that the hybridized mode which is adopted in Thebes City is the most difficult to succeed with as it requires balancing diverse elements. Thebes City’s admirable success lies in its ability to achieve ‘harmony in diversity’.
{"title":"Sophocles’ <i>Antigone</i> and Chinese Opera (<i>xiqu</i>): a discussion of hybridized and indigenized adaptations","authors":"Chen Rongnyu, Li Huiqin","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Sophocles’ Antigone has been the subject of numerous adaptations. Among these are two xiqu (Chinese opera) adaptations of Antigone, Hebei bangzi (Hebei clapper opera) Thebes City (2002) and jingju (Peking opera) Mingyue and Zihan (2015). This article compares these two works and the different ways that they adapt the text. The first strategy for adaptation is ‘hybridization’ in which the work is adapted and transformed according to local generic conventions and expectations, but a number of foreign elements remain. A second strategy is ‘indigenization’ in which the work is thoroughly assimilated into the local cultural form, and there are effectively no foreign elements. Both these strategies can be observed in looking at these Chinese adaptations of Antigone. After comparative discussion of the two xiqus, the article focuses on Thebes City, looking at the way that it combines the history and culture of ancient China with ancient Greece as well as the way in which it engages with Chinese culture through its depiction of ghosts. This element is singled out because it provides a mature example of hybridization at work. From discussions of these productions of Antigone, three key points emerge. The first is that adaptions of Greek drama in xiqu privilege creativity and performability over fidelity to an original text. The second is that when operatic conventions of xiqu are observed, the work is more likely to succeed. This seems to be the case with the tremendous local success of Thebes City. Thirdly, it is worth observing that the hybridized mode which is adopted in Thebes City is the most difficult to succeed with as it requires balancing diverse elements. Thebes City’s admirable success lies in its ability to achieve ‘harmony in diversity’.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135016581","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}
The exhibition of the naked and near-naked bodies of enslaved people is a notable feature in cinematic representation of Rome. This article analyses the way in which these bodies are framed erotically and what an examination of this feature can tell us about the cinematic reception of ancient Rome. In this article, particular attention is paid to the erotization of the body of the slave within peplum films. Looking at these bodies allows us to see the gender dynamics at play in these films as well as the way in which cinema figures Rome as place of liberation and sexual licence. It also allows us to interrogate the power dynamics that operate in such systems of representation and explore the way that such films collocate regimes of pleasures with systems of domination and submission.
{"title":"Masters of desire: the (re)erotization of the slave’s body in cinematic and television representations of ancient Rome","authors":"L. Unceta Gómez","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The exhibition of the naked and near-naked bodies of enslaved people is a notable feature in cinematic representation of Rome. This article analyses the way in which these bodies are framed erotically and what an examination of this feature can tell us about the cinematic reception of ancient Rome. In this article, particular attention is paid to the erotization of the body of the slave within peplum films. Looking at these bodies allows us to see the gender dynamics at play in these films as well as the way in which cinema figures Rome as place of liberation and sexual licence. It also allows us to interrogate the power dynamics that operate in such systems of representation and explore the way that such films collocate regimes of pleasures with systems of domination and submission.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45195697","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 ‘Iphigenia says no’, Anghelaki-Rooke provides a critique of the myth of Iphigenia’s sacrifice that gives the story a distinctively feminine poetic voice designed to subvert the unchallenged authority of myth. Her poem is an impassioned plea for a feminist poetics that gives women a voice and agency, rejecting any form of control or authority over the female mind and body. The choice of Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis and an emphasis on the chorus are central to the anti-war message of the poem, but other contextual factors also frame the poet’s choice of myth and determine the direction of her rewriting: these are a feminist anti-war stance that is distinct from the anti-war stance of male poets like Seferis; the peace movements of the Cold War period and their political reverberations in Greece in the early 1960s; archaeological excavations and the renewed interest in the play that these inspired; classical reworkings in popular films of the years immediately prior to the writing of the poem; and the national curriculum and its underlying ideology.
{"title":"A Feminist Act of Defiance: ‘Iphigenia says no’ by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke","authors":"Liana Giannakopoulou","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In ‘Iphigenia says no’, Anghelaki-Rooke provides a critique of the myth of Iphigenia’s sacrifice that gives the story a distinctively feminine poetic voice designed to subvert the unchallenged authority of myth. Her poem is an impassioned plea for a feminist poetics that gives women a voice and agency, rejecting any form of control or authority over the female mind and body. The choice of Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis and an emphasis on the chorus are central to the anti-war message of the poem, but other contextual factors also frame the poet’s choice of myth and determine the direction of her rewriting: these are a feminist anti-war stance that is distinct from the anti-war stance of male poets like Seferis; the peace movements of the Cold War period and their political reverberations in Greece in the early 1960s; archaeological excavations and the renewed interest in the play that these inspired; classical reworkings in popular films of the years immediately prior to the writing of the poem; and the national curriculum and its underlying ideology.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46434478","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 study offers a reappraisal of Everyman’s Library, the mass-market series of world 'classics' launched by the British publisher J. M. Dent & Sons in 1906. The collection’s reliance on the 1842 and 1911 Copyright Acts has fostered a misconception within literary studies: namely, that reprint series were ‘impervious to novelty’. Conversely, I argue that ‘liveliness’ and ‘timeliness’—being in line with current trends and (re)printed at the right moment—became fundamental ‘classic’ attributes during the interwar years. Everyman advanced a rhetoric of the ‘new’ besides a rhetoric of the ‘old’, based on the idea that what consecrated both terms was only the passage of time, a gaze from the future. When Dent’s series started featuring more contemporaneous authors, the American Modern Library (1917), formally considered its modern(ist) alter ego, began including more ‘classic’ literature instead. Both series exploited the tension between ancients and moderns as profitable: Confucius and Horace were advertised as ‘the classics which are still modern: the modern works which have become classics’. Exploring the blurry boundaries between ‘classic’ and ‘modern’ as marketing categories, this paper draws on the J. M. Dent & Sons Records, Chapel Hill to bridge the gap between modernism and mass production.
这项研究提供了对Everyman ' s Library的重新评价，这是英国出版商J. M. Dent & Sons于1906年推出的面向大众市场的世界“经典”系列。该文集依赖于1842年和1911年的版权法，这在文学研究中产生了一种误解:即，再版系列“不受新颖性的影响”。相反，我认为“活泼”和“及时性”——符合当前趋势并在合适的时机(重新)印刷——在两次世界大战期间成为了基本的“经典”属性。除了“旧”的修辞之外，每个人都提出了一种“新”的修辞，基于这样一种观念，即使这两个术语神圣化的只是时间的流逝，是对未来的凝视。当邓特的系列开始以更多同时代作家为特色时，美国现代图书馆(1917)，正式被认为是其现代(列表)的另一个自我，开始包括更多的“经典”文学作品。这两个系列都利用了古今之间的紧张关系，并从中获利:孔子和贺拉斯被宣传为“仍然是现代的经典，现代的作品已经成为经典”。探索“经典”和“现代”作为营销类别之间的模糊界限，本文借鉴了J. M. Dent & Sons Records, Chapel Hill，以弥合现代主义和大规模生产之间的差距。
{"title":"Placing ‘moderns’ in a ‘classic’ series: the case of J. M. Dent’s Everyman’s Library","authors":"Caterina Domeneghini","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study offers a reappraisal of Everyman’s Library, the mass-market series of world 'classics' launched by the British publisher J. M. Dent & Sons in 1906. The collection’s reliance on the 1842 and 1911 Copyright Acts has fostered a misconception within literary studies: namely, that reprint series were ‘impervious to novelty’. Conversely, I argue that ‘liveliness’ and ‘timeliness’—being in line with current trends and (re)printed at the right moment—became fundamental ‘classic’ attributes during the interwar years. Everyman advanced a rhetoric of the ‘new’ besides a rhetoric of the ‘old’, based on the idea that what consecrated both terms was only the passage of time, a gaze from the future. When Dent’s series started featuring more contemporaneous authors, the American Modern Library (1917), formally considered its modern(ist) alter ego, began including more ‘classic’ literature instead. Both series exploited the tension between ancients and moderns as profitable: Confucius and Horace were advertised as ‘the classics which are still modern: the modern works which have become classics’. Exploring the blurry boundaries between ‘classic’ and ‘modern’ as marketing categories, this paper draws on the J. M. Dent & Sons Records, Chapel Hill to bridge the gap between modernism and mass production.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44527992","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}
The article is dedicated to meaning variations and transformations in the terms meteorology and meteor from antiquity to the present. It is argued that the use of the word meteor as a noun denoting a specific meteorological phenomenon only became established in the Renaissance, as the Greek adjective μετέωρος ‘raised, aloft’ in the substantivized neuter form was originally used in the plural to denote objects in the high in a very general way and in the singular to denote an area, not an object. In the Middle Ages, in contrast, it was the Latin terms impressio or passio that were generally employed to denote meteorological phenomena. An emphasis is also placed on how the term meteorology was problematic in a way from the very beginning, rather than only today, when the term meteor has become more astronomical than meteorological in its first meaning, and efforts have been made to replace the name of the science with completely different terms.
{"title":"‘Meteorology’ and ‘meteors’ across centuries: a short history of two problematic terms","authors":"Matěj Novotný, B. Kocánová, M. Müller","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article is dedicated to meaning variations and transformations in the terms meteorology and meteor from antiquity to the present. It is argued that the use of the word meteor as a noun denoting a specific meteorological phenomenon only became established in the Renaissance, as the Greek adjective μετέωρος ‘raised, aloft’ in the substantivized neuter form was originally used in the plural to denote objects in the high in a very general way and in the singular to denote an area, not an object. In the Middle Ages, in contrast, it was the Latin terms impressio or passio that were generally employed to denote meteorological phenomena. An emphasis is also placed on how the term meteorology was problematic in a way from the very beginning, rather than only today, when the term meteor has become more astronomical than meteorological in its first meaning, and efforts have been made to replace the name of the science with completely different terms.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45455490","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}
Scholars have recognized for some time that Shakespeare’s early comedies drew much from Plautine comedy. Although these points of influence have long been established, discussion of Plautus’ influence on Shakespeare has not often moved beyond them to broader questions of whether he had any influence over Shakespeare’s tragedies, over his later career in general, or over more specific techniques of playwriting, like characterization or metrical composition. This article takes up these latter two issues. I argue that Shakespeare’s use of metrical variation in his most sympathetic characters’ soliloquies correlates closely with Plautus’ practice of using polymetric songs to introduce his most sympathetic characters. As examples, I analyse Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Plautus’ Trinummus. Though no conclusive evidence can be found to prove that Shakespeare digested Plautus’ metrics in addition to his comic plots, the article suggests that Plautus’ influence on Shakespeare could run deeper than previously thought.
{"title":"Shakespeare and Plautus: exploring metrical influence","authors":"Alexander Christensen","doi":"10.1093/crj/clad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clad010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scholars have recognized for some time that Shakespeare’s early comedies drew much from Plautine comedy. Although these points of influence have long been established, discussion of Plautus’ influence on Shakespeare has not often moved beyond them to broader questions of whether he had any influence over Shakespeare’s tragedies, over his later career in general, or over more specific techniques of playwriting, like characterization or metrical composition. This article takes up these latter two issues. I argue that Shakespeare’s use of metrical variation in his most sympathetic characters’ soliloquies correlates closely with Plautus’ practice of using polymetric songs to introduce his most sympathetic characters. As examples, I analyse Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Plautus’ Trinummus. Though no conclusive evidence can be found to prove that Shakespeare digested Plautus’ metrics in addition to his comic plots, the article suggests that Plautus’ influence on Shakespeare could run deeper than previously thought.","PeriodicalId":42730,"journal":{"name":"Classical Receptions Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47353773","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}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：