Reference works

Hornblower et al. 2012 has significant entries on reception, translation, literary theory, and classical studies (although not on transmission, which has to be approached via the entries on libraries and books). There is useful material in Smith 1984, Briggs 1994, Speake 2000, B. Harrison 2003–, and Todd 2004.

Journals

An increasing number of classical and literary journals publishes articles on various aspects of classical reception studies. Of those that focus specifically on reception, the most useful include The International Journal of the Classical Tradition (which publishes in English, German, and French), Akroterion (essential for study of reception in South Africa), Arethusa, Arion, Classical and Modern Literature, Classical Receptions Journal, Didaskalia (an electronic journal covering reception of Greek and Roman drama), Eirene (which draws on research in central and eastern Europe as well as the West), Humanitas, Scholia, and Translation and Literature (wide-ranging and frequently with articles and reviews on classical texts and their translation and reception). Bryn Mawr Classical Review is a useful online source for reviews of published work. Also relevant are a number of theatre research journals, such as PAJ: A Journal of the Performing Arts, Theatre Journal, and Theatre Research International. For an annotated list of journals which publish research on the reception of Greek drama, consult Hazel 2001. Syllologos, the journal of the Herodotus Helpline (https://herodotushelpline.org), publishes studies of Herodotus’ work and its later receptions. Finally, the electronic journal Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies (https://www5.open.ac.uk/arts/research/pvcrs) includes articles, interviews, and reviews.

Translation and language

The best introduction to translation studies is Bassnett 2014, which contains lucid explanation of theoretical and practical issues, and comments on classical texts and their translation and reception histories. Baker 2022 problematizes the field in ways that are useful for classical reception analysis. There are chapters on theoretical and generic approaches and on translations of Greek and Latin authors in France 2000. This indispensable volume also includes detailed bibliographies on each topic discussed, together with a more general list of further reading. Particularly useful readers include Robinson 2002, which has lengthy excerpts from ancient authors, and Venuti 2021, which focuses on modern approaches. Publications which include substantial treatments of classical material are Frank et al. 2004–11 and France and Gillespie 2005–10. For broader interpretations of literary translations and adaptations, see Steiner 1992, Hardwick 2000b (which considers works which move classical texts and referents across boundaries of culture and literary tradition), and Sherlock 1998 (which discusses mythological and theatrical influences on translation). Translators of Greek and Latin texts increasingly include prefaces setting out their approach. Particularly valuable examples are Emily Wilson's translator's notes to her translations into English of The Odyssey (2017) and The Iliad (2023), and Whitaker 2003 and 2012. Alonzi 2023 uses translation as a metaphorical tool to probe process and trajectory in historiography and scholarship. Falconer et al. forthcoming provides a critical analysis of Seamus Heaney's translation of Book 6 of Virgil's Aeneid, while Armstrong and Lianeri forthcoming a and b examine the relationship between global classics, translation, and reception.

There is an essay on the influence of the Latin language by Rebecca Posner, ‘Language’, in Jenkyns 1992. However, in order to study the impact of Greek and Roman works on other languages via translation, and the impact of the translations on understanding of the Greek and Roman sources, it is necessary to range more widely. The problems and opportunities in reading classical texts in translations in which some words are left in the original are discussed in Parker 2001. McLure 2000 offers some important methodological pointers and suggests issues for debate, with passing attention to some classical referents. Bery and Murray 2000 contains provocative studies of diaspora, hybridity, and African modernism which impinge on, but do not directly discuss, classical receptions. Talib 2002 discusses how the English language has contended with and been shaped by other languages in postcolonial contexts, and therefore informs study of important areas of classical reception. Ngugi wa Thiong'o 2012 contains the text of his Welleck Library Lectures, with reflections on language, power, translation, and agency. Bromberg 2021 makes translation a major thread in the field of global classics.

Anthologies, companions, handbooks, and series

Comparative use of anthologies is a good way of tracking changes in the popularity of and the significance attributed to classical material, especially poetry. Anthologies of classical poetry, arranged chronologically or by ‘period’, ‘movement’, or individual author provide useful interfaces and allow study of patterns of excerpting, as well as of selection of individual authors and poems. A good starting point is Poole and Maule 1995. For study of individual authors, the Penguin Classics series includes volumes on Homer (Steiner 1996), Virgil (Gransden 1996), Horace (Carne-Ross and Haynes 1996), Ovid (Martin 1998), Martial (Sullivan and Boyle 1996) and Seneca (Share 1998). Also important for study of classical receptions are Griffiths and Reynolds 1999 and Tambakaki 2023. Silva et al. 2022 presents English-language scholarship on classical receptions in Portuguese and Brazilian poetry. Hardwick et al. 2024a and b set out a new style of commentary for analysing classical receptions in poetry (Oxford Classical Reception Commentaries).

Larger contextual studies are facilitated by Deane 1992, with an introductory essay and a significant number of classical adaptations from Early and Middle Irish literature to the present day. O'Higgins 2017 and Torrance and O'Rourke 2020 have enhanced the links between classical reception and Irish studies. The Cambridge Companions series includes volumes on Greek tragedy (Easterling 1997), Virgil (Martindale 1997), Ovid (Hardie 2002) and Homer (Fowler 2004), as well as Companions to modern authors who use classical material. There are interesting differences in selection and arrangement of the treatment of reception in each of these. The Greek tragedy and Ovid volumes each include substantial chapters on reception (six for Ovid, four for tragedy) and these are placed in a separate section at the end. The Virgil volume starts with a section of seven chapters on ‘Translation and Reception’ and puts study of content and form in a section at the end of the book. The Homer Companion includes discussion of the problems involved in making judgements about very recent receptions. Reception issues are increasingly included as a strand in survey studies of individual poets or of classical culture: see the important but tantalizingly brief discussion of ‘classic’ status and broader aspects of reception in Hardie 1998: 3–4 and the chapter on reception in Bispham et al. 2004. Wiley-Blackwell has published a series of Companions to aspects of Greek and Roman antiquity, including Kallendorf 2007 and Hardwick and Stray 2008. Lee and Morley 2015 contains essays on the impact and interpretation of Thucydides in historiography, intellectual history international relations, and politics.

A number of academic publishers have developed series focused on classical receptions. These include Bloomsbury Academic (Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception, Imagines [which covers visual and performing arts], Classical Diasporas, and Neo-Latin); Brill's Companions; Cambridge University Press (Classics after Antiquity); and Oxford University Press (Classical Presences, Interventions, Oxford Classical Reception Commentaries, and Classics in Theory). Trends in Classics has developed a series titled Scholarship in the Making (published by De Gruyter), which assesses the contributions of individuals and lines of thought in classical scholarship.

Useful online databases and bibliographies may be found at https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com. This is an ongoing resource which contains short bibliographies on particular themes, such as Lianeri 2019 on translation and classical reception. Databases of productions of Greek drama include the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk); Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English, from c.1970 to 2005 (https://www5.open.ac.uk/arts/research/greek-plays), which includes critical articles on the use of paramaterial; the Eumenides project (https://eumenides.ouc.ac.cy) covering Greek drama and poetry; and Pharos (https://pharos.vassarspaces.net), which documents and critiques the appropriation of classical material by hate groups.

History of scholarship

The brief discussion of the classical tradition in Chapter 1 of this Survey focused on the distinction between the concerns of the classical tradition with largely chronological and mono-cultural ‘influences’ and the broader intertextual and interdisciplinary emphases of reception studies. The specific concerns of research on the history of the classical tradition and in particular the shifts in its approaches and paradigms are also rewarding areas for further reading. The Preface to Jenkyns 1992 recognizes these changes and distinguishes between the approach adopted in Livingstone 1921 (and its companion volume, Bailey 1923) and those thought appropriate in Finley 1981 and its companion (Jenkyns 1992). Jenkyns’ emphasis was on ‘the range and diversity of the Roman inheritance’ rather than on a general survey of Roman history or culture, and he included as contributors alongside classicists those whose expertise was primarily in the history or literature of later times. This indicates a move towards exchange of ideas derived from different approaches (in terms both of theory and of discipline).

The trend identified by Jenkyns was already evident in collections such as Clarke 1989, which included essays addressing issues of authenticity, Hebraic and Hellenic cultural approaches, and the appropriation of Hellenism by the Victorian ruling class. In the collected essays prepared for a British Academy project (Wiseman 2002), the spotlight turned to a more self-reflexive examination of the diversity and changes in the subject matter and working methods of classical scholarship, including the classical tradition.

Some of these trends, although by no means all, had been anticipated by Gilbert Highet in his famous work The Classical Tradition (Highet 1949). He included chapters on a variety of contemporary approaches and criticized classicists for narrowing the scope of classical work by excluding popular culture and its interfaces with classical texts. His work has been criticized for its emphasis on the unity of Greek and Roman culture and for its dismissive attitude to the loss of ‘civilization’ in what he called the Dark Ages, but he did provide an overarching chronological framework and explore the significance of successive phases and paradigms in classical influence. Highet also recognized the importance of interaction with other features of the receiving contexts, and considered the role of classical scholarship in the transmission, criticism, and interpretation of classical texts. He was a vigorous critic of what he regarded as deficiencies in translations by professional scholars, and castigated bad teaching (see further in Ball 2012). Finally, Highet had a touching, if misplaced, faith in the capacity of classical culture to save the world from ‘the repeated attacks of materialism and barbarism’ (Highet 1949: 500). Setting aside the arguments about the validity of his selections and judgements, Highet's work is an important document in the history of classical scholarship and needs to be revisited as a comparison with the very different approaches to cultural history which are now to be seen in work influenced by anthropological approaches (for example, in Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988) or by cultural theorists (for example, Eagleton 2003).

Other relevant works are more directly concerned with the history and sociology of scholarship. Of these, the most significant in recent years include Flashar 1995 and Stray 1998 and 2018. Unfortunately, most of the essays in Flashar's volume have not yet been translated from the German. However, there is a detailed review essay, with extensive further bibliography by Lloyd-Jones (1998). Lloyd-Jones documented the major studies which have been made of the work and influence of classical scholars such as Wilamowitz, Jaeger, Schadewaldt, Reinhardt, and Fraenkel, as well as studies of the relationships between German and American scholarship in the twentieth century. He followed Arnoldo Momigliano in cautioning against over-reliance on the biography of classical scholars as opposed to systematic re-evaluation of their work and its impact (cf. Momigliano 1982).

Attention both to personal histories and to their relationship with the ideologies of scholarship has emerged in a recent offshoot of the history of scholarship in which the perspectives of individual scholars are recognized as a shaping force in their work, and by extension in reception studies. A collection of essays on this topic is Hallet and van Nortwick 1997. The new Trends in Classics series ‘Scholarship in the Making’ published a volume of collected essays in honour of Christopher Stray: S. Harrison and Pelling 2021. Kraus and Stray 2016 ushered in a sharpened interest in the relationship between the history of scholarship, commentaries, and classical receptions, while De Pourcq et al. 2020 is a good starting point for reviewing ongoing debates about theory and methods. Hardwick and Harrison 2013 reflects on the cultural politics of classical reception. The Postclassicisms Collective 2020 presents critical reflections on key themes in classical scholarship, and identifies some future trends.

Receptions of drama in languages other than English

Reception of ancient drama is at the centre of international work in both research and practice. In order to identify national and cultural trends and set them in context, a good deal of comparative work is necessary. A major study which considers Greek drama from early modern staging of Greek tragedy (Oedipus the King in Venice in 1585) until almost the present day is Flashar 1991, which contains substantial listings of productions as well as chapters analysing the interaction of Greek drama with German cultural consciousness. Most recently, members of the European Network of Research and Documentation of Greek Drama have produced a number of studies. These range from listings of productions in all languages from 1460 to the present, collected by the Oxford Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk), to the database of late twentieth-century productions published electronically by the Open University research project on the Reception of the Texts and Images of Ancient Greece in modern drama and poetry (https://www5.open.ac.uk/arts/research/greek-plays). A collective publication of the European Network is Mavromoustakos 1999. This contains articles in Greek, English, and French covering research in most European countries. An extensively illustrated work in Greek and English is Mercouris 1998. Produced in conjunction with an international exhibition, this covers productions in Greece, Cyprus, Crete, Spain, Italy, and Bulgaria.

Research in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is documented in English in the Theatralia special issue of Eirene (2001); this important issue also includes many illustrations. The Centro de Linguas e Culturas at the University of Aveiro in Portugal publishes the proceedings of its research conferences, mainly in French, Portuguese, and Spanish, as Agora Supplements (Morais 2001; Brasete 2001). Fradinger 2023 signals Latin America as a growth area in studies of receptions of drama, and a companion volume of translations is forthcoming. Volumes written in English but covering an international range of productions include Patsalidis and Sakellaridou 1999, Hardwick et al. 2000, and Bosher et al. 2015. There are also important English-language studies of reception of drama in the USA that include reference to some international and foreign-language productions, notably A. Green 1994 and Hartigan 1995. These are complemented by Powers 2018. The content of Mee and Foley 2011 reflects its title (Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage). Yaari 2018 discusses tragedy in the light of interactions between Hellenic and Jewish cultures and theatrical traditions. Donizeau et al. 2024 discusses modern adaptations of Greek tragedy in the Middle East and North Africa.