Framing Classical Reception Studies: Different Perspectives on a Developing Field 9004427015, 9789004427013

Table of contents :
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Framing Classical Reception Studies: Introduction
Part 1
Framing Reception
Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research: Can There Really Be Dialogue between
Ancient and Modern?
Familiarity and Recognition: Towards a New
Vocabulary for Classical Reception Studies
Of Mice and Manuscripts: Literary Reception
and the Material Text
Approaching Classical Reception through
the Frame of Social Class
Part 2
Cases, Contexts and Frames
Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching: Pyramus and Thisbe in Three Fifteenth-Century
Sermons
Rutilius Namatianus’ De reditu suo:
The Anthropology of Reception
Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz
(G.W. Leibniz, In Johannem Amosum Comenium)
Innocence Framed: Classical Myth as a Strategic
Tool in Jacob Duym’s Nassausche Perseus (1606)
Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period: Some Observations on Transformations of Ancient Biographical Literature in Humanist
Editions and Commentaries
Framing Humanist Visions of Rome:
Heritage Construction in Latin Literature
Translation as Classical Reception: ‘Transcreative’
Rhythmic Translations in Brazil
Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea: A Case for
Comparative Reception
Epilogue: Nothing to Do with Oedipus?
Towards New Roles for Classics
Index Nominum
Index Rerum

Citation preview

Framing Classical Reception Studies

Metaforms Studies in the Reception of Classical Antiquity

Editors-in-Chief Almut-Barbara Renger (Freie Universität Berlin) Jon Solomon (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) John T. Hamilton (Harvard University) Editorial Board Anastasia Bakogianni (Massey University, New Zealand) Monica Cyrino (University of New Mexico) Kyriakos Demetriou (University of Cyprus) Constanze Güthenke (Oxford University) Yang Huang (Fudan University) Craig Kallendorf (Texas A&M University) Miriam Leonard (University College London) Mira Seo (Yale-NUS College)

VOLUME 19

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/srca

Framing Classical Reception Studies Different Perspectives on a Developing Field Edited by

Maarten De Pourcq Nathalie de Haan David Rijser

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: “Reflected in the frame”. Ancient female bust from the Museo di Capo Colonna (Italy). © Lux Fotografie, Martje and Karin de Vries. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pourcq, Maarten De, 1979– editor, writer of introduction. | Haan,  Nathalie de, editor, writer of introduction. | Rijser, David, 1956–  editor, writer of introduction and epilogue. Title: Framing Classical reception studies : different perspectives on a  developing field / edited by Maarten De Pourcq, Nathalie de Haan, David  Rijser. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: Studies in the  reception of Classical antiquity, 2212–9405 ; 19 | Includes  bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020014373 (print) | LCCN 2020014374 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004427013 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004427020 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Civilization, Classical—Influence. | Civilization,  Modern—Classical influences. | Classical literature—History and  criticism. | Comparative literature—Classical and modern. | Comparative  literature—Modern and classical. Classification: LCC DE71 .F73 2020 (print) | LCC DE71 (ebook) | DDC  938.0072—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014373 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014374

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. isbn 978-90-04-42701-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-42702-0 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Notes on Contributors vii Framing Classical Reception Studies: Introduction 1 Maarten De Pourcq, Nathalie de Haan and David Rijser

PART 1 Framing Reception Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research: Can There Really Be Dialogue between Ancient and Modern? 15 Lorna Hardwick Familiarity and Recognition: Towards a New Vocabulary for Classical Reception Studies 33 Clare L. E. Foster Of Mice and Manuscripts: Literary Reception and the Material Text 70 Fran Middleton Approaching Classical Reception through the Frame of Social Class 83 Edith Hall and Henry Stead

PART 2 Cases, Contexts and Frames Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching: Pyramus and Thisbe in Three Fifteenth-Century Sermons 97 Pietro Delcorno Rutilius Namatianus’ De reditu suo: The Anthropology of Reception 124 Piet Gerbrandy Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz (G.W. Leibniz, In Johannem Amosum Comenium) 139 Cecilia Pavarani

vi

Contents

Innocence Framed: Classical Myth as a Strategic Tool in Jacob Duym’s Nassausche Perseus (1606) 153 Jeroen Jansen Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period: Some Observations on Transformations of Ancient Biographical Literature in Humanist Editions and Commentaries 174 Ronny Kaiser Framing Humanist Visions of Rome: Heritage Construction in Latin Literature 201 Susanna de Beer Translation as Classical Reception: ‘Transcreative’ Rhythmic Translations in Brazil 227 Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves and Guilherme Gontijo Flores Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea: A Case for Comparative Reception 245 Koen Vacano Epilogue: Nothing to Do with Oedipus? Towards New Roles for Classics 272 David Rijser Index Nominum 287 Index Rerum 297

Notes on Contributors Maarten De Pourcq studied Classics at the University of Leuven. He holds the Chair of Literary and Cultural Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. His research interests include classical reception, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, and cultural theory. Nathalie de Haan is a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Radboud University Nijmegen. Her research interests include the history of Archaeology and Classics in Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries. David Rijser is Professor of Classical Receptions at the University of Groningen, and teaches Classics at the University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on Classical Receptions. His Antiquity Renewed: How Tiberius Landed in New Jersey is published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. Lorna Hardwick is Professor emeritus of Classical Studies at the Open University (UK). She was the founding editor-in-chief of Classical Receptions Journal. Clare L. E. Foster is a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Cambridge, where she established the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network. She teaches film history in the Faculty of History and playwriting in the Faculty of Education. Fran Middleton is Lecturer in Greek Literature, Fellow and Director of Studies at Murray Edwards College. Her research in Classics is led by an interest in poetics, how societies operate and how the two are related. Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at King’s College London. She specialises in putting pleasure into the history, literature, theatre, myth and philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome and their continuing impact in the modern world.

viii

Notes on Contributors

Henry Stead is Doctor of Classics at University of St. Andrews. He specialises in Classical Reception Studies, especially Roman poetry and drama in the modern world, with regard to social class and communism. Pietro Delcorno is a NWO Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Radboud University Nijmegen. He specialises in medieval preaching. Piet Gerbrandy is a translator and teaches Classical and Medieval Latin at the University of Amsterdam. His research focusses on Latin poetry from Late Antiquity. Cecilia Pavarani is Doctor in Latin Literature at the University of Milan and the University of Paris, Sorbonne. Jeroen Jansen is the Director of Dutch Studies and Assistant Professor of Dutch literature at the University of Amsterdam. He specialises in the impact of humanism and the revival of learning in Renaissance Netherlands, rhetoric, textual and literary criticism, argumentation and style. Ronny Kaiser is a Research Associate in Classical Philology at Humboldt-Universität Berlin. He specialises in humanist commentaries, editions and translations, of ancient historians. Susanna de Beer is a Senior University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. Her main fields of interest are Latin poetry, Renaissance Humanism, Classical Reception Studies and Digital Humanities. Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves is Professor at the Department of German, Polish, and Classical Languages at Federal University of Paraná (UFPR, Brazil) and Director and Editor-in-chief of the Federal University of Paraná’s University Press.

Notes on Contributors

ix

Guilherme Gontijo Flores is a translator, poet and Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR, Brazil). Koen Vacano recently started his PhD dissertation on the modern reception of the epic in film at the University of Amsterdam.

Framing Classical Reception Studies: Introduction Maarten De Pourcq, Nathalie de Haan and David Rijser Scholars in the field of classical reception studies examine the different ways in which antiquity, a specific aspect of it or a view on it has intersected with later contexts, including contexts in antiquity itself. Studying classical reception, therefore, means looking into a vast array of questions about temporality, canonicity, aesthetics, politics, cultural infrastructure and mobility, history, memory, science – a list which can easily be expanded. Classical reception studies cover a wide range of subjects, from biology to fan fiction, from Byzantium to Hollywood, from architecture to law, and call up concepts, principles and perspectives that are not necessarily widely shared among scholars active under the banner of reception. The field simply is too wide for that: classical reception expertise touches different periods, regions and disciplines, and scholarly positions are determined by differing scholarly traditions and world views. Most people prefer to address this field of study in its plural form, as classical reception studies, because it consists of various sorts of attempts to think or to engage with classical reception from the perspective of different fields of study. That is why this volume takes the notion of ‘framing’ as its overriding theme. Framing refers to the set of terms, paradigms, theories or frames of reference according to which we reflect and speak when we are teaching, doing research or criticizing. It defines the sort of questions that we ask and the way in which we try to find answers to them. The term ‘framing’ points to the importance of ‘perspectives’, of the stances taken when considering any material. In reception studies, frames affect not only the object of reception studies, but these studies themselves as well. ‘Framing’ implies an awareness of relativity: to assess the value of our findings, it is important to be conscious of the identity of our position, our collaborators and intended public. There is, for example, a difference between, on the one hand, classical scholars who are employing classical receptions as a means to fortify the position of their core-discipline, the study of the ancient world; and, on the other, humanities scholars from domains other than Classics whose interest in classical reception is triggered because they come across antiquity in their own domain. What, then, connects these scholars? The question is worth asking, even though the answer to it might be as heterogeneous as the field of study itself.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_002

2 1

De Pourcq, de Haan and Rijser

The ‘Field’ of Classical Reception Studies

This book is for the greater part based on a conference of the same title that was held at Radboud University Nijmegen in 2013 and for which scholars of different countries and from different backgrounds were invited, also through an international call for papers. Interestingly, in that very same year, a special issue of the Classical Receptions Journal celebrated the twentieth anniversary of Charles Martindale’s Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (1993). This publication is generally seen as a seminal text for classical reception studies, especially for the literary scholars and classicists involved in this area of research. The Classical Receptions Journal could surely also have celebrated the tenth anniversary of another key publication, if it had not been from the hand of its editor-in-chief, at the time Lorna Hardwick, whose monograph Reception Studies was published in 2003. The work of both Hardwick and Martindale, their books as much as their institutional efforts in the U.K., have been crucial in establishing the field of study as we know it today and we were honored to have them both with us at the conference. It is their work in particular that has triggered the overall shift to a more dialogical approach in the study of the classical tradition, in which the ancient source is no longer the dominant lens through which the receiving instance is examined. This shift itself is a clear example of the importance of frames in classical reception studies, as their very name has been coined in the act of ‘reframing’ the existing study of what was back then usually called ‘the classical tradition’.1 Both Martindale and Hardwick are literary scholars, and this inevitably gives a certain priority to a specific set of approaches or concepts (again, examples of ‘frames’), such as translation studies, adaptation theory, dialogism or hermeneutics. These, however, are not necessarily the means by which other humanities scholars would approach the study of classical receptions within their domain of expertise. Moreover, reception research to a considerable extent builds upon existing expertise in fields with a much longer record of service, such as Renaissance Studies, Byzantine Studies, Art History, Legal History and 1  The term ‘classical tradition’, rather than e.g. ‘classical bearings’ or ‘classical heritage’, gained traction thanks to the 1949 work of the British classicist Gilbert Highet entitled The Classical Tradition. The goal of this survey, which became a true classic of its own, is to trace, in Highet’s own words, ‘the river of Greek and Roman influence’ (541) in the canonical literatures of the West. The metaphor of the river (note the singular in the quotation) is cleverly used to suggest the unity and the continuity of the classical tradition, implying that its ancient sources have continuously been watering our spiritual lands by means of its most privileged medium: literature.

Framing Classical Reception Studies: Introduction

3

Aesthetics – although the creation of ‘classical receptions’ as a separate field risks making people overlook this. Conversely, scholars from these disciplines do not necessarily conceive of themselves as classical reception scholars, since the latter term has been conceived by, and perhaps also for, classicists. An essential feature of the work of Martindale, Hardwick and their colleagues is the way in which they implemented conceptual insights from and were prepared to enter into dialogue with the theoretical humanities. Reshaping their area of study by bringing the concept of ‘reception’ to the foreground, they problematized it in a profound way. In doing so, they clearly released pent-up energies in classical studies and beyond. Around the turn of the millennium ‘classical reception’ suddenly became a buzzword and inspired a group of scholars to work more closely together. Since that time, several new generations of reception scholars have continued and developed the discourse. It is true that not all scholars were prepared to accept the theoretical implications of the concept of ‘reception’, and the concept failed to provide the settings and amplitude necessary to account for all sorts of engagement with antiquity or the complex nature of their workings. Yet today, classical reception studies have not only become part and parcel of many teaching and research programs within Classics and related disciplines, but is increasingly sparking the interest of scholars from other areas of study. 2

The Reception Discussion

From the very beginning, the use of the term ‘reception’ and ‘classical reception studies’ as a transdisciplinary label has been the subject of controversy.2 Part of the opposition against the term ‘reception’ was, and still is, that its etymology would suggest passivity: as if reception were only about moments in time in which antiquity ‘is’ received. This would not do justice to the dynamics of, if not the ‘power play’ within, processes of reception: these, by contrast, are extremely active and interactional. In fact, the interest of reception scholars today is especially triggered by this power play. Yet criticism based on the etymology is per definition of limited value: one seldom criticizes philologists for (not) loving logoi, let alone that their very methodologies must be shaped in accordance to the expression of this love. On the other hand, scholars have criticised the term ‘reception’ because the implied contrast with the earlier term ‘classical tradition’ tends to make us overlook precisely the ‘non-active’ and 2  See, for instance, Martindale and Thomas (2006), Kallendorf (2007), Hardwick and Stray (2008), Böhme e.a. (2011), Gély (2011), Silk, Gildenhard and Barrow (2014), Butler (2016).

4

De Pourcq, de Haan and Rijser

‘unconscious’ dimensions of cultural transfer and transformation and make us turn a blind eye to the workings of cultural continuity (e.g. Silk, Gildenhard and Barrow 2014). One of the editors of the present volume has argued elsewhere (De Pourcq 2012) that it could be more helpful to view the term ‘reception’ as a ‘travelling concept’ (Bal 2002), that is, a word or a name adopted from a neighboring field of study with the aim of opening up one’s own field of study. A travelling concept consequently expresses the wish to establish a new pedagogical community and to start developing new critical practices.3 In the case of classical reception studies, it is significant that both Martindale and Hardwick refer to the ‘modern’ reception theory of Hans Robert Jauss as an important point of reference for their use of the term ‘reception’, even though the term was already in use as a synonym for antiquity’s ‘Nachleben’ e.g. in the field of Legal History.4 Apparently, the appeal of Jauss’s term ‘reception’ was that it inspired to reorganize and refresh the study of ‘the classical tradition’ by making intersections with ‘theory’ from the contemporary humanities. Many of these so-called ‘modern theories’ were relatively embryonic in their outline and mostly of an invitational rather than transferable nature.5 Moreover, using one theory usually leads to exploring cognate theories and fields of study. Hence, deploying the term reception meant to set an agenda of making connections with the contemporary humanities, in which similar issues like memory, cultural identity, adaptation, cultural mobility, heritage, materiality 3  The term ‘new critical practices’ implies that travelling concepts do more than instigating new ways of studying research objects. There is an important, although often neglected, methodological difference between ‘criticism’ and ‘interpretation’ to the extent that the latter concentrates on understanding, whereas the former deploys understanding to critique and possibly also to transform existing structures and approaches. This difference returns in different guises in the discussion on what humanities scholars fundamentally do or ought to do: to describe and explain parts of what has happened in (post)human cultures or to engage with (post)human culture, also in terms of its present and future. A similar discussion can be seen in classical reception studies, see e.g. Goldhill (2002), Settis (2004), duBois (2010), Güthenke (2013), Martindale (2013), Rijser (2016) and Holmes (2017). 4  For the use of the word ‘reception’ before Jauss, see e.g. Bünemann (1928) and Levy (1942). 5  There has been no extensive dialogue with either the hermeneutical or the empirical branches of modern reception studies in the four decades separating Jauss from the rise of classical reception studies, as is also noted and expanded upon by Clare Foster in this volume. From the perspective of reception studies as a theoretical, historical and empirical paradigm in the humanities, there has not been any notable rapprochement with the study of the classical tradition either (see its absence in reference works on reception studies, e.g. Holub (1984)). In other words, reception has primordially functioned as a travelling concept rather than a theoretical or methodological model. See also De Pourcq (2012) n. 6.

Framing Classical Reception Studies: Introduction

5

and cultural communities were and still are on the agenda. For classicists, this means leaving their disciplinary field and moving into other areas of study, which mostly were already interdisciplinary in their scope and in their training, such as Comparative Literature, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies and Cultural History. The idea, then, is that travelling concepts invite scholars to travel. However, exploring areas of study in which one has no formal disciplinary training may arouse discomfort and uncertainty. Charles Bernheimer once wrote about the ‘anxiogenic’ effect of comparing literatures from different eras or areas, stating that if one has to be familiar with at least two traditions, one as a rule knows less than a specialist in one field (Bernheimer 1995, p. 1). This complicates and even endangers one’s scholarly authority, which in any field but no less in the field of classical studies is an important standard, as well as an objective. If studying processes of classical reception generally stimulates scholars to collaborate, this may be seen in the light of compensating for such uncertainties. But as important is the need to create a more fully transhistorical and transcultural awareness about their objects of study and to find a balance between established practices and new approaches. A different way of looking at classical reception studies would be to consider them an extended form of thematic criticism: antiquity as a theme that is studied in different periods, regions and media. Rather than as a field on its own, reception could be seen as a subdisciplinary topic among so many others, that should only be studied by specialists from the discipline in point: antiquity in art history, antiquity in law studies, antiquity in continental philosophy, antiquity in the history of medicine, and so on. One could argue that classical reception studies are merely a pragmatic label for bringing together, side by side, different disciplines that are all functioning independently. Such a view is hard to disprove; temptations to resist it may be related to the central function that Classics traditionally have had in culture and education. In any case, it appears to be counterintuitive, given the widespread and successful efforts to institutionalize classical reception studies by means of journals, research networks and series from academic publishers, also outside of the Anglophone world. 3

Period, Time and Reception

A decade ago, as avant-garde a scholar as Simon Goldhill could still claim with some confidence that classical reception studies were broadly of three types: those that take an ancient work and follow its afterlife, those that take

6

De Pourcq, de Haan and Rijser

‘a post-Classical author and sees how this particular artist works with a classical paradigm’ and a third type that takes a more general cultural model and explores how classical antiquity has provided models and inspiration in a time in history or in a genre or an artistic movement […] The specific problem for contemporary reception studies is how these three models fit together.6 At that time, it apparently did not seem odd to start the roll-call with a first type that charts ‘afterlives’ from the perspective of an ancient ‘text’: at present, both the predominance of text and the perspective from that antique ‘standard’ would certainly be viewed as an old-fashioned approach in most academical circles. Also, it is striking that in 2009 Classical Receptions were, judging from Goldhill’s review of the field, still safely anchored in chronology. Goldhill’s most recent contribution, however, is to Brooke Holmes’s Liquid Antiquity which, amongst other things, seeks to replace traditional sequential chronology by a more subtle concept of ‘fluidity’. Apart from illustrating the dynamic, indeed the dazzling pace of scholarly developments in the field of Classical Reception, such changes of perspective within the career-span of an outstanding scholar like Goldhill show once again what we all know, but what is so difficult to accommodate in scholarship: that scholarly concepts and theories are as time-bound as the objects they study. If scholarship from Goldhill’s third type has now claimed a larger share in the field as a whole, while at the same time definitely taking an anti-chronological turn, in specimina of his second, still very productive type (of which the second part of the present volume provides a number of examples) a chronological perspective – we, looking back at Dante, who is looking back at Vergil – is still employed in a relatively unproblematised way. On the one hand, it is clear that such exercises are perhaps more part of, say early-modern cultural history (in this volume Delcorno and Jansen, for example) rather than classical reception studies, and thus play an ‘ancillary’ role, similar to that of classical receptions as a ‘theme’ within, say, art-history or legal history. On the other, an illustration of the proliferation of this type of scholarship brings into sharp relief how important classical reception actually has become. We frame these more securely chronologised contributions on purpose by examples of a more ‘fluid’ approach to chronology (Gerbrandy, Vacano).

6  B MCR 2009.09.58.

Framing Classical Reception Studies: Introduction

4

7

Approach of This Book

The result of all of this is that the field of classical reception studies remains highly diverse, accommodating a variety of methods, topics and stances almost as polymorphous as the academy itself. With this volume we seek both to honor this diversity and to search not only for what divides but also what may unite. Classical reception studies, in our view, should at least be a forum for sharing approaches and concepts, as well as testing the boundaries of our disciplines, if not questioning the boundaries of the disciplinary itself. A common denominator of the approaches presented here is an openness towards historical processes as ways of illuminating our relations with or senses of the past and creating new ways of intellectual discourse for the future. The authors in this book will therefore take as a point of departure of their discussions conceptual, theoretical or methodological notions which are not only relevant for discussions among scholars, but also for everyone who is looking for a means to explain how and why antiquity matters to people, or how and why it also may not. The examples of classical receptions, from Charlemagne to manga to theories of barbarism, are overwhelmingly frequent. The scholarship on them is alarmingly massive. Yet, there are few places where students, critics and scholars alike can compare the words and ideas – the ‘frames’ or ‘framing devices’ – that we may or can use to examine and judge them. Such is the aim which is set for the contributions to this book. The central notion of ‘framing’ also includes reference to the care and caution with which scholars need to approach the manifold cases of classical receptions, and the field as a whole. In a stricter sense, framing may stand for the influence of concepts, figural speech, methods and other ways of phrasing and mapping, and for how we formulate research questions, position our research and address audiences. The chapters of this volume address this theme of ‘framing’ by taking as their focal point the framework itself from which reception is, or may be, studied. These frames are not necessarily of the same category. They may concern a given approach or method, for instance, by interrogating the models of ‘source texts’ or ‘cultural memory’. A frame may also consist of notions such as ‘dialogism’, and the way in which these notions, often handled unconsciously, inform the scope and result of the research. Also, frames may consist of competitive models, such as scholarly discourse versus popular culture, and the different ways in which these mutually affect, contradict and exclude each other. Whatever form of ‘framing’ is chosen, all contributions not only explicitly state from which perspective the contributor operates, but also address questions that pertain to the functioning of these frameworks in classical reception studies. The result will show a template of

8

De Pourcq, de Haan and Rijser

present methods, perspectives and aims of classical reception studies. In order to do so in a coherent way, the authors of the different chapters have been invited to follow a similar approach to the extent that each chapter employs and discusses a central frame and refers to recent or important theoretical or methodological scholarship, and includes a brief closing paragraph providing a further reading. The chapters that follow are neither comprehensive with respect to method, nor seek to cover the whole relevant chronological, topographical or thematic spectrum. Rather, they are illustrations of diversity and incentives to collaborate while yet retaining scholarly and interpretative autonomy – in fact a bit like the suk or medina, with its contiguous clusters of associated merchants exchanging knowledge among themselves and trading with the visiting public, all covered by one bazar. This book is divided into two sections. The first part consists of contributions that deal with larger issues and theoretical concepts that are fundamental to classical reception studies. Starting point in the chapter written by Lorna Hardwick (‘Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research: Can There Really be Dialogue between Ancient and Modern?’) is the concept of ‘dialogue’ as a tool to illuminate both classical and post-classical culture, and literary texts in particular. Because of the radically heterogeneous character of these texts, the dialogical models employed should be as layered and multifaceted as the texts themselves in order to do justice to their respective autonomous meanings. Clare Foster (‘Familiarity and Recognition: Towards a New Vocabulary for Classical Reception Studies’) analyses the dynamics of reception by introducing the concept of ‘recognition capital’. Recognition not only entails the active part of a receiving audience, but also addresses the immanent ‘classical quality’ of any received object or text (in order to facilitate its recognition as being classical). For a successful (recognizable) reception the ‘item’ received in any ‘receiving tradition’ is co-constitutive with its reception/tradition. This frame of recognition and familiarity could enhance our understanding of many a process in cultural history in a broader sense, by questioning attributions of value and the collective perceptions that form their basis and result at the same time. Fran Middleton focusses on the materiality of manuscripts and printed books that literally frames the reception of classical Texts (‘Of Mice and Manuscripts: Literary Receptions and the Material Text’). The material book allows a text to be ‘present’ but is also a product of the text’s reception. Moreover, books produce and receive the meaning of a text, and positions this text and its meaning(s) in society as well. Finally, “Acknowledging the materiality of text

Framing Classical Reception Studies: Introduction

9

reminds us that receptions are less sequential than simultaneous, and that the process of reading and writing are coincident”. The chapter ‘Approaching Classical Reception through the Frame of Social Class’, written by Edith Hall and Henry Stead, reframes the general idea of framing into a ‘dispersive prism’ (class-consciousness) that refracts the metaphorical white light (as a metaphor of cultural phenomena) into a series of coloured bands of light (objective and subjective class positions, political agendas, classical experience etc.). The result, as they argue, is a model; that could work for any form of social category (and consciousness) in any society, at any time – not the last place in contemporary societies. In the second part of this volume, in a series of detailed case-studies, authors look at specific contexts and objects, and connect these to specific approaches, concepts or frames in order to establish the strength and endurance (or not) of such frames. Pietro Delcorno (‘Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching: Pyramus and Thisbe in Three Fifteenth-Century Sermons’) discusses the frame of allegory, borrowed from Ovid and applied to late-medieval sermons. In doing so, the adaptions of the preachers and the expectations of the audience are analysed. Moreover, he shows that the wide distribution of these sermons using (allegories referring to) classical myths must have had a deep impact on the spread of these myths in fifteenth century Europe. The frame chosen by Piet Gerbrandy (‘Rutilius Namatianus’ De reditu suo: The Anthropology of Reception’) reflects an anthropological perspective, by taking the notion of ‘rite de passage’ as the starting point for an analysis of Rutilius’ poem. In Gerbrandy’s reading De reditu suo is “steeped in liminal symbolism” and “informed by lived experience”, notwithstanding the fact that its early fifth century author actively borrowed from and referred to canonical authors such as Homer, Virgil, Horace and Ovid. The merit of liminality as an explicative frame, however, shows that such references are more than an intertextual play alone. The chapter written by Cecilia Pavarani (‘Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz (G.W. Leibniz, In Johannem Amosum Comenium)’) discusses the obituary epigram written in Latin by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz soon after the death of the educator Comenius. The frame chosen here, (the history of) education and learning, allows for a new analysis of Leibniz’ poem in which an eulogy for Comenius and praise for his educational ideals are combined. Moreover, it shows how echoes of ancient Latin poetry, Lucretius, Ovid, and Virgil in particular, were used to convey the seventeenth century ideals that Comenius and Leibniz shared. The chapter by Jeroen Jansen (‘Innocence framed: Classical Myth as a Strategic Tool in Jacob Duym’s Nassausche Perseus (1606)’) discusses the

10

De Pourcq, de Haan and Rijser

process of framing itself, from a constructionist point of view. A frame can be regarded as a process of selection, emphasis and presentation. Together, such frames build ‘remembered frameworks’ that put a meaning on a text or image. His case-study shows how Duym uses frame packages (framing devices and reasoning devices) and an ‘innocent victim frame’ in order to steer the audience responses in the direction of Duym’s ultimate objective at the time of writing: continuing the war between the Netherlands and Spain. Ronny Kaiser takes cultural transformation as the starting point of his contribution ‘Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period: Some Observations on Transformations of Ancient Biographical Literature in Humanist Editions and Commentaries’. Such transformations, however, are often to be regarded in terms of productive reciprocity (‘allelopoiesis’), since both the reference area and the reception area are modified in the closely interlinked process of exchange. Thus, the humanist editing strategies, commentaries and paratexts on Suetonius and Nepos not only put an end to the ancient distinction between historiography and biography, but also remodelled them in order to facilitate contemporary needs, serving for example as a mirror for princes. Heritage construction is the frame chosen by Susanna de Beer for her contribution (‘Framing Humanist Visions of Rome: Heritage Construction in Latin Literature’). She shows how humanists evoked old and new images of Rome that can be considered as heritage construction, understood as a process of selecting, interpreting and appropriating elements from the past. Thus, their poems gave voice to existing heritage claims and shaped new claims at the same time. In both heritage and literary studies (intertextuality in particular) the concepts ‘memory’ and ‘appropriation’ play an important role. The chapter finishes with a plea for the use of digital humanities for the creation of an interactive map in order to visualize the reciprocity between Classics and classical reception Studies. Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves and Guilherme Gontijo Flores propose in their chapter entitled ‘Translation as Classical Reception: “Transcreative” Rhythmic Translations in Brazil’, that poetic translations of classical texts can be seen as an important form of reception and translators as agents of reception because they “perform the transposition of something ‘new’ in another context”. Discussing four metric translations of Homer into (Brazilian-)Portuguese and recent work by two Brazilian translators of Greek lyrical texts and Roman comedy, they show how rhythmic translations re-create ancient texts in a new context. In his chapter, ‘Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea: A Case for Comparative Reception’, Koen Vacano advocates the value of trans-historical and

Framing Classical Reception Studies: Introduction

11

inter-cultural comparison in reception studies. Comparison works, he argues, as a heuristic tool if the two objects of comparison are not too dissimilar, or, conversely, too identical. If, on the other hand, the tertium comparationis is present in both objects in a slightly different way, comparison leads to a deeper understanding of the comparanda irrespective of their cultural context and date. Vacano’s comparison of Breaking Bad and Medea, with the ‘problematic protagonist’ as the tertium comparationis convincingly shows the merits of such a frame. In his epilogue to the volume, ‘Nothing to Do with Oedipus? Towards New Roles for Classics’, David Rijser considers practical and methodological problems in forming an academic program or curriculum to study classical receptions, and advances arguments to form such a curriculum notwithstanding these problems. 5

Postscript

The conference and this book would not have been possible without the support of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research in the form of a Veni Fellowship NWO granted to Maarten De Pourcq. Other generous contributors were the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW); the Dutch National Research School for Classics OIKOS; at Radboud University Nijmegen the Research Institute for Historical, Literary and Cultural Studies (HLCS), the Departments of Classics, History and Literary and Cultural Studies, and the Radboud Internationalisation Fund; at the University of Amsterdam the Department of Classics; and, finally, our publisher Brill. Bibliography Bal, M., Travelling Concepts in the Humanities. A Rough Guide (Toronto – Buffalo – London, 2002). Bernheimer, C., ed., Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism (Baltimore – London, 1995). Böhme, H., Bergemann, L., Dönike, M., Schirrmeister, A., Toepfer, G., Walter, M., and Weitbrecht, J., eds., Transformation. Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels (München, 2011). duBois, P., Out of Athens: The New Ancient Greeks (Cambridge, 2010). Bünemann, H., Elias Schlegel und Wieland als Bearbeiter antiker Tragödien. Studie zur Rezeption der Antike im 18. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1928).

12

De Pourcq, de Haan and Rijser

Butler, S., ed., Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception (London – New York, 2016). De Pourcq, M., “Classical Reception Studies: Reconceptualizing the Study of the Classical Tradition,” The International Journal of the Humanities 9 (2012), 219–226. Gély, V., “Partages de l’Antiquité: un paradigme pour la comparatisme,” Revue de Littérature Comparée 86.4 (2012), 387–395. Goldhill, S., Who Needs Greek? Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism (Cambridge, 2002). Güthenke, C., “Nostalgia and Neutrality. A response to C. Martindale,” Classical Receptions Journal 5.2 (2013), 238–245. Hardwick, L., Reception Studies (Oxford, 2003). Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., eds., A Companion to Classical Receptions (Malden – Oxford – Chichester, 2008). Hardwick, L., ed., Redeeming the Text – Twenty Years On, Special Issue Classical Receptions Journal 5.2 (2013). Highet, G., The Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1949). Holmes, B. and Marta, K., eds., Liquid Antiquity (Athens, 2017). Holub, R.C., Reception Theory: a Critical Introduction (London – New York, 1984). Kallendorf, C.W., ed., A Companion to the Classical Tradition (Malden – Oxford – Chichester, 2007). Levy, E., “Reflections on the First ‘Reception’ of Roman Law in Germanic States,” The American Historical Review 48.1 (1942), 20–29. Martindale, C., Redeeming the Text. Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge, 1993). Martindale, C. and Thomas, R.F., eds., Classics and the Uses of Reception (Malden – Oxford – Carlton, 2006). Martindale, C., “Reception – a new humanism? Receptivity, pedagogy, the transhistorical,” Classical Receptions Journal 5.2 (2013), 169–183. Rijser, D., Een telkens nieuwe oudheid. Of: hoe Tiberius in New Jersey belandde (Amsterdam, 2016). Settis, S., Futuro del ‘Classico’ (Turin, 2004). Silk, M., Gildenhard, I., and Barrow, R., eds., The Classical Tradition: Art, Literature, Thought (Malden – Oxford – Chichester, 2014).

part 1 Framing Reception

∵

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research: Can There Really Be Dialogue between Ancient and Modern? Lorna Hardwick The primary aim of this essay1 is to offer some first steps in subjecting to scrutiny one of the most influential tenets that has been used in classical reception research, that is the claim that there can be a dialogical relationship between ancient and subsequent texts.2 This tenet is frequently seen as crucial to discussions concerning ‘what is classical about classical receptions?’ and to explorations of the implications of reader response theory. References to a dialogical relationship between ancient texts and subsequent receptions recur in many rationales for classical reception research and teaching and are invariably used in a commendatory sense. A key example occurs in Charles Martindale’s 2013 article ‘Reception – a New Humanism?’ in which, inter alia, he meditates on how to initiate or inform a ‘sufficient dialogue with antiquity’, suggesting that: One of the advantages of a dialogic model, where ancient and modern provide mutual illumination of each other, is that it explains why reception ought to be part of any classics degree. Dialogic reception energizes the classics, and illuminates antiquity; superficial reception studies do not generate dialogue, do not tell us about the classical. One could go further and argue that Classics is necessarily a dialogue of ancient and modern, transhistorically.3 1  I would like to thank the organisers of the Framing Classical Receptions conference held at Nijmegen in June 2013 for their kind hospitality and for giving participants the opportunity for rewarding discussions in such congenial surroundings. 2  The word ‘text’ in its broadest sense covers literary, performance, oral and visual cultural material and embraces a variety of genres and forms. For discussion of the relationships between materiality and literary texts, see Porter (2010), especially commenting on ‘Homer’s Monumentalizing Imagination’ 476–481: ‘Epic, then, is mute materiality, made audible but not immaterial’ 478. Lardinois et al. (2015) contains essays investigating what different kinds of texts have in common, where they differ, whether they can be studied in similar ways and how the function and meaning of texts lies ‘at the core of human communication’. In this short essay I focus primarily on literary and performance texts. 3  Martindale (2013) 177.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_003

16

Hardwick

Clearly, there are many strands in this kind of approach. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of them and subject them to closer scrutiny, including consideration of how they are situated in models of agency, temporality and cultural space. An underlying principle of my approach will be that we should not confine our investigations to transhistorical connections/movements but also think laterally.4 What I am concerned with here is investigating ‘connectivities’ and ‘agencies’ – the ‘when, where, how, by whom and to whom, why and with what effects’ aspects of the relationships between ancient texts and their subsequent migrations, rewritings, re-drawings and re-thinkings. I add the provision that it is also necessary sometimes to be willing to delete the ‘re’ and to recognise both that there may be mutation via creativities of various kinds into ‘new’ and that some aspects of the ancient text may be disrupted or discarded (sometimes to reappear in different guises). Connections are not always constant or consistent. It is usually necessary to think on several planes simultaneously (multiple frames was the term used at the conference in Nijmegen in June 2013).5 Furthermore, it is important to distinguish between the creator of the reception cultural artefact (poem, performance, film, painting, speech) and the activities of the scholar who has a different frame for analysing and situating these. One of the major steps forward in research and teaching in recent years is that the creators and the scholars are increasingly willing to talk and listen to one another and to respect one another’s work. The creative practitioner, from Dryden to Picasso to Anne Carson, provides (in addition to the aesthetic value of his or her work) a conduit of communication between antiquity and subsequent spectators, viewers and readers (including scholars) that unsettles fixed hermeneutic approaches. The implications of the claims for a ‘dialogical relationship’ are considerable – for the status and dynamics of the ancient texts; for the post-classical material and for the concepts and methods brought to bear by scholars and practitioners. At its most simple the claim represents the urge to address the relationship between ancient texts and their subsequent receptions and the scholarly 4  Hence, I am not concerned with struggles for conceptual or chronological precedence between ‘classical tradition’ and ‘classical reception’ scholarship The false polarities that sometimes ensue have been effectively demolished in the excellent essay by Budelmann and Haubold (2008). Butler (2016) 3, posits a tertium quid which he characterises as ‘deep classics’. From a different perspective, Gaskin (2013) may be added to the critical literature in that his monograph sets out to provide an alternative to reception studies and deconstruction as ways of reading, Gaskin (2013) ix. His book offers a revisionist approach to theories of intrinsic meaning and authorial intent. 5  The Introduction and essays in Butler, ed. (2016) offer further perspectives on layered thinking.

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research

17

imperative to make sure that neither silences the other when interpretative frameworks are being constructed.6 Thus possible bases for the ‘dialogical argument’ include aspiration and practice as well as theory. At its most basic the argument aspires to preserve the role of the reader in the articulation of meaning without exposing reader response agency and theory to accusations that ‘any reading goes’ (i.e. is as convincing or as valuable as any other). Neither, however, does the dialogue model privilege any one reading or set of readings. Rather, I suggest that if the argument that dialogical relationships are and need to be central to classical reception studies is to stand up to possible objections, it needs to be reformulated in ways that take account of its multiple applications. Given the range of Greek and Roman material, its migratory histories and its subsequent incarnations, it may be counter-productive to look for a ‘one size fits all’ way of characterising relationships; might different types of reception text, involving different creative practices, also involve different dialogical (and other) models? I need to start by admitting that the dialogical argument is a stance to which I am sympathetic. Indeed, I have used the term in a number of articles and discussions. So my suggestions here are partly informed by self-reflection. I also recognise that there is an underlying ‘elephant in the room’: Martindale and others regard dialogical relationships between ancient and modern as central not only to the rationale for classical reception research and teaching but also to that of classics itself as a discipline. If the dialogical argument turns out to be a chimera, is it not only the rationale for classical reception studies that is lost but also that for classics? There are a number of other underlying reasons for appeals to various kinds of dialogical relationship in classical reception studies. This discussion will leave aside the instrumental argument – i.e. that classical reception is a proven way of attracting students to classical study (capturing students) and of pursuing outreach and/or contributions to public debates and arts criticism (various kinds of public engagement in communities and fulfilment of the obligation of scholars to contribute as ‘public intellectuals’, see Hardwick and Harrison, 2013; Hardwick 2013; Porter 2008). I do not in the least denigrate any of these activities but they are not my concern here. The fact that a dialogical relationship would be ‘advantageous’ does not constitute either a necessary or a sufficient basis for acceptance of its existence (in terms either of ontology or

6  Ancient or subsequent textual voices may indeed be silenced or marginalised in individual examples of appropriative classical reception, but that that is a different phenomenon, of which overarching explanations have to take account.

18

Hardwick

epistemology), although it does provide an added incentive for scrutiny of how such a relationship is conceptualised and by whom. There is, moreover, one set of underlying reasons/emotions that cannot be discounted. These include the desire to answer the (usually) unspoken question, ‘what’s classical about classical reception’. Scholars such as Sally Humphreys have written persuasively of ‘the erotics of the discipline’, a passion for the Greek and Roman texts that drives scholars (Humphreys 2004). Traces of this can be seen in how the term ‘Hellenist’ often implies hellenophile rather than simply identifying that a practitioner works with Greek material. Keeping ‘the classical’ as a main spring of classical reception can have a host of underlying causes – including an unwillingness to cede appropriation to others, both because of the power and authority of the subject specialist and because of desire to ‘protect’ the texts and the subject. It is also true that some aspects of attachment to the Greek and Roman texts and material culture can lead to denial of its effects. If we say – for example – that a modern historian who is tracing how some particularly unpleasant regime used classical images and tropes in its propaganda is not engaging with antiquity in any meaningful way, we may or may not be providing an accurate description of his or her methods. However, we may also be masking questions that classicists should be probing – for instance, about whether there is something in the ancient texts and images (a Trojan horse if you like) that has provided a substantial feed into the modern appropriation or has triggered particular developments or variations for which it has to share responsibility. So it would not necessarily be true to say that research into ‘offensive’ or apparently non-dialogical appropriations yielded no insight into the ancient text; it might rather be the case that it yields something we would prefer not to find.7 The erotics/anxieties bases to the aspiration for a dialogical relationship are often closely intertwined, with the result that, in spite of the psychological force and the intellectual respectability of much of its energy, the term ‘dialogical relationship’ has been in danger of becoming a sort of mantra (and one which is often taken out of context). This is not the fault of its pioneers. I see a similarity with the way in which Martindale’s formulation of the ­hypothesis that meaning is realised at the point of reception (Martindale 1993) has been taken by less accomplished readers and less theoretically informed analysts as an established ‘fact’. It has been applied out of context in such a way that the complexities of mediations and associations and the multiplicities of 7  For detailed discussion of a twentieth-century example (Mussolini’s Rome), see Nelis (2011) and Lamers and Reitz-Joosse (2016).

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research

19

points of reception (and even of alternative journeys) are overlooked. This kind of vulnerability to ‘mantra’ needs to be taken seriously, not least because reception-type activities are so wide-ranging and often represent people’s first encounters with the subject, for example in schools and in the courses taken by beginning undergraduates (both types of course are frequently taught/led by people who do not research in the field). Furthermore, some kind of classical reception framework (usually unstated and unexamined) frequently underlies the public-engagement external face of classics. The intellectual importance of the issue in itself and in its applications suggests that we need to think of the term ‘dialogical relationship’ as part of a hypothesis, something to be considered and tested in any particular case with a special emphasis on investigating the form, trajectory and implications of the ‘dialogue’. With any luck this might lead to a self-reflexive drive that enables us to take a more critical perspective on our own assumptions and facilitate the development of an engagement with an increasing range of deliberative communities – in other subject areas, across cultures, in traditions of scholarship, in the public imagination. A first step could be to look at some different ways in which dialogical relationships might be conceptualised and conducted: what does ‘dialogism’ imply?8 1

Platonic Dialogue

An immediate association of the term ‘Dialogue’ in the minds of classicists is the Platonic or philosophical dialogue. However, as we all know, this does not necessarily imply a rigorous mutual interrogation between equals. A philosophical dialogue can be a test of wits, an adversarial encounter as much as or even rather than an inquisitorial pursuit of truth. Plato research has shown how the Socratic dialogue can be theatrical in its characterisations, language and structure (Emlyn-Jones, 2008). Furthermore, Socrates’ interlocutors are positioned, by Plato in his composition and by Socrates within the drama that unfolds; they may even be manipulated into appearing to be ridiculous – as, by extension, are their arguments. The implications for the embedding of a similarly restricted model of dialogical activity in the humanistic classical scholarship envisioned for classical reception might not be auspicious. However, an over-flippant dismissal of the Platonic dialogue as a model for dialogism in classical reception research is vulnerable to challenge on the grounds that 8  I apologise for the brevity and simplicity of the summaries here; my role is that of a gadfly.

20

Hardwick

the Platonic dialogue as a genre is not in itself confined to the imagined situation that it communicates but rather invites readers to reflect and enter into a dialogue with the process of investigation established by Socrates in the text.9 Such engagement has two important implications: firstly that there is contest, both in the manipulation of language and rhetoric and in resistance to it.10 That agonistic aspect is to be found both in the source texts and in responses to them from readers and thinkers. Secondly, it follows from this that there are levels of dialogism that are activated by a plurality of participants who are not mutually engaged at the same place and time. Participants include subsequent readers and scholars as well as the creators of new works. 2

Dialectic

Philosophers like to characterise dialogue as ‘argumentative exchange’ (for example, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 1995 2nd edition, 232 ad loc). According to Aristotle, this was invented by Zeno the Eleatic. It has a technical sense of ‘question and answer’ that can be construed as leading to refutation and revision. Intellectual historians among us will be far more competent than I am to summarise how Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Marx have adapted those formal and constitutive elements. It is especially useful when thinking about the nature of classical connectivities and the creative and scholarly agencies involved in them to note Kant’s reservations about taking pure reason outside its proper sphere. All I want to suggest here is that a strictly philosophical dialectical model is not what most proponents of a dialogical relationship between classical texts and their receptions have in mind, although Plato’s variations on the genre do infuse some aspects of the cultural politics of creative practice. The emphasis on ‘layering’ of dialectical practices and readerly engagement that Plato scholars have identified can provide a stimulating paradigm for investigations of how literary texts are conceived and reconceived by subsequent readers and writers. Furthermore, in the light of my comments above on the problematic nature of the Socratic practices in the Platonic dialogue, it is as well to keep in mind that the evolution of the Socratic question and answer into the logical method described by Aristotle is complex and problematic rather than linear and authoritative.11

9  Kahn (1996); Schofield (2006). 10  Schofield (2006) 58. 11  Fink (2012) especially section 2.

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research

3

21

Bakhtinian Open-Endedness

The theory of dialogical relationship that has proved most fruitful for classicists with interests in literary hermeneutics and cultural theory is probably that of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975). From his work has been taken the notion that dialogue is an aspect of human activity that brings the self and the other into a relationship which can be polyphonic and open-ended and which can provide a point of intercommunication between the past and the future, via the present. Although well-attuned to the form of the novel (every utterance is at least ‘double-voiced’, serving the author as well as the characters) his approach has also been influential among performance scholars because it promotes the concept of the embodied, with the lived body as the material condition of social existence and – performance theorists maintain – of communication.12 Bakhtin’s approach has also been attractive epistemologically because it opens up the possibility that all participants in a dialogue can and should be heard with attention. Dialogue thus involves a plurality of consciousnesses and his associated concept of the chronotope (such as the ‘public square’) allows exploration of the relationship between time and space, as well as providing a site for the activities of deliberative communities.13 So: it becomes apparent, even from my brief and selective survey, that the notion of dialogue in classical reception raises issues about plurality of consciousness; about who sets the agenda; about who participates; about who persuades and how; about agencies; about how and by whom the ‘dialogue’ is situated, conducted and appraised; and residually even about who ‘wins’ an argument or sets an aesthetic standard. Classical receptions can provide a site for these activities – whether opening up one that was previously occupied and contested, or by creating a new space.14 Thus they can open up multi-directional engagements that are also the concern of comparative literature scholars; for example, in her discussion of what she identifies as the crisis of humanism de Gely has used the concept of ‘partage’, a separation that may allow sharing and recombination. She argues that that since gender studies and post-colonial studies have converged in deconstructing the exemplary status of classical texts as the foundation of notions of universalism and have also demolished their association with European/western culture, they have 12  See Fischer-Lichte (2014) 131 for discussion of the transitions between phenomenality and semioticity. 13  See further the discussions in Saxonhouse (2006) in relation to political culture and Wiles (2016) in relation to Greek tragedy. 14  Bhabha (1994), Riddiford (2013), Fischer-Lichte (2017), especially ch. 6 and ch. 9.

22

Hardwick

by extension overturned models that depend on the polarity and mutual exclusiveness of categories used to discuss literary, cultural and intellectual relationships (Gély 2012).15 If duality is no longer to be a limiting factor in the notion of dialogue, the question then becomes: what kinds of plurality might be involved? The issue demands an added dimension to Martindale’s claim that: With both historicism and presentism, there are, so to say, only two points involved (‘now’ and ‘then’, differently privileged). With reception there are always at least three and generally many more (ourselves reading Milton reading Virgil …), where all the points also include the mediating texts subsumed within them and texts can speak to texts on a basis of equality, without a hierarchy necessarily being imposed on any of the points.16 The connections suggested by Martindale in the passage quoted above were mainly framed in terms of literary receptions in temporal relationships. That approach is further refined in James Porter’s discussion of Walter Pater’s view that receiving the classical past is a two-way process that illuminates antiquity as well as modernity. Porter emphasises that the effect is not only to illuminate but to change: antiquity changes with every interpretation of it, as does the meaning and character of the present moment in which antiquity is ‘received’…. ‘In rendering each moment of his narrative into a veritable traffic jam of historical temporalities, Pater challenges and confounds our sense of temporal sequence and our very phenomenology of time.17 However, plurality and polyphony require attention to space and place as well as to temporality. A model that embraces both temporalities and spatial mapping has been explored by Emily Greenwood in her 2009 monograph Afro Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century. In this study, her methods of analysis and the underlying provocation of the issues she investigates are based on a model of 15   Fischer-Lichte (2014) explores the relationship between theatrical and cultural dismemberment and transformation in the context of Latin-American staging of Greek tragedy (ch. 3). 16  Martindale (2013) 172. 17  Porter (2016) 151, 155.

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research

23

triangularity that she set out in her earlier article ‘Classics and the Atlantic Triangle: Caribbean Readings of Greece and Rome via Africa’.18 Assuming that no one model fits all, what other perspectives might be worth attention? So far, the scholars I have cited have been almost entirely referring to written texts. Nevertheless, the implications are not entirely logo-centric and some models use visual metaphors. Palimpsestic models are extensively used and their emphasis on discerning inscriptions, effacements and re-inscriptions resonate well with the conventions of scholarly analysis but the implications for ‘layering’ do not always sit very well with the conditions of reader and spectator response which are usually triggered through their immediate experience in reading or viewing. Hour-glass models have tended to be unfashionable among scholars model in that they stress the relationship between the present reception and the ancient ante-text/idea or figure without much attention to what has gone between (although that may lurk subliminally in the consciousness or the creative tradition and thus in the end be compatible with a palimpsestic approach). The hour-glass image does help us to grasp the difference between the scholarly analysis of processes of reception (the palimpsest) and the immediate effect on the mind and understanding of the reader/spectator. Louis MacNeice explored this in his late poem ‘Perspectives’ (1963) – Yet sometimes for all these rules of perspective The weak eye zooms, the distant midget Expands to meet it. …… The further-off people are sometimes the larger. Interweaving: this model has been explored by Erika Fischer-Lichte (Fischer-Lichte, 2010, 2014). It combines performance theory with the desire to develop a model for cross-cultural theatre that does not import the postcolonial associations of ‘inter-cultural’. It implies that in the totality (and ephemerality) of performance what is important is the whole tapestry and not the distinction of individual strands (which if unpicked would destroy the whole). Fischer-Lichte’s model accepts that the encounter between different traditions and cultures can be destructive as well as transformative and that

18  Interestingly, that piece appeared in the journal Forum of Modern Language Studies, Greenwood (2004) 365–376.

24

Hardwick

the result, in the global context in which performativity operates, the ‘outcome was not homogeneity but the production of new differences’.19 A variation on this model that makes more allowance for the persistence of specificities is that of braiding. As developed by the novelist Wilson Harris, braiding allows for abrasiveness and for unpicking and rebraiding (Harris 2001). Affiliation: the contribution of affiliation studies as a field of cultural enquiry may have much to offer classical reception research at a time when direct knowledge of and engagement with Greek and Latin texts, myths and material culture cannot be automatically assumed in any modern social and educational sphere. Affiliation scholars seek to identify and map buried connections between writers and artists through two, three or even four degrees of separation.20 Such separations need not be temporal but can also involve mediation through genre and through idiom, register and networks of association. They raise important questions about repression, loss and transformation of perceptions about antiquity as well as about the cultural agencies involved. Conversation: It will already be apparent that the possible ramifications of the ‘dialogue’ model are considerable and messy and that each depends on different kinds of agency to activate the potential of the ancient material. There is a further model that merits particular attention, partly because it has been seen as persuasive in that it allows for variations in intensity and outcome. This is the ‘Conversation’ model that has been put forward primarily in literary contexts, notably by David Hopkins in his collection of essays Conversing with Antiquity: English Poets and the Classics, from Shakespeare to Pope (2010): The model of literary reception … is one of conversation and dialogue, a model which, I hope, might go some way towards mending the rift between ‘reception aesthetics’ and ‘historicism’. The conversation in question is conducted across time, and across large cultural divides. Though it might seem at first sight like a conversation between individuals, there are always more than two parties involved. Human beings never come to any conversation without a vast array of existing concepts, experiences, and reading. Conversation always involves the recollection, invocation, and questioning of other conversations…. For conversations to be more than exercises in extended solipsism, participants must register the ‘otherness’ of their interlocutors, and proceed on the assumption that, … they can move towards them to some degree, momentarily escaping, or at least taking a momentary glimpse beyond, the prison-house of their 19   Fischer-Lichte (2014) 228. 20  Johnston (2013) xviii.

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research

25

own head and their own environment. But conversation also depends on some sense of continuity, some faith that, however alien their interlocutors’ premises and findings might at first sight seem, some sense can be made of their utterances – a sense that does not merely involve rewriting those utterances so that they accord with the conversationalists’ own.21 It would, I think, be a mistake to dismiss Hopkins’ model as one that results only from the privileged and urbane environment of the literary world. It also embodies ways of looking at the wider world of human activity, although usually with strong transhistorical resonance. Equally important is Hopkins’ insistence that conversation implies a degree of negotiation. The combination of those two aspects takes the model away from specificity and conflict. It is useful to compare Hopkins’ primarily literary model with other models that use similar structures to address different issues. For example, David Cannadine, in a sometimes problematic discussion in the chapter on Class in his recent book The Undivided Past: History Beyond our Differences (2013) has argued that since 1989 at least relations between different class groups have been ‘characterized more in the long run by conversation, collaboration, and cooperation than by anger, antagonism and animosity’.22 Cannadine’s overall thesis is that ‘identities’ such as those of religion, nation, race, gender, class and civilisation are forms of human solidarity that work against ‘common humanity’. Leaving aside the necessarily provisional nature of judgements made about the very recent past (to say nothing of the possibilities of false consciousness) what is significant about Cannadine’s claim is the polarity/mutual exclusivity that he draws between cooperative activities and adversarial activities. Texts and their histories of reception and re-imagining are surely messier than that. One of the benefits of studying classical material is that it is necessary to pay attention to conflict as well as to co-operation (and vice versa).23 It is also the case that one of the values of studying classical receptions is that across times and places (including the ‘pasts’ of antiquity and the early modern as well as the more recent) one finds that the ‘conversations’ and ‘conflicts’ are intertwined, with shifting balances but not mutual exclusion. That suggests to me not merely the value of the study of classical receptions as a check on overarching generalisations, whatever their provenance, 21  Hopkins (2010) 13–14. 22  Cannadine (2013) 117. 23  For example, in the debates about competitive and co-operative values in Homer (cf. the Adkins/Long debates of the 1970s) or the debates about the nature and function of the agon in tragedy, see Barker (2009).

26

Hardwick

but also that Hopkins’ model of ‘conversation’, while a necessary part of the diversities that need to be contained within the dialogue model, does not of itself provide a sufficient definition. The abrasive and problematic aspects of engagement with the past find a theoretical and performative counterpart in Bonny Honig’s recent study Antigone Interrupted (2013) in which she discusses the recalcitrance of texts, invoking such apparently disparate figures as Walter Benjamin (Illuminations, 1969, with Hannah Arendt) and Zizek. Honig claims The contemporary focus on the reception, interpretation, rewriting, or restaging of classical texts tends to treat those texts as endlessly malleable, not as also resistant to their receptions. And yet, sometimes the texts exceed and resist the demands of their interpreters. When the texts (or other survivals) are recalcitrant, when we encounter their remainders, when they accost us with their alienness, the interpretative encounter may be less hermeneutic and more traumatic … It is because they have such powers that classical materials and their reception are of more than antiquarian interest to us.24 In that passage Honig seems almost to personify the texts, prompting questions about the kind of agency that can be attributed to the text as a partner in dialogue. In what sense can the text be said to be an autonomous interlocutor and a deliberative discussant – or indeed a resister? What is the role of form in facilitating the dialogues identified by the scholar or created by the new writer? Or is the agency of the text primarily identified and generated by the scholar (or the creative writer or artist or thinker or rhetorician)? The status and modus operandi of the text as a partner in dialogue has become more problematic since literary theory revised the status and agency attributed to the author (the ‘death of the author’ in shorthand). The underlying rationale for this was the assumption that meaning is not stable/fixed and that intentionality (even if it can be identified) is not a defining criterion for meaning (for counter arguments, see Gaskin 2013). Nevertheless, there are certain ontological issues that remain. Tim Rood has pointed out how classical historiography presents some challenges to other areas of reception studies, not least because historians do not respond in quite the same way as do poets to their source texts (Rood 2013, 200). In his 1998 study of Thucydides Rood comments: 24  Honig (2013) 191.

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research

27

What distinguishes historical texts from fiction is the reader’s assumption that they relate ‘what actually happened’ … readers of historical texts … tend to identify author and narrator and to suppose an ‘ontological connection’ between the discourse and the events it signifies.25 This is not to dissolve the distinction between narrative technique and reader response but to suggest that their relationship may be different in historiography.26 Analysts have drawn on what Heidegger called the ‘ontological difference’, a term that highlights the difference between, on the one hand, ‘ways of being’ (a term that covers world views and their communication) and the ‘actors’ in place and time (Schanske, 2007, 188).27 Such problems concerning the nature of authorship and how the world of the text is conceived and communicated throw the searchlight on the agency of scholarship. To what extent might the scholar in the course of analysis and interpretation be perceived as ‘ventriloquizing’ the text that he or she honestly aspires to activate as a participant in dialogue? Ineke Sluiter in a study of Commentaries has pointed out the force of the ‘charitable’ dimension in philological commentaries – how a subsequently validated insight is said to be latent in an ancient author (Sluiter 1998).28 Reception researchers are not immune from this either when mining a text. 4

Lateral and Horizontal ‘Dialogues’ in Scholarship

The examples I have mentioned involve research that crosses space, place and language as well as temporalities. It is therefore necessary to think laterally. The implications for scholars of such lateral/horizontal dialogue have been recently explored by Constanze Güthenke. She points out that the cognitive dissonance that comes from dealing with more than one field is surely having an effect on how we as Classicists relate to other humanistic disciplines. Here, too, dialogue is of the essence, and it may well be just as difficult to achieve as that across time, if not more so, given that we 25  Rood (1998) 10. 26  For a narratological study that allows comparison across genres, see De Jong (2014). 27  In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides arguably aims to include both (see further Hardwick (2015)). 28  See further Sluiter (2000) and for comprehensive analysis of the theory and practice of commentaries, Kraus and Stray, eds. (2016).

28

Hardwick

are in the case much less able to rely on the comforts of prosopopeia, entering into dialogue not with absent voices, but with current colleagues.29 This thread in the debate is increasingly present in current research, both on creativity in classical receptions and on the history and practice of scholarship (each provides insights for the other). In an Afterword to a Classical Receptions Journal Special Issue that focused on Central and Eastern Europe and receptions of classical poetry, Emily Greenwood commented: Studying the dissemination and free circulation of classical influences (as well as the censorship of classical texts) within the continent of Europe reminds us that there is no centre or privileged site for European classical reception studies. In turn, this reminder reinforces the view from classical reception in other parts of the world, which demonstrates the potential of Greek and Roman texts and myths to cut across national and cultural formations.30 The range of perspectives on the ‘dialogical argument’ demonstrates both that the concept is an important heuristic tool and that – in contrast to its seductive aura of rationality – it is multi-faceted and needs refining if it is to be useful to explaining diversions, interruptions and repressions and other traumatic aspects of classical reception texts and scholarship. The concept is valuable in directing attention to problems about whether – and if so then to what extent – the ancient texts themselves (written and material) can be said to have a dialogical agency other than that constructed and refracted by scholars and creative practitioners. It is unfortunate that to date the most influential explorations of dialogical relationships in classical reception theory have been made in relation to literary receptions and have depended on analysis of intertextualities rather than embracing other kinds of transtextuality (Genette 1992). There will also be much to be learnt from closer attention to research on the roles of monuments, ruins, and the aura attached to place and figure as sites for the symbiotic relationship between ancient and modern. Furthermore, modern media and technology shape the transference of different artistic forms and content and influence the parameters of scholarship.31 All these aspects raise potentially troublesome issues which are vibrant intellectually but 29  Güthenke (2013) 243–244. 30  Greenwood (2013) 355. 31  A conference held at the University of Bristol, UK, in 2016 addressed these questions and a publication Media and Classics edited by Pantelis Michelakis is planned.

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research

29

cannot easily be subsumed into mantras. Thus there are challenging implications in the move to claim dialogical relationships between ancient texts and modern receptions as a sine qua non of classical reception theory and then to place reception as the heart of classical study of any kind. If classics as a discipline (and indeed as a vehicle for global cultural exchange) depends on the refractive lenses offered by receptions and if the claims for a directly dialogical relationship between ancient and subsequent texts are shown to be complex and problematic, what are the implications for the theory and practices associated with classics? Should more attention now32 be paid, both in the discipline of classics and in classical reception analysis to the messier kinds of connectivity and the multiple agencies that are already figuring in some classical reception research? 5

Further Reading

The best way into engaging more fully with the issues touched on in this chapter would be to choose a Greek or Latin text and consider it alongside some examples of how it has been translated, discussed by scholars and rewritten in different times and places. What kinds of selection have taken place? Do the links operate through allusions to the text itself or to ideas about the text? Does understanding what is happening depend on the readers’ knowledge of other mediating works? Are the marginalised elements recovered by other writers and scholars or are they effaced? A variety of approaches to relationships between ancient and modern can be found in: C. Martindale and R. Thomas, eds., 2006, Classics and the Uses of Reception, Oxford and Malden MA, and in A. Lianeri and V. Zajko, eds., Translation and the Classics: Identity as Change in the History of Culture, Oxford. I.J.F. De Jong, 2014, Narratology and Classics: A Practical Guide, Oxford, discusses how narratives are constructed and communicated in a variety of ancient genres (including epic, historiography, biography, the novel and narratives that are part of drama and lyric). This work is indispensable to the study of multiple perspectives and to analysis of the roles of internal and external agents in constructing these. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 2012, Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing, New York, is not as daunting as it sounds and offers a readable and thought-provoking perspective on world literature and connections between texts and thus to the contexts in which the relationships generated by Greek and Roman material might operate. 32  See further Hardwick 2011; Hardwick 2013; Wiles 2016.

30

Hardwick

Bibliography Bhabha, H., The Location of Culture (London, 1994). Budelmann, F., and Haubold, J., ‘Reception and Tradition’, in eds. Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., A Companion to Classical Reception (2008), 13–25. Butler, S., ed., Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception (London, 2016). Cannadine, D., The Undivided Past: History Beyond our Differences (London, 2013). De Jong, I.J.F., Narratology and Classics: A Practical Guide (Oxford, 2014). Emlyn-Jones, C., ‘Poets on Socrates’ Stage: Plato’s Reception of Dramatic Art’, in eds. Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., A Companion to Classical Reception (2008), 38–49. Fink, L., The Development of Dialectic from Plato to Aristotle (Cambridge, 2012). Fischer-Lichte, E., ‘Performance as Event – Reception as Transformation’, in eds. Hall, E. and Harrop, S., Theorising Performance: Greek Drama, Cultural History and Critical Practice (London, 2010), 29–42. Fischer-Lichte, E., Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides’ The Bacchae in a Globalizing World (Chichester, 2014). Fischer-Lichte, E., Tragedy’s Endurance: Performances of Greek Tragedy and Cultural identity in Germany since 1800 (Oxford, 2017). Gaskin, R., Language, Truth and Literature: A Defence of Literary Humanism (Oxford, 2013). Gély, V., ‘Partages de l’Antiquité: un paradigme pour la comparatisme’, Revue de Littérature Comparée LXXXV1, no. 4, Octobre–Décembre (2012), 387–395. Genette, G., Palimpsests: Literature and the Second Degree (Lincoln, 1992). Goldschmidt, V., Le Paradigme dans La Dialectique Platonicienne (Paris, 1947). Goldschmidt, V., Les Dialogues de Platon, structure et method dialectique (Paris, 1947). Greenwood, E., ‘Classics and the Atlantic Triangle: Caribbean Readings of Greece and Rome via Africa’, Forum of Modern Language Studies, 40.4, (2004), 365–376. Greenwood, E., Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2009). Greenwood, E., ‘Afterword: Omni-Local Classical Receptions’, Classical Receptions Journal 5.3, (2013), 354–361. Güthenke, C., ‘Nostalgia and Neutrality. A Response to Charles Martindale’, Classical Receptions Journal, 5.2, (2013), 238–245. Hardwick, L., ‘Fuzzy Connections: Classical Texts and Modern Poetry in English’, in eds. Parker, J. and Mathews, T., Tradition, Translation, Trauma: The Classic and the Modern (Oxford, 2011), 39–60. Hardwick, L., ‘Against the “Democratic Turn”: Counter-texts; Counter-contexts; Counter-arguments’, in eds. Hardwick, L. and Harrison, S.J., Classics in the Modern World: A ‘Democratic Turn’? (Oxford, 2013), 15–32.

Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research

31

Hardwick, L. and Harrison, S.J., Introduction to Hardwick and Harrison, eds., xix–xxxvii. (2013). Hardwick, L., ‘Concepts’, in eds. Morley, N. and Lee, C., A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides (Chichester, 2015), 493–511. Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., eds., A Companion to Classical Receptions (Malden, MA, 2008). Harris, W., ‘Theatre of the Arts’, EnterText 21, (2001), 260–74. Honig, B., Antigone Interrupted (Cambridge, 2013). Hopkins, D., Conversing with Antiquity: English Poets and the Classics from Shakespeare to Pope (Oxford, 2010). Humphreys, S., The Strangeness of Gods: Historical Perspectives on the Interpretation of Athenian Religion (Oxford, 2004). Johnston, K.R., Unusual Suspects (Oxford, 2013). Kahn, C., Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: the philosophical use of a literary form (Cambridge, 1996). Kraus, C. and Stray, C.A., eds., Classical Commentaries: Explorations in a Scholarly Genre (Oxford, 2016). Lamers, H. and Reitz-Joosse, B., The Codex Fori Mussolini: A Latin Text of Italian Fascism (London, 2016). Lardinois, A., Levie, S., Hoeken, H. and Luthy, C., eds., Texts, Transmissions, Receptions: Modern Approaches to Narrative, Radboud Studies in Humanities – 1 (Leiden, 2015). Martindale, C., Redeeming the Text (Cambridge, 1993). Martindale, C., ‘Reception – a new humanism? Receptivity, pedagogy, the transhistorical’, Classical Receptions Journal 5.2 (2013), 169–183. Martindale, C., Evangelista, S. and Prettejohn, E., eds., Pater the Classicist: Classical Scholarship, Reception, and Aestheticism (Oxford, 2017). Nelis, J., From ancient to modern: the myth of romanita during the ventennio fascista: The written imprint of Mussolini’s cult of the ‘Third Rome’ (Brussels, 2011). Porter, J.I., ‘Reception Studies: Future Prospects’ in eds. Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., (2008), 469–481. Porter, J.I., The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, Sensation and Experience (Cambridge, 2010). Porter, J.I., ‘Reception, Receptivity and Anachronism in Marius the Epicurean’, in eds. Martindale et al. (2017), 149–162. Riddiford, A., Madly After the Muses: Bengali Poet Michael Madhusudan Datta and his reception of the Graeco-Roman Classics (Oxford, 2013). Rood, T., Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation (Oxford, 1998). Rood, T., ‘Redeeming Xenophon: historiographical reception and the transhistorical’, Classical Receptions Journal 5.2, (2013), 199–211.

32

Hardwick

Saxonhouse, A.W., Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens (Cambridge, 2006). Schanske, D., Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History (Cambridge, 2007). Schofield, M., Plato (Oxford, 2006). Sluiter, I., ‘Metatexts and the Principle of Charity’, in eds. Schmitter, P. and van der Wal, M.J., Metahistoriography. Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of the History of Linguistics (Munster, 1998), pp. 11–27. Sluiter, I., ‘The dialectics of genre: some aspects of secondary literature and genre in antiquity’, in eds. Depew, M., and Obbink, D., Matrices of Genre. Authors, Canons and Society (Cambridge, MA, 2000), pp. 183–203. Wiles, D., ‘Oedipus: The Chronotope’, in eds. Monaghan, P. and Griffiths, J. Montgomery, Close Relations: Spaces of Greek and Roman Theatre (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2016), pp. 95–105.

Familiarity and Recognition: Towards a New Vocabulary for Classical Reception Studies Clare L. E. Foster Arguments over vocabulary characterise the secondary literature for the fledgling sub-discipline of Classical Reception Studies. These indicate deep divisions of approach. This chapter celebrates these divisions as pertinent and indicative of the field’s wider potentials. It suggests that the struggle to consensually frame CRS points to one of its most useful lessons: that for recognizably repeated works (which anything described as classical or classic must be) what a work is, and its persistence through time, are inseparably related. 1

Tradition vs Reception: A False Opposition?

Divergent approaches have developed in tension with each other. There is a marked contrast between scholars who see culture as a series of individual encounters between singular objects and subjects, and others who see it as a kind of tissue, a set of networked acts of reference whose influence and meaning is endlessly variable and context-dependent.1 This is not necessarily the same distinction as that which lies behind various arguments over the merits of the vocabulary of ‘tradition’ versus ‘reception’. These can both be seen as sets of objects or practices (e.g. receptions in the plural) that are equally reified.2 Silk, Gildenhard and Barrow, for example, in their introduction to The Classical Tradition: Art, Literature, Thought (2014) see ‘reception’ (which they define by referring solely to Martindale 2003 and 2006)3 and ‘tradition’ 1  Influential in this regard is e.g. Barthes (1984) 146. 2  For discussion, Hardwick and Stray (2008), and Budelman and Haubold in the same volume. 3  In referring to these two publications by Martindale (who had since revised his views: Martindale (2013)) they ignore the presence of an emerging Anglophone ‘Classical Reception Studies’ as defined by the establishment of new graduate courses, professional networks, and publication series, which require consensus-building, and, unlike an individual publication, must be a financial and policy priority of institutions. To insist on a preoccupation with literary receptions also appears to devalue, for example, sociological approaches (Stray et al.) significant interest in the history of the discipline (e.g. Beard, Goldhill, Prins, Leonard, Billings, Porter, Grafton, Güthenke et al.) and seminal interdisciplinary cultural analyses by e.g. Hardwick, Wyke, Settis, Vasunia, Malamud, and Most, as well as the art and archaeological perspectives whose interactions with textual studies did much to stimulate

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_004

34

Foster

(preferred for its wider, more diverse capture) as competing over the same preexisting subject matter: … we seek to give a sense of the diverse contents of the tradition, but we are more concerned to ponder its coherence, delineate its profile, and explore its typology … what is the [classical] tradition overall? How do we identify its boundaries?4 The repeated definite article (‘the’) and words like ‘contents’, ‘coherence’ and ‘delineate’ show the extent to which it is an intellectual object being given definition here, rather than, say, a set of questions coherently arising from problems of scope, retroactive naturalised assumptions,5 and multiple historically-specific subject positions.6 This object-based approach inevitably raises problems of definition: problems in which it actively participates. Where does the ancient world – whether imagined as a ‘Greece’, a ‘Rome’ or something else – begin and end? What ‘original’ versus ‘receiving’ cultures are to be distinguished one from the other? To whose imaginations, when, and why, might the idea of such a ‘tradition’ be available? Diachronic approaches to the texts of Greek drama, for example, in their sweep across millennia, often ignore radical differences between cultural contexts, technologies of reproduction and their corresponding publics, the scale of populations and their access to knowledge etc. The object, remarkably, survives through all. In contrast to this are the rigorous cultural studies offered by, for example (in Anglophone classics) Lorna Hardwick, Christopher Stray, Maria Wyke, and Simon Goldhill, among others.7 These have encouraged a vision of classical reception as including all and any references to the classical past, in whatever mode or medium,8 and now exist side by side with articles, books and edited volumes which have proliferated over the past two decades celebrating antiquity in contemporary popular culture, whose scholarship is uncertainly located and difficult to peer review.9 Approaching classical reception as a phenomenon belonging to the sub-discipline in the first place (e.g. Etienne, Beard and Henderson, Edwards, and now Harloe, Hales, Nichols et al.). 4  Silk, Gildenhard, Barrow (2014) 7. 5  Challenges usefully recently laid out by Denis Feeney: Feeney (2016) 1–16. 6  See e.g. L. Williams (1995) 1–20 ‘Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film’. 7  Hardwick (2003); Stray (1998); Wyke (1998); Goldhill (2002). 8  Alistair Blanshard, Shane Butler and Emily Greenwood, the editors of CUP’s ‘Classics After Antiquity’ series, say ‘Rather than regarding reception as an epiphenomenon of Classics, we see it as the discipline’s engine’: Richardson (2013) xi. 9  E.g. Graf (2016) 73–82, an article about empowering girls through the Amazonian archetype, which refers the reader to texts of Pausanias and Strabo from 1918 and 1917 editions (81).

Familiarity and Recognition

35

whole cultures and their processes inevitably raises problems of parameters.10 What qualifies as an instance of primarily classical reception, rather than an instance of other more important agendas such as commercial viability, fashion, education, or the use-values of tradition itself – agendas which can be entirely deracinated from any interest in a historical ancient Greece or Rome? What is a limit case of ‘classical reception’ when culture operates as a kind of language, continuously evolving from past patterns, styles and content to make its meanings? If a contemporary English lyric poem is ‘receiving’ the ancient origins of lyric, for example, why are not previous incarnations in, say, Horace, or Eighteenth-century Romantic poetry, equally a potential ‘origin’, or ‘source’? Not every scantily-clad female with a bow and breasts is an Amazon: or is meaningfully an Amazon. It is in that ‘meaningfully’ that classical reception is located. References to an antiquity, even when intentionally made, are not necessarily motivated by a grasp of, or even interest in, what most readers of a chapter such as this would mean by ‘antiquity’. Both the narrow object-based and catch-all-references approach are problematic in different ways. Both are also associated with a desire to prove importance. This is significant. For however understandable in a beleaguered discipline,11 such an agenda predetermines an interest in seeing continuities, rather than discontinuities. It encourages the assumption (however much this is acknowledged) that there is a meaningful aggregate – ‘the classical world’, the ‘classical past’ – that pre-exists its retroactive construction by some or other constituency.12 It suggests that the elements which constitute this ‘classical world’ have their own agency. It can also imply, in a somewhat circular fashion, that the question of which original and receiving cultures to include is already answered by ‘the’ phenomenon itself, thus ironically perpetuating the ideological implications of demarcating the Western-identifying, hegemonic and narrowly-periodised ‘Greece’ and ‘Rome’ it also seeks to critique.13

10  Hardwick (2003) 107–113; Stray (1998); Hardwick and Stray (2008) 1–5; Goldhill (2002). See also Porter (2006), Wyke (1998) and Michelakis (2013). 11  Anglophone Classics has had a distinct struggle: see Stephens and Vasunia (2010), Stray (2009). 12  Bayart (2005) 59; Ulf (2009) 81. 13  The acronym AMPRAW – Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in the Reception of the Ancient World – was suggested (by Helen Roche) because other founding committee members wanted to avoid the word ‘classical’ in case it was taken to have answered the question about what was included/excluded, a topic addressed by my discussion: https:// ampraw2012.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/what-is-classical-reception (accessed July 29th 2017).

36

Foster

Titles such as Classical Presences,14 Classics After Antiquity,15 Deep Classics,16 and Postclassicisms17 no doubt reflect a desire to avoid the vocabulary of ‘reception’ and ‘tradition’, and their contested associations. German Classicists have favoured the vocabulary of afterlife and cultural memory; French that of comparitism and sharing.18 But Classical Reception Studies – the plural is important – might be taken to consist precisely in these types of self-reflexive questions. This chapter argues that the present importance of the new subfield, and indeed, of the classical world itself, lies not in claims of influence or relevance,19 but in the paradigmatic nature of the questions both pose. These are of significant interest to other disciplines that deal with similar questions of continuity and discontinuity across huge geographical, temporal and cultural scopes: from Music, English, Art History, Anthropology, Politics, Economics and History itself to Film Studies, Translation Studies, Theatre and Performance studies and the Information Sciences – disciplines which also have much to offer classical reception studies.20 They are questions inherent to the problem of any clearly-located subject engaging with a scope so amorphous it must necessarily be framed. And they are topical in a digital global environment where repetition, reference, and recognisability are intimately related to power. Models of persistence vary widely and evolve concomitantly with various ideas of ‘works’. Both are themselves interesting cultural constructs, and as is to be expected, reflect disciplinary agendas, both consciously and unconsciously. Music, literature, theatre, curation and the archive (in the widest sense) all 14  The OUP classical reception series: https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/c/ classical-presences-clpr/?lang=enandcc=nl (accessed November 20th 2017). 15  The CUP classical reception series: https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/classics-after -antiquity/7275A30B098AEF04859ACC8273DDCF42 (accessed November 20th 2017). 16  Butler (2016); an edited volume based on a Bristol conference and research centre launched in 2013. 17  A Princeton initiative, linking those interested in classical reception at Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, Sydney, and the Scuola Normale Superiore de Pisa: http://www .postclassicisms.org (accessed July 8th 2017). 18  Véronique Gély has also written about defamiliarisation and deterritorialisation, e.g. Gely (2012). Thanks to Maarten De Pourcq for this reference. 19  David Wiles suggests that CRS emerged from the desire to be ‘relevant’: Wiles (2011) 45. Bristol’s Department of Classics and Ancient History distinguishes its ‘Institute for Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition’ from ‘Reception’ as distinct research interests, describing the former as an expression of ‘the belief that classical culture remains a vital influence in the modern world’: http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/en/ organisations/institute-for-greece-rome-and-the-classical-tradition%28b0e8df32-97b9 -4835-a341-45590e1f561f%29.html (accessed July 14th 2014). 20  As Platt and Squire both preach and practice (2017) xxxiii, 4–5.

Familiarity and Recognition

37

raise fundamental questions about the relationship of the identity of works to their own repetition. Classical Reception Studies, however conceived, not only self-evidently engages with thousands of years of activity and countless modes in which the classical past can be said to have been repeated, but this very scope draws attention to the fact that there are multiple potential ways of contextualising any one instance, iteration, or intertext. The explanatory framework within which we identify and interrogate a given phenomenon – anthropological, philosophical, economic etc. – will determine what we see.21 The unique role of the discipline of Classics and the classical cultures in the history of education, attributed value, publics, institutions and the performance of authority makes classical reception (as opposed to reception in general) a particular opportunity to direct attention to the cultural and historical specificity of discursive frames themselves. And the finite and fragmentary nature of the remains of the classical past, as limited exempla, specifically enable these observations. For the fact the apparently ‘same’ material has been used to serve such radically different human purposes in different times and places underscores that whatever else it is, a work, or any other form of selfconsciously public communication, is also always who it is for.22 My current research argues that new multidisciplinary approaches are needed to cultural repetition, revival, restaging, re-exhibition, reproduction and other forms of reference to the publicly recognisable, or ‘recognition capital’.23 Within this, CRS is a particular opportunity to compare past and present models of persistence. Classicists in 2020 can be expected to be particular experts in, say, histories of reading and their concomitant publics, the impact of print and other technologies, the waxing and waning of education and Christianity, fluctuating ideas of gender, race, class etc. – in other words, in the politics of culture, because as Beard and Henderson argued seminally in 1995, their highly fragmentary yet also misleadingly familiar knowledge base, if they are to be self-conscious scholars, requires them to master precisely these 21  Michaelakis (2008). 22  See e.g. http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/acts-of-creativity-audiences-and-us (accessed July 8th 2017) and ‘Beyond the Authority of the Text: Performance as paradigm, past and present’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7F6XQ7Jy7gandfeature=e mb_title. 23  See, e.g. ‘Why Re-? Thinking twice about repetition’ (http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/blog/ post/why-re-thinking-twice-about-repetition); The Re-Interdisciplinary Research Network at CRASSH, University of Cambridge (http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/re -interdisciplinary-network), and an earlier conference at UCL, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ institute-of-advanced-studies/ias-events/reperforming_images_from_sources_to _resources.

38

Foster

‘gaps’.24 This chapter proposes new vocabulary which takes account of the fact that all engagements with the classical past, whether in commercial or educational contexts, whether creative or analytical, are related and in certain respects equivalent interventions in a public realm. It argues that to examine the co-evolution of cultural practices with the discursive activities which frame them is essential for any rigorous approach to classical reception, however variously understood. Post-war literary theory established the principle that the meaning of artworks cannot be separated from their various contexts of response:25 but when this response is perceived as characteristically ongoing, these conditions are, I argue, distinct. What follows attempts to explore this distinction outside the terms of any one disciplinary convention, vocabulary, or metaphor. It offers three images (Figs. 1, 2 and 4) which together invite the reader to explore some structural functions of repetition in any collective context: the creation of community, type, and imaginaries of sequence. It makes a case for framing CRS not as the study of a, or the, tradition, but of the traditional. 2

Recognition Capital

Two core questions of relevance to CRS have emerged from my co-running an interdisciplinary seminar series for the past five years about the concept of performance.26 First is the need to ask, in the case of recognisably repeated works, what else is being performed other than ‘the work’ itself (however variously conceived) – values such as community, status, authority, participation, memorial, continuity etc. It is often these values that drive the act to reproduce or refer in the first place. Indeed, a familiarity can become so widespread that the scale of its reach can be the primary meaning of its constitutive instances. Some might see an example of this in the capacity in Britain of classicising iconography to connote empire, and by extension, the establishment itself;27 or of Shakespeare quotes more recently to refer to the common experience of education. Traditions have complex 24  Beard and Henderson (1995) 1–16. 25  In CRS, most often associated with Jauss (trans. De Man (1982)) and Iser (2006). For discussion, De Bruyn (2012) and Schmitz (2007) 88–91. Jauss’ ‘reception aesthetics’ (see e.g. Rush 1997) was further developed by Iser and the Konstanz School as ‘reader-response theory’ see e.g. Iser (1993). 26  http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/performance-network (accessed August 8th 2017); and https://www.performance.group.cam.ac.uk/ (accessed November 2019). 27  See e.g. James and Ravenhill-Johnson (2014).

Familiarity and Recognition

39

agencies and effects which are not in the power of any one agent to control. Like applause in an auditorium, they can be the product of individual initiative, but depend on the sustained complicity of others to come into being and remain in existence. A second, related, question is how we should approach the detailed aesthetic merits of artworks which exist in reciprocity with their own notoriety. Where are the boundaries of such artworks located? Who or what polices these, when and why? What useful work is done by the idea of a stable, unique and unitary aesthetic object – i.e. an ‘original’? Ideas of aesthetic autonomy and human universality that are bound up in the masterpiece, or ‘great work’ have been valued precisely for their capacity to offer a reference point, the reassuring closure of definition and standard, especially at times of uncertainty. While the instability of the much-adapted ‘classic’ is often lamented,28 what is stable is precisely this role it has as a space of ongoing collective contest. Arguments about a traditional work’s meanings and potentials offer a marker of continuity – a frame of sorts – In a self-evidently uncontainable world. That this reference – a going back – is collusive is easily missed if culture is imagined as a series of haptic encounters between individual objects and unitary subjects. But repetition or reference in any collective context implies that certain capacities to recognise exist; in a public context these are demonstrably variable capacities; and therefore identifying. To repeat can never be neutral. Recent commentary on the political agencies of the internet has emphasised the social norming which interactively drives and is driven by the repeated or familiar.29 In these processes, truth is of secondary importance. As behavioural scientist Maya Shankar found in her research for the Obama administration, debunking a myth often does little more than reinforce it: ‘within hours a listener may not remember whether it is true or false … it just feels recognizable’. Repetition is ‘sticky’, she says, especially when it is uncomplicated or simplified (cognitively fluent, in psychological terms): ‘the more easily we can mentally process an idea, such as “Make America great again” or “Lock her up!” the more we’re prone to retain it … Repetition works’.30 This is arguably also part of the appeal of the apparently self-evident idea that works of art persist across vast gulfs of time and place remaining meaningfully ‘themselves’ despite their radical reversioning; or that this longevity is 28  Arthur Pomeroy discusses this in relation to film: Pomeroy (2008) 10; for the reperformed ancient text see now Hunter and Uhlig 2017. 29  See e.g. “Iteration as Persuasion in a Digital World”, Foster and Zhang (eds.) (Springer), a Special Issue of AI and Society Journal (forthcoming). 30   Sarah Stillman in The New Yorker, Jan. 23rd (2017) (https://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2017/01/23/can-behavioral-science-help-in-flint).

40

Foster

itself the proof that they are ‘great works’ (‘masterpieces’, or ‘classics’). Yet such ideas are learned. They are culturally specific, as the example of the very different non-Western attitudes to cultural repetition, authority and originals (e.g. Chinese Shanzai) suggests.31 Roland Barthes and others have usefully viewed texts, in the widest sense, not as objects, but as practices.32 This perspective is particularly helpful in the case of texts-in-relation, the condition which terms like translation, adaptation, and appropriation have been coined in different languages, times, and places to mark. That many are co-constituted by their intertextuality has been discussed in depth by Classicists, who recognise this as characteristic of early ideas of literature and public art.33 CRS could develop rigorous approaches to works so widely known they are characteristically intertextual with themselves – a joke Ovid makes about his own oeuvre.34 This is the condition of Shakespeare in Britain at the time of writing, for example. In other times and places, it has been characteristic of the Bible, and of Homer.35 Such works, on first reading, already have the status of re-read texts; they are ‘resources of the recognisable’. 3

No Single Subjects: Community

The remarkable persistence of classical material, and at the same time the characteristic diversity of its uses, are both easier to understand if we approach cultural repetition in terms of the audiences it implies. The object-focussed fidelity debate36 has not only distracted attention from much of the meaning and purpose of a reproductive gesture, but also from rich opportunities to analyse and reveal the assumed historical capacities of audiences, and their

31  See Byung-Chul Han Shanzai, (2017) MIT Press; or Yi-Chieh (2011); http://www.bikebiz .com/news/read/fake-china-where-copyright-means-copy-it-right. 32  Nicholas Bourriaud extends this to see aesthetics as a form of social interaction: Bourriaud (2002). See e.g. De Pourcq (2012). 33  E.g. Feeney (2016) 6–7; Beard and Henderson (2001) 65–106, (105). Platt and Squire (2017) use the vocabulary of framing metaphorically as well as literally. 34  For a familiar text as self-mythologising, Foster (2016) 213–18. 35  See e.g. Graziosi (2002), Scodel (2001), West (1999). 36  See Oey (2016) 23–31 (film); and Rodosthenous (2017) 1–27 (theatre) for recent fidelity debate overviews.

Familiarity and Recognition

41

contact zones.37 Whether called tacit knowledge,38 assumed knowledge,39 horizons of expectation,40 a play of expectations,41 or cognitive context,42 implied capacities to recognise (to ‘get’ the reference, or joke), as scholars in various disciplines have noted, are themselves historical evidence. Georgina Born has coined the term ‘protended audience’ to describe the way a musical work encodes certain abilities to appreciate, and thus particular audiences, whose implied presence (whether actual or not) co-constitutes ‘the work’.43 In the case of works which refer to the classical world of Greece and Rome, I argue, the protended audience is provocatively, and demonstrably, mixed (Fig. 1.)44 Past and present audiences are implicitly brought into co-presence, and attention is directed to the varying levels of knowledge among audience members. As Rachel Bryant-Davies demonstrated (in the case of classical burlesque at London’s Astley’s Circus) those with broad exposure to the classics as a ‘common cultural currency’ are imagined side by side with those whose ‘formal school-book education’ might allow them to recognise more precise details in the work.45 Such inevitably mixed capacities to recognize in public contexts such as cities, theatres, galleries, museums are a potent means of performing social inclusion/exclusion, and suggesting a precisely composite ‘imagined community’.46 All acts of communication imply a capacity to understand on the part of some persons or other; but this is foregrounded in the case of works that have a consensually pre-existing familiarity (whether actually familiar or not). And works from ancient Greece and Rome particularly foreground the need for acquired knowledge in order to recognise them (not least, the learning of Latin or Greek). This specifically directs attention not only to common knowledge, but to an individual’s knowledge in comparison to, and in 37  C  ontact Zones, Blunck, Savoy and Shalem (series eds.) (2011–17). A term first coined in literary studies, Pratt (1991), and since adopted by museology, anthropology, art history and theatre and performance studies. 38  Polanyi (1966), from sociology. 39  Bordieu (1984), from anthropology. 40  Iser (1989), from reception studies. 41  Fish (1980), from literary theory. 42   Boase-Beier (2011), from translation studies. 43  Born (2014), a lecture given at the second CIPN conference ‘The Politics of Framing and Staging: Performance as Paradigm II’: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25656 (accessed July 8th 2017). See the practical illustration of this offered by Chloë Alaghband-Zadeh in her work on the listeners of Classical North Indian music, a CIPN seminar: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26558 (accessed July 8th 2017). 44  For specific examples using classical material, see e.g. Foster (2015) 124–146, and 185–191. 45   Bryant-Davies (2011). 46  Anderson (1991) 7. For ‘imagined communities’ as precisely mixed see e.g. Bhabha (1990) 1, Stuart Hall (2005) 24: for discussion, Holdsworth (2010) 7.

42

Foster

figure 1 The fourth-century theatre at Epidaurus: public capacities to recognise perform identity as simultaneously and inseparably individual and social. From Greek Tragedy in Action by Oliver Taplin, 1978, p. 87

community with, others. It is this space of mixing, I argue, which the classic(al) offers, as a particularly identifying experience of history, or rather, of history as identifying experience.47 Certainly, engagements with ancient Greece and Rome highlight two principle pleasures of any recourse to the ‘resource of the recognisable’: the chance to imaginatively participate in an extended human community, and to negotiate a complex subjectivity. In Fig. 1 the focal point is relatively inscrutable compared to those looking at it: this is an image of something people already know. The viewers in the photograph, and those for whom the image has been reproduced, are framed as corecognisers. The detailed aesthetic merits of their object of common focus are not necessarily fully, or easily, available – merits which presumably made it an object of common focus in the first place. I argue that this paradox characterises many modern engagements with ‘Greek drama’. The detailed individuality of the audience members in the foreground also underscores that such a large number of people cannot possibly all know this thing identically, to the same 47  See e.g. the work of Charles Stewart and the Research Group on Historical Consciousness at UCL’s Institute of Subjectivity and the Cultural Imagination: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ anthropology/isci/historical-consciousness (accessed July 8th 2017).

Familiarity and Recognition

43

degree, or in the same way. Assembly around an object of common knowledge brings this individuality into focus at the same time as locating it in a group. The experience of a classical work prompts one to notice what one knows, how much one knows it, how one knows it compared to others, and why there are these differences: i.e. to make positioning observations. It is not necessary for the spec in the centre of the orchestra to be identifiable in order for most of these meanings to be performed. Moreover, the reperformed text of a classical ‘work’ implicitly gathers into dramatic co-presence not only those whom it is addressing in the present, and those it originally addressed in the past,48 but also all those who have engaged with its revival since then. The consequently monumental text gathers this temporal diaspora, and channels the drama of its narrative. It is a very large conceptual auditorium in which one sits to what is now called in many countries and languages a ‘Greek play’.49 Indeed, the imagined extent of this collective investment, or koinē, is often one of the values being performed, whether a peace-promoting pan-European identity (Leyhausen, the festival at Delphi) or an internet-mediated global community (Chris Thorpe’s ‘Chorus’ in the Gate Theatre at Notting Hill’s 2016 Iphigenia Quartet). The extent of this reach means that any engagement with ancient Greece on stage is de facto an engagement with the present, and with social identity. This might seem an obvious point, but it has been de-emphasised by viewing reception in terms of a single and singular reader, viewer, or ‘receiver’ who engages “in the transmission of culture”.50 The modern emphasis on the receiver and receiving context as central to both meaning and ‘eventhood’51 – to which the emergence of Classical Reception Studies is related – has often imagined single, stable and unitary readers or viewers, who respond as discrete and unitary ‘selves’, capable of single responses: a model drawn partly from the idea of the individual consumer which characterises the commercial contexts of popular culture, and partly from earlier privileged and haptic experiences of reading and viewing (Keats’

48  Which always included a projected afterlife to some extent, as Scodel has argued: Scodel (2001). 49  See e.g. Fragkou (2015) on Rimini Protokoll’s recent exploration of these ideas in Athens. 50  The phrase on Bristol’s website: http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/en/organisations/reception%2870fc9ea1-4dac-43a9-89b9-e02b02ea2eaf%29.html (accessed July 14th 2014). 51  Matthew Lipman in 1973 early proposed a concept of art as ‘event’, rather than as an encounter between art objects and perceiving subjects: Lipman (1973) 3.

44

Foster

response to Chapman’s Homer, for example).52 But we might rather view being an ‘audience member’ for artworks as precisely an opportunity to try out different selves: to variously imagine ourselves and others having different potentially identifying responses. Certainly, we can see this ability to recognize a complex self – or rather, how it might be composed of multiple contradictory parts – as precisely the opportunity a repeated text offers. Because it differentiates levels of knowledge,53 a classical work performs the various ways one’s ‘self’ participates in the wider social ‘selves’ offered by different imaginary groups – classicists, say, or the educated, or those of a certain era, class, or nation (whether accepting or rejecting or both). The pleasure at being able to be moved by an ancient work cannot easily be separated from the external meanings of this ability as an aspect of social identity.54 Nor can interest in adapting, or ‘read-writing’, as Lawrence Lessig puts it, works held widely in common.55 The immanent aesthetic qualities of works of art are a resource, or agent, for such negotiations of identity and social inclusion/exclusion; those of a traditionally-valued work – ‘the classic’ – overtly so.56 Instead of characterising differences between originals and their copies, comparing versions, or contesting category and canon, scholars could instead see their goals as elucidating the sets of tensions a reframed or restaged work puts in play; the values it contests; the ironies and paradoxes it performs; or the particular nature of the present it dramatizes – and the multiple audiences for whom these various meanings might be available.57 For it is often precisely the implicit gathering of mixed audiences in the conceptual space of the familiar which is dramatic. We do not only gather objects; objects gather us.58 Robert Icke, in discussing his 2015 Oresteia at the Almeida Theatre, London, understood his work as inscribing different audiences in a single space. Icke said he was writing for both those who know nothing about Greek tragedy, and for Simon Goldhill, who enthused him about the ancient Greeks when he was 52  The term ‘popular’ is problematic as it has been taken to refer to predilection, or class, rather than the dynamics of mass cultures: but the problem is apposite, and illustrative. 53  See e.g. Goody (1987). 54  Issues explored by Yopie Prins in relation to nineteenth-century female interest in learning Greek: see Prins (2017). 55  Lessig (2008). For ideas of reading and writing as integral and related activities, see Boase-Beier (2011). 56  Cf. T.S. Eliot’s 1945 essay ‘What is a Classic?’ 57  The thrust of the first CIPN conference, ‘Beyond the Authority of Text: Performance as Paradigm’: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/24682 (accessed July 8th 2017). 58  A significant literature on material culture addresses these ideas, e.g. Bill Brown’s Thing Theory: Brown (2003).

Familiarity and Recognition

45

an undergraduate reading English at King’s College, Cambridge.59 The detailed aesthetic merits of his Almeida Oresteia protend such a mixed audience. The production was promoted as emphatically not an empirical engagement with the actual words of Aeschylus’ text, like, say, the rival production of the The Oresteia at the Globe Theatre running at the same time in a new translation by Rory Mullarky.60 The Evening Standard even said the Almeida production contravened the Trades Descriptions Act by calling itself the ‘Oresteia’, for the whole of the first act was newly written material, a prequel which imagined Agamemnon sympathetically as a modern day politician exceptionally burdened with the responsibilities of office. Yet this ‘fresh’ material,61 conceived and performed as modern drama absorbed acting and psychological realism,62 was combined with a second and third act which cleaved to Aeschylus’s text, including some verbatim quotes, e.g. Athena’s scale-tipping decision: ‘I am for the man’. Icke could have chosen to invent throughout, as other recent Oresteia versions have (e.g. Yael Farber’s Molora, in which Orestes decides not to kill his mother).63 But the presence of Aeschylus’ words was as emphasised in the latter half as it was absent in the first: the ancient text was literally, rather than literarily, present. The Almeida live readings of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, which were also part of their 2015 ‘Greek’ season, suggest there is something more than multiple audience capture behind this conspicuity of ‘the’ text. These all-day performances of Homer’s epics in their entirety emphasised the text-as-object by not only reading from a physical book, but rendering it in the measured totality of all its words and the consequently monumental scale of its live performance,64 and beginning the readings with the first few lines read aloud in ancient Greek: underscoring its status as an object, a historical artefact. For these few opening lines, non-ancient-Greek-speaking audiences were being invited to attend at the presence of the text, rather than to experience its detailed aesthetic merits. At the same time as the Almeida Greek season, a British television series, Dickensian, exhibited the same determination to declare the original text’s 59  The Amazon webpage lists the author as Icke, not Aeschylus: Oberon Books’s cover compromised, removing ‘The’ and ‘By’ from the title, with ‘Oresteia, Aeschylus: a New Adaptation by Robert Icke’. Anne Carson had styled her 2010 version ‘An Oresteia’. 60  Rodosthenous (2017) 5. 61  E vening Standard (2015). It nevertheless gave Icke its Best Director award. 62  Marguerita Laera calls it ‘hypernaturalistic’, to suggest the contrast of this stylistic choice with its choral model: Laera (2015). 63  http://www.yfarber.com/molora/ (accessed August 1st 2017). 64  ‘More than sixty artists, 18,255 lines of text and audience of more than 50,000 people across the world’: https://almeida.co.uk/iliad-digital (accessed August 8th 2017).

46

Foster

presence, despite the fact it took Dickens’ famous characters and invented new stories for them. Series writer Tony Jordan said ‘I’m faithful to his [Dickens’] characters. I played fast and loose with the stories and the narratives and I mixed them up – but within that, and within that construct, I’m faithful to Dickens as written by Charles Dickens’.65 In these examples there seems to be not just reference to a source, but identification of ‘the’ work as distinctly present while not necessarily making experience of it available. This is the function of piecemeal reference – in other words, quotation. If we ask what else is being performed other than the ‘work’, the memorialising YouTube clips of the Almeida Homer readings suggest another telos of emphasising the text’s presence.66 The clips begin with bold sluglines announcing the date and time: the cinematic sign of History, and the photographic sign of record. Then they emphasise the size of the epic task – in this case, one so huge it needed breaking into parts, and delivering by multiple actors. Each actor has a numbered clip in an online scroll, with the actor names prominent, drawing attention to the combined community of up-and-coming actors with those already established, each one simultaneously individuated and included in the group of those who were ‘there’ on the historic day: who took part, or participated. This participation was specifically an offer made by the scale of Homer’s texts, and by their traditionality. The Almeida Iliad and Odyssey offered a memorialising participation that extended forwards as well as backwards in time: one that looked forward to a past. These actors could count and be counted not only in 2015, but for posterity. Like other events held to create their own record, this is a distinct potential of classical reception, as opposed to reception in general; one which is less a form of nostalgia, as Joshua Billings has argued, than as Constanze Güthenke hints in response to Billings and Martindale – a ‘desire for closeness’, or ‘quasi-epiphanic commonality’.67 Participation is a specific opportunity offered by the celebrity text. In the British theatrical repertoire, celebrity texts have long been associated with celebrity performers, each reciprocally qualifying the other.68 Juliet Binoche played Electra in the summer of 2015, at the Barbican, as Kristin Scott-Thomas had the year before at the Old Vic. As Melvyn Bragg said when interviewing Benedict Cumberbatch at the Barbican in the same year, playing Hamlet is the mark by which an actor in Britain is recognised as having made it to the top.69 65  Billen (2015). 66  https://almeida.co.uk/the-odyssey-part-one. 67  Billings (2013): Güthenke (2013) 242. 68  The commissioning of new translations of classical texts by national venues far exceeds those of new plays from modern foreign languages, for example: Laera (2017). 69  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfpgdjT9QmQ (accessed July 20th 2017).

Familiarity and Recognition

47

There is of course a self-reflexivity to acknowledging common cultural currency, something ‘everyone knows’. But unlike most half-truths, repeating it does make it so.70 This circularity should be central to any conception of Classical Reception Studies. The ability of well-known objects – whether textual or otherwise – to perform community is helpful context in which to understand the recent resurgence of engagements with performed Shakespeare and ancient Greek drama in Britain of which the Almeida Greek season was a part. This resurgence is paralleled by renewed interest in retroactivity, periodising and listing of all kinds: what Louise Blythe calls ‘top ten culture’.71 In a digital global search environment, when a national culture is no longer necessarily geographically, ethnically or educationally determined, and public service broadcasting with its implicitly homogenous audiences no longer time-specific, or live,72 nationallyrecognised texts in Britain such as Shakespeare, Greek drama, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens offer a new kind of space for a national conversation (as do Strictly Come Dancing, or the Great British Bake-Off, for example).73 The recognisably repeated or classic text becomes a public space for participant activity of a specifically national reach. This is a space at once flexible – transferable from medium to medium (cf. ‘Dickensian’) – and fixed, verifiable through specific language, in part or whole (‘I am for the man’, ‘as written by Charles Dickens’). In such a context ‘the text’ acts precisely as an iterative space, some ‘thing’ to gather round which crucially promises return to the same encounter, differently experienced. In this ability of characteristically reperformed (i.e. traditional) texts to connect communities across time and space, the presence of their authentic aesthetic details is crucial. These must be identified and their presence asserted, whether audiences have the actual capacity to appreciate them or not. Such details do not have to be accompanied by the – or a – whole work from which they once originated. As Belgian artist Francis Alÿs explored in his 2006–9 work Fabiola, the objective existence of an original is not a prerequisite for its ongoing reproduction (Fig. 2).

70  Stillman (2017). 71  A related development is the increasing use of inset panels offering timelines of ‘highlights’ to explain persons, objects or events. 72  Foster (2013): http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/24829, where I argue that the concept of liveness and the performance of community are related, as suggested by the 2009 NESTA report on NT Live: https://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/nt_live.pdf (accessed July 8th 2017). 73  Lucy Jolin interviews me about this in ‘Down The Rabbit Hole’, CAM Magazine 87 (Easter 2019: https://www.cam.ac.uk/larpingabout).

48

Foster

figure 2 The Fabiola Project: Francis Alÿs: Fabiola, Installation view © National Portrait Gallery, London

4

No Single Objects: Type

Francis Alÿs describes what after a decade of re-installation he has just renamed his Fabiola Project as an ‘ongoing investigation of devotion, representation, anonymity, reproduction, and value’.74 Alÿs collected these demotic reproductions of a local saint, Fabiola, over several years from Mexican and European markets and second-hand shops. Each is recognisably a ‘Fabiola’, yet the original from which all derive is long lost. Alÿs’ point is that there does not need to be an original: the aggregate itself establishes a typology which can be repeated ad infinitum without need of a single source, or ‘originary original’, in Theo Herman’s phrase.75 Icons most meaningfully exist anyway in the minds of those who have the capacity to recognize them, via their typical features: here, the orange colour, for example, left-facing profile, or bust composition. This work suggests how repetition itself establishes the elements of such a typology, exploring how far these can be varied while remaining recognisably ‘a’ Fabiola – the green colour, for example. The collection itself polices its ­categoric criteria, the degree of sameness across instances suggesting what further change would make it no longer ‘a’ Fabiola. Alÿs’ work suggests the value, in the absence of external information, of using a corpus of evidence to understand the meaning of its constituent items (the approach taken to demotic Roman wallpainting, for example).76 In a similar way, traditions of performance of Shakespeare or Greek drama engage with and continuously establish limit cases for generic definition. Collectively-held pre-existing expectations – the most reductive sense of 74  Most recently exhibited (2016) in the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas: https://www .menil.org/events/1395-the-fabiola-project (accessed August 8th 2017). 75  Hermans (2003). 76  From August Mau onwards. See e.g. Lorenz (2016).

Familiarity and Recognition

49

‘tradition’ – can be seen as policing, or providing a prescriptive frame for, future activity.77 Rachel Cusk, in her 2015 production of Euripides’ Medea, for example, also part of the Almeida’s Greek season, changed the ending by having Medea abandon rather than kill her children, so that modern audiences might have a greater ability to relate to – as Cusk read it – the feminist message of Euripides’ text. But reviewers complained that Medea is not ‘Medea’ unless she kills her children, and that without such extreme actions Greek tragedy is no longer tragic: Michael Billington described the production as ‘diluted’;78 Victoria Sadler said ‘too much had been lost’ and it was ‘a reductive version of [Medea’s] true self’.79 Failure to conform to expectations about type appeared to outweigh the merits of Cusk’s otherwise close reading of Euripides’ text. Robert Icke’s 2015 Oresteia, in contrast, although it significantly departed from the spirit of Aeschylus’ trilogy with a first act newly written to encourage sympathy for Agamemnon, conformed to type in precisely these respects – the expected famous tied-jury ending, and a provocatively realist rendering of an unimaginably horrible human action (killing your daughter) – and was widely praised by critics. Says director George Rodosthenous, ‘Audience expectations sometimes become an obstacle to the directorial vision and allow the ongoing disputes about authenticity and experimentation with form to be perpetuated’.80 Alÿs’ Fabiola underscores that such typological expectations are a collective phenomenon, not in any one person’s control, collusively maintained, and do not need an original to be present to persist. It is a structural function of repetition in any public context to paradoxically both create an original81 – a fixed reference point – and at the same time a typology, or set of features supposed to be typical. These are precisely transferable.82 This ‘original’ and its typifying features co-exist in a tension that sustains engagement with both in the public sphere. Contests over the nature of putative originals become a key way to periodise, locate, evaluate, and socially identify. Denis Feeney describes the moment in Roman cultural history when after free-form, exuberant ‘creative miscomprehension’83 the Romans 77  Foster (2015). 78  Michael Billington https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/oct/02/medea-review-rupert -goold-kate-fleetwood-almeida. 79  Victoria Sadler http://www.victoriasadler.com/review-medea-almeida-theatre-not-for-me/. T  hanks to my student Meghan Sullivan for this observation and these references. 80  Rodosthenous (2017) 11, discussing Hardwick (2013) 328. 81  Most often attributed initially to Walter Benjamin (1936) many have taken these thoughts further, e.g. John Berger in his popular book and TV series 1970 Ways of Seeing. 82  Ideas usefully applied by e.g. Hobsbawm and Ranger (1984) and Baudrillard (1994). 83   For comparison with similar non-Western attitudes of ‘creative disrespect’ see Wakabayashi (2011) 27.

50

Foster

began to write translations of Greek scripts, ‘putting a new kind of premium on a new kind of fidelity’.84 Alÿs Fabiola reminds us that by definition, once a text becomes communally recognisable, whether its instances are called appropriations, allusions, versions, adaptations, or translations, reference to it can never be to a single or singular entity. Often in lists of instances of classical ‘receptions’ of ancient texts, it is this typology being engaged with, rather than a set of objective aesthetic characteristics. Edith Hall, for example, includes the Coen brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou in a book of receptions of Homer’s Odyssey, while the filmmakers say they have never read the book.85 The Coen brothers’s comment, like Alÿs, plays with popular ideas of ‘sources’ or ‘originals’. In the case of their witty film (cf. their 2016 Hail Caesar as another example) the idea that a collectively-held original or history exists is one of the main ideas the work explores. Considered in isolation, any one of these paintings of Fabiola could have a set of very different available meanings. It could be taken as an image of, say, a woman, or piety. But if ‘a’ (or ‘the’) original Fabiola was re-discovered and compared to these images, the meaning of all them would change. They would become double entities, adopting the both/and status of an actor on stage: both themselves, and their character, an instance of the thing to which they are held to refer. If such an originary ‘original’ Fabiola was further contextualised by experts offering facts about names, dates, places, and related works, this body of knowledge would become implicitly involved in all the images, and each instance of a Fabiola would also be identified, in part, by how it expresses, reflects and contests it. Instead of primarily performing the community of ‘those who know Fabiola’ (the logic of copying and collecting associated with fashion or brand, as here) the images would each perform relative degrees of this expertise. This helps us see the difference between these images and a Greek drama. What counts as, say, a production of ‘The Oresteia’ proposes a significantly extended constituency of varied, sometimes incongruous producers, consumers, critics and experts. It connects initiators and responders in an interdependent web of mutual influence: the work’s discursive context becomes co-constitutive of it.86 My Phd thesis investigated the origins and impact of the first performances of the authentic texts of Greek drama in Britain, c. 1880, arguing that their historical importance had been missed because of their retroactive association with a subsequent tradition of performance of Greek plays in Greek at Oxford 84  Feeney (2016) 110–114. For this as an aspect of representation itself, see Barnett (2008) 2. 85  Hall (2009). 86  As Simon Goldhill self-reflexively recognizes: Goldhill (2017).

Familiarity and Recognition

51

and Cambridge. Close reading of original archival material shows that in fact they emerged in close association with the first performances of Shakespeare’s original texts (the First folios) since his own day, and with the first performances of ancient Greek texts in translation. Progressives such as Frank Benson, William Poel, Benjamin Jowett, Gilbert Murray and Lewis Campbell saw such ancient Greek dramatic texts, associated with education, seriousness and difficulty, as a way to signal that theatre could be respectable, and education should be for all. Their experimental ‘archaeological’ performances, in privileging the authentic authored dramatic text as literary – then a new idea – helped lay the foundation for modern drama, the national theatre movement, and the idea of a play as its text still influential today. At the same time, late Victorian recitative performance styles, which characterised the first hagiographic delivery of these texts in this period, became established together with this emphasis on the text as a peculiarly British (and to some extent, Anglophone) ‘Greek play’ performance tradition. Both are in still evidence in this review of a production of The Bacchae at London’s Mermaid Theatre eighty years later, in 1964:87 The chorus is always a problem. There is a tendency … to speak with a mechanical “theatrical” delivery … We hear the same inflexion, the same moaning descent from a high note to indicate the presence of doom [that] choruses in English-language productions of [Greek] plays have been giving us for years. Surely some better way of getting the lines and the emotions across ought to be possible? The assumption of consensus embedded here in ‘always’ and ‘tendency’ is repeated in this reviewer’s criticism of Kenneth Cavander’s translation, described as ‘inclined to shuttle between the modern and the traditional’. He concludes that despite a problematic production, ‘The Bacchae is a splendid, an indestructible play’. (That there was indeed another way of ‘getting the emotions across’ would be famously demonstrated by Richard Schechner four years later, in his Dionysus in 69.88) This model of persistence, of a text which fortunately ‘survives’ its own production, is still prevalent. But what this reviewer confidently calls both a ‘Greek play’ (the recognisable type) and ‘Euripides’ Bacchae’ (the presenced text) is in fact a very British play (‘we always hear … giving us for years’). This consensual nature of the production (‘we’ … ‘us’) is obscured by the fact that the assumed reason for producing and going to the play is the inherent merits of the autonomous, singular and ‘indestructible’ text – despite 87  F inancial Times, Feb. 6 (1964). 88  Zeitlin 2011.

52

figure 3

Foster

Johan Zoffany’s The Tribuna of the Uffizi 1772–77: a satire of Georgian England’s fashion for the Grand Tour, in which the tourists are the exhibits. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020, with permission

the fact that these merits, as this reviewer laments, are not fully available in this particular instance. That this assumed consensus implicitly flatters both reviewer and readers for their expertise also slips past unnoticed. This is the indirect subject of Paul Zoffany’s different take on collectivelydriven types (Fig. 3). The subject of this famous painting is framing itself: the responsive contexts in which works exist are explicitly rendered as the work. Where Alÿs is interested in notoriety, Zoffany is interested in category, and the central involvement in it of aesthetic details, requiring discursive expertise and authority – here, ironically figured. The similarly generic poses of the human figures in art and life – the contrast between the clothed and unclothed, male and female – frames the connoisseurs of these artworks as equally subjects of discussion themselves. The experience of viewing – both ours of the painting and the subjects in the painting of the artworks – self-reflexively performs the self-congratulation, and social inclusion, which belongs to all capacities to recognise. But Zoffany further suggests how the fact of a set of knowledge held in common necessarily generates social stakes: stakes which would from this

53

Familiarity and Recognition

period onwards (1770s) become increasingly negotiated via ideas of authenticity, authority, and attributed value. The painting is an interesting provocation for CRS in the present context because it precedes the dominance of the imaginary which has dominated discussions of how the classical past has been reproduced, revived, revised, revisioned and reversioned since the advent of the modern academy in the late nineteenth century: sequence. 5

Synchronous Diachronies: Imaginaries of Sequence

Embedded in the etymology of tradition, transmission and translation, imaginaries of sequence have profound and discrete effects. The defining characteristic of a ‘source’ is its location in time. The very word ‘source’ already implies a timeline, and thus to some extent, comparison with the present. Such timelines are always also story-lines, and operate as imaginaries in their own right. Maria Wyke recently found a 2004 newspaper article which described a group of US Marines who in order to ‘blow off steam’ before the attack on Fallujah staged a chariot race wearing togas over their body armour (Fig. 4). According to the Associated Press reporter the pre-battle race featured ‘cobbled-together carts and confiscated Iraqi horses, [taking] their cue from the 1959 Charlton Heston classic’: “We’re ready to go. I’m just ready to get this done. I want to go and kill people, so we can go home,” said Lance Cpl. Joseph Bowman, 20, from North Zulch, Texas. “Kill them and go home, that’s all we can do now”. But first, the Marines had a little fun with the horses. “Friends, Romans, Marines: Lend me your ears for the rules,” bellowed the master of ceremonies Capt. Jonathan Vaughn, 30, of Cleveland.89

figure 4 Marines before Fallujah ‘letting off steam’ by re-enacting Ben Hur © Shutterstock 89  Edward Harris, Associated Press, Nov. 6 (2004), NEAR FALLUJAH, IRAQ (AP).

54

Foster

Is this an instance of classical reception? If so, who is ‘doing’ classical reception? For these Marines were not interested in ancient Rome, or in being Roman – they were interested in being American. They were bonding before going into battle. It was precisely the familiarity of the reference that was the value here. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, quoted by the US Captain (‘lend me your ears’), is a text which has its own significant presence in American education, theatre history, and film, both as a generalised ‘Shakespeare’, and as an aspect of the role of Julius Caesar specifically in America’s negotiation of its own republicanism.90 A reason a chariot race could be meaningful at this particular moment had to do with a specific tradition: an imaginary of sequence the Marines all knew existed, even if they did not know its exact details. Behind their actions lay the fact that, for example: – Ben Hur, a novel written by General Lew Wallace, was published in the United States in 1880. By 1900 Wallaces’ original novel was the most owned book in the USA after the Bible. (It would be on US bestseller lists for fifty years, until 1930). – The Chariot Race, an 1883 painting by Alexander Von Wagner, painted in response to the novel, depicted two quadrigas, one with white horses, one with black, hurtling neck and neck around the meta of a Roman circus. This image from Von Wagner’s painting would be used to promote the massively successful US stage version by William Young (recurring later in its film versions), and sales of its published music. – Ben Hur, the 1899 stage version, famous for the technological marvel of its treadmill which allowed real horses (black versus white) to gallop at full tilt onstage towards the audience (each taking it in turns to edge ahead until Messala’s attempt to foul Hur’s wheels backfires and causes his own demise) had been seen by twenty million people by 1921. – Ben Hur, a 1907 silent film, a selection of key episodes from both novel and stage version, included a chariot race staged by Manhattan Beach Fire Department, New York, using simple chariots racing past a static camera.91 – Ben Hur, the 1925 silent feature film, at the time the most expensive film ever made, at $4m (but a reasonable risk, given the then extraordinary notoriety of book and play) also made then record profits (over $75m). Using an actual monumental set, 42 simultaneous cameras, and over ten thousand extras, the chariot race was the highlight of the film and of its promotional advertising. Branded products using the Ben Hur name, some referring to 90  Cf. Wyke on Caesar (2007) and Caesar in the USA (2012). 91  Solomon (2016), who argues that the Ben Hur phenomenon launched modern consumer culture.

Familiarity and Recognition

55

vehicles, e.g. auto-mechanics and house-moving companies, but also toiletries, clothing and wallpaper, proliferated.92 – Ben Hur, the 1959 remake with Charlton Heston, directed by William Wyler (one of the young second unit directors for the chariot race in the 1925 version) was the first American film to have a separate dedicated marketing budget ($3m) to sell branded products tied in to the movie along with the movie itself, creating a nationwide marketing ‘event’. Hailed as launching the era of the modern ‘blockbuster’, it was the highest-grossing film worldwide for three decades. The novel ‘Ben Hur’ that began this sequence was itself part of a tradition of nineteenth-century popular images of ancient Rome in novels, theatre and painting.93 But after its publication the spread of the Ben Hur brand became a self-sustaining phenomenon, deracinated from any single source (cf. ‘lend me your ears’) and signifying a generalised ‘ancient Rome’ as a way to refer to Judeo-Christian values and American history. So while the novel ‘Ben Hur’ written in 1880 by General Lew Wallace may be a single text, bound by its number of words, and with immanent aesthetic merits still capable of yielding pleasure to diverse readers, once it became recognition capital, i.e. publicly familiar, the question of where its boundaries meaningfully begin and end at any one time, for any one person, and how its entity changes as a result of ongoing response, are not simple matters. Familiarity changes its nature retroactively, and predictively. Susan Bennett says everything has brand affinity; is ‘equally available for the creation of value beyond the event itself’.94 But a commercial desire to monetise existing familiarity in a marketplace does not fully explain the Marines’ activity. With the move from a print to a digital culture, not only are works which reference the recognisable, and the tradition which gives rise to that recognisability, implicated in each other: but that this is a collective recognisability can be precisely the value being performed. For the Marines, Ben Hur was less a source, than a resource. A chariot race offered them a means to affirm their common capacity to recognise: in other words, it was an available ‘heritage’, one in which the social group – in this case, nation – was centrally implicated. In the case of material supposed to be collectively familiar, any instance, iteration or intertext cannot be separated from some or other imaginary of sequence, which it both constitutes and is constituted by. Wyke’s work on ancient 92  For this film see now Wyke and Michelakis (2013). 93  For an example, see the study of the converged cultural context of Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii by St Clair and Bautz (2012). 94  Bennet, lecture at IFTR Stockholm, 2016. See also Bennet (2014).

56

Foster

Rome on film has emphasised how cinematic traditions of representation are consciously understood and engaged with by producers and audiences alike. As Feeney puts it in the case of ancient Rome, ‘The Greeks [for the Romans] have a diachronic dimension as well as a synchronic dimension at any given moment, with different imagined or represented Greeks potentially in play in their own constructions’.95 Diachronic and synchronic perspectives are always combined in practice. Not only is each engagement with the classical ‘the culmination of past interpretations,’96 but how any material alluded to was available at a particular time – in print, in translation, via exclusive social circles, an educational syllabus, or google search – makes a difference to its significance, and changes how it is subsequently viewed. Literacy about these dynamics is crucial. Once recognition capital exists, this drives new iterations of the narrative, and new engagements with the original(s) – book, film, painting, etc.97 As this recognisability expands to new audiences, those groups will be newly addressed by repeating versions – hence the need to continuously translate, or remake. The 2016 Ben Hur is a good example: a loss-leading advertisement for much larger revenues from ancillary rights exploitation (merchandise, computer games) it was directed by Timur Bekmambetov from Kazakhstan. Born in the Soviet Union, Bekmambetov is known for his expertise in delivering violent, sexy, action-based and material aimed at non-anglophone markets, rather than character-driven narrative. He was the director of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), Hardcore Henry (2016), and – the film which presumably recommended him to the producers of the 2016 Ben Hur – a female-wrestling ‘period action movie’, The Arena (2001), in which a gladiator undergoes gender reassignment (Fig. 5). This 2016 Ben Hur does not refer to the same 1959 post-war America the Marine Captain imagined he was invoking twelve years earlier.98 These different instances under the same title, ‘Ben Hur’, have the same titles, story elements, and named characters, but in all other respects are entirely different events – produced for different reasons, for different audiences, and highly distinct types of social experience. What links them is not the persistence of meaning, but the persistence of recognition capital. However much declared a ‘remake’, and however visibly similar their typical elements, if such 95  Feeney (2016) 9–10. 96  Pomeroy (2008) 12; Wyke (1997) establishes this. 97  Mass culture is the defining feature of film, rather than the image: Pomeroy (2017) 2. 98  In this high budget range other revenue streams (gaming, merchandise, amusement park rides etc.) have exceeded receipts for theatrical exploitation since c. 2003: Ross Berger, Written By, Dec. 2011.

Familiarity and Recognition

57

figure 5 The Arena, 2001, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, director of the 2016 Ben Hur – an ancient Rome on film now reflective of ex-Soviet and Russian, not post-war American, audience values and with NAR (‘No Acting Required’). Note: Kiefer Sutherland’s comment on the 2014 Pompeii, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, known for the ultra-violent Shopping, Death Race and Resident Evil franchises (Inferno, Afterlife, Extinction, Genesis, Apocalypse, Retribution etc.): http://www.channel24. co.za/Movies/News/Pompeii-was-hell-for-KieferSutherland-20140912.

figure 6 From factoid to fact: an illustration from an Usborne children’s textbook, showing slave rowers with chained ankles.

works are seen as consisting in the different audiences they address, they have very little, if anything, in common. As Arthur Pomeroy says, films which refer to the classical past present a raft of problems for the researcher.99 The Marine Captain was inspired to quote from a well-known text, albeit it from a different work, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.100 In this, the Marine Captain and the AP journalist arguably have more 99  Pomeroy (2008) 9 and Pomeroy (2017) 1–5. 100  Marlon Brando’s powerful performance as Marc Anthony, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1953, made that speech specifically well-known six years before the Charlton Heston Ben Hur.

58

Foster

in ­common with readers of this volume in their respective interest in chariot races, Shakespeare, or Ben Hur, than the largely teenage non-Anglophone audiences which are now the primary target demographic for much current ancient-world themed popular culture, where a classical trope, name or title is often a globally recognisable signal for sex, violence, or large-scale destruction. Charles Martindale has argued that films – and other popular phenomena of low aesthetic quality – have no place in a Classics curriculum.101 But these Ben Hur examples suggest that dividing our scholarly interests in artworks by medium is unhelpful: they need to be distinguished by purpose, as scholars in translation studies have argued:102 or more specifically, by the various audiences they imply. For apparently similar content, or subject matter, can be a misleading categoric determinant. Films like the Frank Miller’s Anti-Islam comic-strip adaptation 300 are evidence not of a widespread interest in in ancient history among its target audiences, as I have argued elsewhere, but of its almost complete absence.103 The extent to which not seeing a line connecting the 1959 Ben Hur to its 2016 remake seems counterintuitive performs the extraordinary extent to which imaginaries of sequence have become a naturalised characteristic of Western discourse. Continuity is a preoccupation of ancient literature.104 But while ancient writers personify their books and imagine their future trajectories (e.g. Ovid Tristia 1. 1) they do not necessarily imagine them as ‘originals’, or ‘sources’ of a sequence or timeline of future versions, translations, or copies, in the way suggested by, say, pedagogical practices of listing like this: Oresteia (thanks to Edith Hall for the ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ comments):105 458 BCE Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon, Choepheroi, Eumenides) 452–421 Ion of Chios Agamemnon (Clytemnestra is the ‘good guy’) 240–207 Livius Andronicus Aegisthus (Agamemnon is the ‘bad guy’) 140–86 Lucius Accius Clytemnestra (Aegisthus is ‘bad’) 100–50 Polemaios’ Clytemnestra 55 BCE Revival of Accius’ Clytemnestra for opening of Pompey’s theatre: 50-mule procession when Agamemnon enters 101  Martindale (2013). 102  ‘Skopos’: see e.g. Maljkmaier and Windle (2011). 103   Foster (2012): https://www.academia.edu/3094058/Adapting_History_and_the_History _of_Adaptation (accessed July 30 2017). 104  Feeney (2016) 5. 105  An example of the knowledge which such listing enables is Hall’s history of the representation of Clytemnestra, which I draw on here: Hall (2005) 53–76. For any of these productions, see http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/research-collections/performance-database/productions.

Familiarity and Recognition

59

c. 1 BC Ovid Ars Amatoria (mention) (Clytemnestra love-struck for Aegisthus, no Iphigenia) 49–65 CE Seneca Agamemnon (Clytemnestra ‘bad’, no Iphigenia) 1589 Pierre Matthieu’s Clytemnestre (love triangle) 1680 Claude Boyer’s Agamemnon 1738 James Thomson’s Agamemnon (Drury Lane, London – Clytemnestra faints, doesn’t kill anyone; Agamemnon ‘good’, Aegisthus ‘bad’) 1777 Vittorio Alfieri’s Agamennone 1780 James Thomson’s Agamemnon (in French, in Paris) 1797 Citizen Lemercier’s Agamemnon, Theâtre de la Republique (decadence of Royals, Trojan victim Cassandra ‘good’) 1848 William Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair, Becky Sharp’s viricide 1868 Robert Reece Agamemnon and Cassandra, or the Prophet and Loss of Troy (male crossed-dressed Clytemnestra, classical burlesque) 1875–80 Lewis Campbell’s translation of original text of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon produced by leading industrial engineer Fleeming Jenkin, Edinburgh Frank Benson’s Agamemnon, the original text in Greek, at Oxford, 1880 the first Greek play to be performed in its original text since antiquity, according to national newspapers 1885–1904 Frank Benson’s Oresteia in translation, international tour 1906 Harvard University’s Agamemnon, to inaugurate the new stadium, with a 26-horse procession when Agamemnon enters 1921 J.T. Shepherd’s Oresteia in Greek, a revival of the Cambridge Greek play in Greek tradition (ended in 1912) after First World War 1926 Terence Gray’s Oresteia with full choral dance, in English, the Festival Theatre, mocking the old-fashioned Cambridge tradition (Ninette de Valois) 1931 Eugene O’Neill Mourning Becomes Electra (no Iphigenia – Freud) 1936 Nazi Oresteia (during Berlin Olympics) 1939 T.S. Eliot The Family Reunion 1943 Sartre Les Mouches 1977 Andre Serban’s Agamemnon in New York 1980 Peter Stein’s Oresteia in Berlin (stages the beginning of all human life) 1980 Karoulos Koun’s Oresteia in Greece 1981 Tony Harrison and Peter Hall’s Oresteia at National Theatre (with masks, inspired by the fact the Olivier theatre’s shape was modelled on Epidauros, according to the NY Times) 1986 Suzuki Tadashi Clytemnestra, Japan

60

Foster

1992 Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides (Asian-style choral dance; preceded by Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis) 1999 Katie Mitchell Oresteia, NT (ghost of Iphigenia on stage haunting Agamemnon) 2004 Molora’s South African Oresteia (Orestes reconciles with Clytemnestra, decides not to kill her) 2015 Rory Mullarky’s Oresteia, in a new translation, Globe Theatre, London 2015 Robert Icke’s Oresteia at the Almeida Theatre, London (foregrounds Agamemnon’s dilemma) Classicists, theatre makers and filmmakers engaged with the classical past, necessarily operate in the context of such imagined chronologies, or timelines. What is currently called ‘Greek drama’ in Britain, for example, is an art form for which some or other imaginary of sequence is definitionally essential. Histories of ‘works’ might involve a variety of imaginaries of sequence – classificatory, genealogical, evolutionary, originary – but what they all have in common is the tendency to reify: both the individual item, and its assumed aggregate. As Louis Deluc put it in 1921: ‘Orestes, Agamemnon, Electra, have crossed twenty-five centuries of different customs, literatures, horrors, and yet remain intact. They have the solidity of statues’.106 Of course, chronology itself – naming and dating – is a prerequisite for other forms of knowledge. But as with all organising principles, it has its own effects, the literary effects of listing are obvious; but the chronological listing – which Classical Reception Studies pre-eminently confronts, conceptually and actually – also attributes value, defines, and legitimises. For chronologies are always also narratives. They suggest beginnings and ends, articulate change, and heroise their subjects (repeated ‘works’). These imaginaries of sequence reflexively sustain a late nineteenth-century focus on objects, rather than audiences, and exert this normative influence mostly unnoticed. Signs of their hidden agency at work are, for example: measurements of gaps or extents of time (e.g. Agamemnon in Performance 458 BC to AD 2004107); precise definitional parameters (not the myth of the house of Atreus, Greek tragedy, or Aeschylus’, but ‘Oresteia’); precisely located origins (‘Charlton Heston’s 1959 classic’); and the specificity of date and place in general (the APGRD’s digital database of productions of Greek drama is cross-searchable by both date and place, enabling a variety of chronological lists to be made of works which refer 106  Michaelakis (2013) 2, quoting Deluc [1921] (1988) 257. 107  Macintosh, Michelakis, Hall and Taplin (eds.) (2005).

Familiarity and Recognition

61

to the same ancient ‘source’.)108 These elements conspire to create a decontextualized eventhood – the idea that something happened without reference to those it happened to. This is what the Bacchae review from 1964 exemplifies. It continues: There are no new interpretations to be imposed on The Bacchae: even the broad lines on which it is to be produced have hardened into permanence over the last two thousand-odd years. All that remains to be decided is in the nature of ornament….109 The mention of number of years – the measurement of the gap – is significant. Diachrony here explicitly reifies, gives ‘permanence’ to an object: one confirmed by the apparently measurable scope (‘two thousand-odd years’) of its continuity. The creative industries have an interest in maintaining the idea of the transhistorical or universal appeal of ‘the work itself’ – as do our disciplines. Both draw legitimacy from the importance of their objective subject matter, an importance reflexively reinforced by reference to its alleged longevity. But interrogating the dynamics of traditions and the traditional is important. For traditions are prescriptive, as well as descriptive (why the 1964 Bacchae reviewer thinks it worth intervening). We need to better understand their agency, specifically as imaginaries which influence actual practice.110 6

Conclusion: Reframing Expertise

Viewing all types of public engagement with the recognisable or familiar in terms of the audiences they imply foregrounds the interrelation between discursive and creative practices. As Zoffany’s wry compare-and-contrast exercise suggests (Fig. 3), we might want to distinguish between readings of works which aim to imaginatively access the experience of the human subjects by whom and for whom they were originally made, and readings which are interested in using a recognisable work in a particular present in order to say something else – usually about the nature of that present. This relationship 108  The APGRD has taken thoughtful interest in the database’s inevitably prescriptive principles of organisation, which evolves periodically: http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/ research-collections/performance-database/productions. 109  B.A. Young, Financial Times, Feb 6, 1964. 110  Foster (2018) 121.

62

Foster

of adaptor to audience of saying something about another work – Margaret Atwood’s take on the Odyssey in the form of The Penelopiad, for example – is a very different relationship to audience from propositional artworks, that is, artworks interested in performing the impossibility of taking a single or simple point of view. It is in fact very hard to deliver to public experience the immanent complexities, ironies and ambiguities of a famous text in a traditional context. Existing expectations, and the other values brought into play by the tradition of which it is a part, must first be acknowledged, addressed, and incorporated into the re-presentation. But the following example of persistence in a 2003 children’s textbook, ‘Rome’ (Fig. 6) suggests a further reason expertise about the traditional is needed. The chains just visible on the slaves’ ankles come from Lew Wallace’s imagination. In his original 1880 novel Ben Hur, the chains are involved in a key story point,111 so it is not surprising they were repeated in the stage play, and in the 1925 and 1959 films. But according to Simon James, there is no evidence that slave rowers were chained in antiquity. In earlier periods rowing was an honour.112 So here, a remnant of Judeo-Christian proselytising fiction from the nineteenth century, written by a General who had just fought a war to end modern African slavery, creeps into a childrens’ history book, a hundred and twenty years later. Few would dispute the usefulness of Simon James’ corrective expertise, from the discipline of archaeology. But no single discipline currently sees its subject as assessing the nature of such persistence, the wider patterns and behaviours such a ‘factoid’ (James’ term) exemplifies, or the traditions of representation, associations, identifications and moral justifications of which it is a part.113 Corrective expertise is critically important in the digital present: but not the piecemeal object-focus corrective expertise inherited from nineteenthcentury engagements with authenticity (how long the Spartans’ spears actually were in discussions of the 300, for example).114 A shift of interest towards how we know, rather than what we know, is long overdue. The British Museum, for example, sold its 2017 exhibition about the ancient Scythians by emphasising what they have in common with the fictional Dothraki in the Game of Thrones,115 as if this recognisability was what would make the Scythians interesting to its target audiences. This is the relationship to audiences of advertising. It is far removed from an idea of history as a preeminently question-raising activity, which tells us something about ourselves. 111  The Roman general Arrius, after noticing a ‘nobility’ about Hur, orders that his chains be unlocked before they go into battle, so he will not drown if the ship sinks. 112  James (2001). 113  E.g. as described by Pomeroy (2008) 7–8. 114  Foster (2012) 123. 115  http://blog.britishmuseum.org/the-dothraki-and-the-scythians-a-game-of-clones/.

Familiarity and Recognition

63

But an audience-centered approach does not have to choose this logic in order to appeal. The very title of a series like The Bromans suggests there is an appeal in drawing attention to the habit itself of replicating ancient Rome in recognisable generic tropes (cf. ‘Dickensian’, the Cohen brothers’ Hail Caesar.). The problem is not comparison to Game of Thrones as such, but the way it is made. Scholars, archivists, curators and translators (in the broadest sense) could engage audiences by bringing out how different the Scythians were from the associations with Game of Thrones viewers might first imagine. This distinction in the purpose of any act of reference is important. Thomas Hegghammer, for example, has recently demonstrated how apparently innocent or kitsch romanticised history and familiar cultural references – music, poetry and storytelling – were also highly active agents in laying a cultural foundation for the spread of Jihad,116 ‘presenting something with an aura of authenticity in which each element has some historical precedent … [acting as] a glue that has kept lots of different groups together in the past, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t in the future’.117 As William St. Clair puts it, ‘Any act of looking … has required decisions on the part of the viewer, not normally consciously or explicitly taken, about the organising categories within which the seeing experience is to be understood’.118 To make patent the framing action of these organizing categories could be the work of CRS. Its ‘knowledge world’ positions it well to debunk the myths and question the stories we are sold, and make the history of their selling compelling. Expertise – its function, and importance – urgently needs reframing to this end. Reframing what many people traditionally think is interesting. Suggesting there is no single truth, but rather many truths, and that these are relative, perspectival, and context-dependent, is very different to encouraging the view that the ancient Greeks and Romans were just like us. Some, especially the young, might warm to scholarship which promises to question authority, expose mechanisms of persuasion, or reveal some of the underlying cultural assumptions and structures of attention that control our perceptions – in short, a scholarship which enables awareness of the processes by which opinions are formed, and maintained.119 It matters that we collectively and publicly dispute the historical nature of the ancient world, but this has to be in informed conversation with the 116  Hegghammer (2017). ‘… they [Islamic jihadis] see themselves as historical heroes, knights in shining armour … it’s a very romantic culture’ (Ibid.). 117  Quoted by Andrew Anthony, The Observer July 23rd, 2017. 118  St. Clair (2014) 58–59 (http://books.openedition.org/obp/2136). 119  See Zorach (2017). Platt and Squire (2017) xxxiii; and Goldhill (2017) 283–301 recently ­described their activity as scholars as acts of framing.

64

Foster

traditions of its various and aggregate representation. For if item and tradition are co-constitutive, as this chapter has suggested, then the pressing question to ask is who, or what, controls these ongoing frames. The vocabulary of familiarity and recognition keeps these multiple and collusive contexts in the picture. This angle of approach is both suggested by and timely in a digital global present, where the act of reference to the collectively familiar increasingly drives public communication and social cohesion. In this supremely referential environment Classical Reception Studies could have an important role in helping shift conceptions of cultural history away from a discourse about objects and events, towards one about the attributions of value, and collective perceptions, the repetition of objects and events makes possible. 7

Further Reading

Some of the ideas in this chapter are developed further in an international research network I founded in 2017, ‘Re-’ (seminar series: http://www.crassh.cam .ac.uk/programmes/re-interdisciplinary-network; blog: http://www.crassh.cam .ac.uk/programmes/re-interdisciplinary-network; twitter https://twitter.com /_Re_Network_; sign up at https://lists.cam.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/ucam-re -interdisciplinarynetwork. Since 2018 we have collaborated with Factum Arte Madrid), the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (Berlin), Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH), the Polanyi Society (USA), AI and Society Journal, and Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA), holding symposia and conferences on topics such as Reperforming Images: from Sources to Resources; Translation as Performance, Rethinking Repetition in a Digital Age, Repetition, Revival, Reconstruction: the Visual Culture of Architecture 1750–1900 and Tacit Engagement in the Digital Age, and Re-/Un-Working Tragedy: perspectives from the Global South. Publication titles in development include Iteration as Persuasion in a Digital World, Beyond Originals and Copies, Canons Versus Icons, Translation and the Performance of Authority, and Recognition Capital. Published works in this emerging field include ‘Repetition as Recognition’, my afterword to Eirini Kartsaki’s edited volume On Repetition: Writing, Performance and Art (2016), “Re”: an Errant Glossary edited by Christoph Holzmeyer and Arnd Wedemeyer (2019), and Reconstruction, Replication and Re-enactment in the Humanities and Social Sciences (eds. Sven Dupré, Anna Harris, Julia Kursell, Patricia Lulof, Maartje Stols-Witlox) Amsterdam University Press (forthcoming). For thinking about the dynamics of performance, collectivity and tradition, English lecturer Zoe Svendsen’s ongoing work as a lecturer

Familiarity and Recognition

65

and practitioner is seminal (see her ‘Theatre & Dramaturgy’, forthcoming in the Palgrave Macmillan series (eds. Harvie and Rebellato; for a semiotician’s perspective, Edinburgh Professor of Architectural Computing Richard Coyne’s blog (https://richardcoyne.com/) is generous and relevant. For the symbolic agency of the classical, Christopher Stray’s early works remain very useful (1998 et al.), and Yopie Prins’s recent Ladies Greek (2017) methodologically inspiring; Maria Wyke’s 1998 monograph Projecting the Past and the 2005 Imperial Projections (eds. Joshel, Malamud and McGuire) are excellent introductions to the importance of synchronic context in Classics and film, worth looking at before navigating the 2017 Blackwell Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen (ed. Pomeroy); Edith Hall’s chapter ‘Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra versus her Senecan Tradition’ in the 2004 Agamemnon in Performance: 458 BC to AD 2004 (eds. Macintosh, Michelakis, Hall and Taplin) is an excellent example of the ideological insights enabled by diachronic research. Bibliography Anderson, B.R. O’Gorman, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991). Barnett, D., “When Is a Play Not a Drama? Two Examples of Postdramatic Theatre Texts,” New Theatre Quarterly 24.1 (2008), 14–23. Barthes, R., Image, Music, Text (London, 1984). Baudrillard, J., Simulacra and Simulation (Michigan, 1994). Bayart, J.-F., The Illusion of Cultural Identity (London, 2005). Beard, M. and Henderson, J., Classical Art: From Greece to Rome (Oxford, 2001). Beard, M. and Henderson, J., Classics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1995). Benjamin, W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (London, 2008). Bennett, S. and Schwietzer, M., “In the Window at Disney: A Lifetime of Brand Desire,” The Drama Review 58. 4 (2014), 23–31. Bhabha, H.K., Nation and Narration (London – New York, 1990). Billings, J.H., “Hyperion’s Symposium: an erotics of reception,” Classical Receptions Journal 2 (2010), 4–24. Boase-Beier, J., A Critical Introduction to Translation Studies (London, 2011). Bourdieu, P., Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Boston, 1984). Bourriaud, N., Relational Aesthetics (Paris, 2002). Brown, B., “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28.1 (2001), 1–22. Budelmann, F. and Haubold, J., “Reception and Tradition,” in Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions, ed. Hardwick, L., (Malden, 2008), 13–25.

66

Foster

Butler, S., Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception (London, 2016). Davies, B., Wladyslawa, R.G., e.a., Imaginary Cities: The Ruins of Troy and Carthage in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2011). De Bruyn, B., Wolfgang Iser: A Companion (Berlin – Boston, 2012). De Pourcq, M., “Classical Reception Studies: Reconceptualizing the Study of the Classical Tradition,” The International Journal of the Humanities 9 (2012), 219–226. Eliot, T.S., “What Is a Classic?” The Spectator, 1 March 1945, The Spectator Archive. Accessed December 16, 2013. http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/2nd-march-1945/22/what -is-a-classic-by-t-s-eliot-faber. Feeney, D.C., Beyond Greek: The Beginnings of Latin Literature (Boston, 2016). Fish, S.E., Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Boston, 1980). Foster, C., A Very British Greek Play: a Critical Investigation of the Origins and Tradition of Greek Plays in Greek in England, 1880–1921. PhD thesis (Cambridge, 2015). Foster, C., “Adapting History and the History of Adaptation,” in The Adaptation of History: Essays on Ways of Telling the Past, eds. Raw and Tutan (2013), 117–28. Foster, C., “Afterword: Repetition or Recognition?” in On Repetition: Writing, Performance and Art, ed. Kartsaki, E., (Chicago – London, 2016). Foster, C., “Wilde and the Emergence of Literary Drama, 1880–1895,” in Oscar Wilde and Classical Antiquity, ed., Manny, I. Iarla, e.a. (Oxford, 2018), 107–126. Fragkou, M., “‘We are Athens’: Precarious Citizenship in Rimini Protokoll’s Prometheus in Athens,” in Performances of Capitalism in Crises and Resistance, eds. Zaroulia, M., and Hager, P., (London, 2015), 171–192. Gély, V., “Partages de l’Antiquité : un paradigme pour le comparatisme,” Revue de littérature comparée 344.4 (2013), 387–95. Goldhill, S., “‘Is This Reperformance?’” in Imagining Reperformance in Ancient Culture: Studies in the Traditions of Drama and Lyric, ed. Uhlig, A. and Hunter, R., (Cambridge, 2017), 283–301. Goldhill, S., Who Needs Greek? Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism (Cambridge, 2002). Goody, J., The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge, 1987). Graf, B., “Arya, Katniss, and Merida: Empowering Girls through the Amazonian Archetype,” in Classical Myth on Screen, ed. Cyrino, M., and Safran, M., (London, 2016), 73–82. Graziosi, B., Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic (Cambridge, 2002). Güthenke, C., Greek Lives. German Classical Scholarship and the Language of Attachment, 1790–1920 (Oxford, 2014). Güthenke, C., “Nostalgia and Neutrality. A Response to Charles Martindale,” Classical Receptions Journal 5.2 (2013), 238–45.

Familiarity and Recognition

67

Hall, E., “Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra versus Her Senecan Tradition,” in Agamemenon in Performance: 459 BC to 2004 AD, 53–76. ed. Macintosh, F., Michelakis, P., Hall, E., and Taplin, O., (Oxford, 2005). Hall, E., The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey (London, 2009). Hall, S., “Whose Heritage? Un‐settling ‘the Heritage’, Re‐imagining the post‐nation,” Third Text 13 (1999), 3–13. Hardwick, L., Reception Studies (Oxford, 2003). Hardwick, L., “Translating Greek Plays for the Theatre Today: Transmission, Trans­ gression, Transformation,” Target – International Journal of Translation Studies 25.3 (2013), 321–42. Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., A Companion to Classical Receptions (Oxford, 2008). Hegghammer, T., ed., Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists (Cambridge, 2017). Hermans, T., “Translation, Equivalence and Intertextuality,” Wasafiri 18 (2003), 39–41. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1984). Holdsworth, N., Theatre and Nation (Basingstoke – New York, 2010). Hunter, R. and Uhlig, A., Imagining Reperformance in Ancient Culture (Cambridge, 2017). Hutchinson, G.O., Greek to Latin: Frameworks and Contexts for Intertextuality (Oxford, 2013). Iser, W., How to Do Theory (London, 2006). Iser, W., Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (New York, 1993). James, S., “The Roman Galley Slave: Ben Hur and the Birth of a Factoid,” Public Archaeology 2.1 (2001), 35–49. Jauss, H.R., Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (Minneapolis, 1982). Laera, Margherita, ‘On Killing Children: Greek Tragedies on British Stages in 2015’ in Critical Stages/Scènes Critiques, The IATC webjournal, December 2015: Issue No 12. Leach, E.W., The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of the Naples (Cambridge, 2004). Lessig, L., Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (London, 2008). Lipman, M., Contemporary Aesthetics (1973). Lorenz, Katharina, Ancient Mythological Images and their Interpretation. An Intro­ duction to Iconology, Semiotics and Image Studies in Classical Art History (Cambridge, 2016). Macintosh, F., Michelakis, P., Hall, E., and Taplin, O., eds., Agamemnon in Performance 458 BC to AD 2004 (Oxford, 2005). Malmkjær, K. and Windle, K., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies (Oxford, 2011).

68

Foster

Martindale, C., “Reception – a New Humanism? Receptivity, Pedagogy, the Trans­ historical,” Classical Receptions Journal 5.2 (2013), 169–83. Martindale, C., Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge, 1993). Martindale, C. and Thomas, R.F., eds., Classics and the Uses of Reception (London, 2006). Michelakis, P., Greek Tragedy on Screen (Oxford, 2013). Michelakis, P., “Performance Reception: Canonisation and Periodisation,” in Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions, ed. Hardwick, L., (London, 2008), 219–24. Oey, J., Practicing Adaptation: One Screenplay, Five Films (UEA PhD thesis, 2016). Patzak, Brooke Penaloza, “The Museum Is Open: Towards a Transnational History of Museums 1750–1940 (Meyer and Savoy, Eds.),” Museum Anthropology Review 9.1–2 (2015), 176–178. Platt, V. and Squire, M., The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 2017). Polanyi, M., The Tacit Dimension (Gloucester, 1966). Pomeroy, A.J., ed., A Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome on Screen (London, 2017). Pomeroy, A.J., “Then It Was Destroyed by the Volcano”: The Ancient World in Film and on Television (London, 2008). Porter, J.I., Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome (Princeton, 2006). Pratt, M.L., “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession (1991), 33–40. Prins, Y., Ladies’ Greek: Victorian Translations of Tragedy (Princeton, 2017). Prins, Y., “OTOTOTOI: Virginia Woolf and the Naked Cry of Cassandra,” in Agamemnon in Performance 458 B.C. to 2004 A.D. (Oxford, 2005), 163–87. Ravenhill-Johnson, A., and James, P., The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem, 1850–1925 (Cambridge, 2013). Richardson, E.M.D., The Failure of History: Nineteenth-Century Britain’s Pursuit of the Ancient World (Cambridge, 2013). Rodosthenous, G., Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial Visions (London, 2017). Rush, O., The Reception of Doctrine: An Appropriation of Hans Robert Jauss’ Reception Aesthetics and Literary Hermeneutics (Roma, 1997). Schmitz, T.A., Modern Literary Theory and Ancient Texts: An Introduction (London, 2007). Scodel, R., “The Poet’s Career, the Rise of Tragedy, and Athenian Cultural Hegemony,” in Gab es das Griechische Wunder? eds. Papenfus, Dietrich and Strocka, Volker M. (Mainz, 2001), 215–25. Silk, M., Gildenhard, I., and Barrow, R., The Classical Tradition: Art, Literature, Thought (London, 2014). Solomon, J., Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster (Edinburgh, 2016).

Familiarity and Recognition

69

St. Clair, W., “5. Looking at the Acropolis of Athens from Modern Times to Antiquity,” in Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice, ed. Sandis, C., 57–102. St. Clair, W. and Bautz, A., “Imperial Decadence: The Making of the Myths in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii,” Victorian Literature and Culture 40.2 (2012), 359–96. Stephens, S.A., and Vasunia, P., Classics and National Cultures (Oxford, 2010). Stillman, S., “Can Behavioral Science Help in Flint?” The New Yorker, January 16, 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/can-behavioral-science-help -in-flint. Stray, C., Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830–1960 (Oxford, 1998). Ulf, C., “Rethinking Cultural Contacts,” Ancient West and East 8 (2009), 81–132. Wakabayashi, J., “Secular Translation: Asian Perspectives,” in The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies (Oxford, 2011). West, M.L., “The Invention of Homer,” Classical Quarterly 49.2 (1999), 364–382. Wiles, D., “Greek and Shakespearean Plays in Performance: Their Different Academic Receptions,” in Theorising Performance, eds. Hall, Edith e.a. (London, 2011). Williams, L., Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Brunswick, 1995). Wyke, M., Caesar: A Life in Western Culture (London, 2007). Wyke, M., Caesar in the USA (Berkeley, 2012). Wyke, M., Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History (New York – London, 1998). Wyke, M. and Michaelakis, P., The Ancient World in Silent Cinema (Cambridge, 2013). Zeitlin, F., “Dionysus in 69,” in Dionysus Since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the New Millennium, eds. Hall, E., Macintosh, F., and Wrigley, A. (Oxford, 2004), 49–76.

Of Mice and Manuscripts: Literary Reception and the Material Text Fran Middleton We consume texts through physical experience – seeing, touching, hearing. At the moment of reception, a reader, viewer or listener reacts to sensory experience even as they realise the meaning of a work. Scholars have emphasised this in relation to the reception of plays and other literature through performance, and discussed the changed dynamic performance creates between the text and its ultimate recipient,1 but what may be said about the material books which frame the reception of written texts? What can we learn from books’ role in the reception process? As a medium through which reception occurs, the material book performs its own act of reception and influences a reader’s engagement with the text. In the words of Hans Robert Jauss (1970:13), each new text ‘evokes for the reader (listener) the horizon of expectations and rules familiar from earlier texts, which are then varied, corrected, changed or just reproduced’. However, the material book frames a reader’s expectations as much as the text’s tropes of narrative and character. As a result, the book may itself produce a competing horizon of expectations, to operate against the text’s content. In performance, a text is mediated through speech and movement, sound and other visual interest. Material books less obviously manipulate their text, but they allow it to become a visual and tactile experience. The material book’s ‘set of marks’, as Charles Martindale describes (1993:15) the text in material form, may be understood to lack meaning until that meaning ‘is construed by a reader’. Yet before one determines the meaning of such marks, there are other questions to answer. What sort of marks are they? How big? How clear? How old are they and how were they produced? The more a reader finds themselves answering these questions, not least by encountering different versions of the text, the more reception is influenced by the text’s frame. In the case of classical literature, this issue becomes ever more significant, as our surviving ancient texts have been countlessly remediated since antiquity. In this chapter, I first look at two famous productions of the Iliad, one from the tenth century and the other from the twentieth, to discuss how they model different approaches to the text and work as material receptions of the Iliad, insisting on the poem’s 1  See for example Hall (2010), who discusses performance reception against the binary relationship between the imagined reader and text.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_005

Of Mice and Manuscripts

71

importance. I then turn to the Batrachomyomachia, its own work of Iliadic reception, to consider the power of those horizons of expectation produced by the material book. The Batrachomyomachia’s humour, I will suggest, does not only rely on the characters and tropes of the Iliad, but the social status of that poem, which we may understand as a property defined through the reception process of the material text.

1

Ancient authors would recognise only very few of the objects through which we read their texts today. The vast majority of classical works do not survive in papyrus rolls, but through printed volumes, digital editions, fragments and handwritten codices. Venetus A is one such manuscript. As the oldest surviving copy of the complete Iliad, Venetus A (Marcianus Graecus Z. 454 [= 822]) was produced in Byzantium during the tenth century AD, and is famous for its extensively annotated version of the Iliad’s text, including both critical marginalia and more lengthy commentary alongside the poem’s verses. It is our main source for the Iliad’s A scholia, and provides important evidence for the reception of the Iliad in antiquity. In its own right the manuscript also tells us a great deal about Byzantine reading practice and the reception of the Homeric epics at this time. The recto face of the volume’s twelfth folio shows the opening of Iliad 1. Rather than a neutral presentation of the text, the folio emphasises the importance of its scholarly commentary. The Iliadic verses themselves only take up a quarter – maybe a third – of the page, and they are bulked out by interlinear glosses and marginalia. Scholarly commentary, on the other hand, takes up the majority of the space and surrounds the Iliadic text on three sides, visually shutting the verse within its compass. This catena style of commentary, with notes locking in the main text, was most commonly used during the Byzantine period for sacred texts such as the Bible, rather than for works of classical antiquity.2 This wider context allows us to recognise Venetus A as an act of scholarly reverence and respect for the Iliad, and the importance of the verse is further emphasised by the folio’s hierarchies of letter size and the intensity of ink. Although there are only few lines produced on this page, Venetus A’s Iliadic verse is written in the largest and darkest lettering, the easiest script to physically see. 2  See Hunger (1989) 29–30, who discusses various commentary layouts in the Byzantine period.

72

Middleton

The Homeric verse appears as the most important material on the page and this layout is a reception of the Iliad: a visual representation of a scholar’s studious approach to Homeric poetry in the world of Byzantine literature. At the same time, it also predicates such a reception, by its nature as a material book. A reader of this edition cannot look at the Iliad without seeing commentary, and they are not free to formulate a response to the Iliad through consumption of its verse alone. Instead, the reader’s approach to the text responds to the commentary which surrounds it, even if that reader actively ignores this extraneous information. One recognises the Iliad as a work which takes the same shape as other texts of great cultural significance, and as something ‘more’ than the average classical poem. The text’s purpose and value is made clear even before the reader considers the poem’s first line, as the Iliad is signalled as a text which should engender respect close, scholarly attention. No two Byzantine manuscripts look alike, even when they are produced within the same cultural moment. As a result, Venetus A does more than record the Zeitgeist of tenth-century Byzantium, and more than record a set of interactions we may imagine between its scribe, commissioning scholar and financer.3 The manuscript both receives the Iliad and encourages its readers to read the poem in its own scholarly way. This challenges any model of reception in which the material text’s ‘set of marks’ are amorphous and must be realised into meaning. The marks of Venetus A’s Iliad do a great deal more to determine the cultural position of the Homeric text and to argue how the Iliad should be reproduced in the future. Venetus A’s reception of the text is an act of constitution, which is concerned not only with the manuscript’s own reader, but with the on-going production of the Iliad as a text. How do we understand the theory of this? Over the course of the 1980s, in his works Palimpsestes (1982) and Seuils (1987), the French theorist Gérard Genette examined how texts are presented, arguing that they are always influenced by their accompanying frameworks, which he terms the ‘paratext’. This paratext is a combination of the ‘peritext’ – textual material physically present in the book, such its rear-cover blurb, front-cover imagery, title and publishing insignia – as well as any wider information a reader is able to access about the work, called the ‘epitext’. This includes interviews with the writer, their correspondence, and a book’s reviews.4 In the introduction to Seuils (1987:7, emphasis his), Genette claims that the text uses this paratextual accompaniment

3  The precise circumstances of Venetus A’s production are unknown. For investigation into the manuscript’s ensuing history, see Blackwell and Dué (2009). 4  Genette (1987) 7–11.

Of Mice and Manuscripts

73

… precisely to present it [le présenter], in the usual sense of the verb, but also in its strongest sense: to give it presence [le rendre présent], to insure its presence in the world, its “reception” [« réception »] and consumption, in the form, today at least, of a book. This complicates Martindale’s (1993:3) maxim that ‘meaning is always realized at the point of reception’. In Genette’s formulation, material realisation of the text is what gives rise to reception, and the paratext allows textual meaning to be predicted, at least to a certain extent, before reception occurs. The material text operates in a similar way to this, but it attacks the idea of reception as an absolute, isolable moment more committedly, as the influence of the physical page becomes even less separable than Genette’s paratext from the text itself. To give the text presence is to receive the text. The text always requires some sort of presence before its abstract meaning may be realised, yet to give the text presence also requires determining the text’s meaning. The two actions of the material book, reception and production, are paradoxically simultaneous. Venetus A simultaneously responds to the Iliad with respect and engenders respect from its reader for that text. The longer processes of reception and of production depend on one another – and over time, in the tradition of a work, they create a recursive feedback loop, in which the text’s meaning is repeatedly closed down at the same time as its realisation is made possible. Text without realised meaning, Genette’s bare text (‘texte nu’), does not exist in Martindale’s model of reception,5 and we need not assume its existence in any pure form. Yet one encounters a field of expectations for the text shaped by paratextual information and the work’s material presentation. This image of the text is constantly under negotiation even before the text has been read, and that reading is situated within discourses of cultural value and social practice: questions of who reads the work and why. The reader’s response is not isolated, and it is not the only thing to give the text its clothes, and the material book responds to the text’s qualities as a social entity as well as a literary conceit. To explain further: Figure 2 shows page 1 (folio 18r) of David Monro and Thomas Allen’s Oxford Classical Text of Iliad 1–12 (first published 1902, this copy reprinted 1978 and housed in the Faculty of Classics’ library in Cambridge). There are a number of continuities between this volume, a scholarly edition of the twentieth century, and Venetus A. Again, the hexameters of the Iliadic text have been presented in the most legible script on the page, in this case the 5  See for example Martindale (1993) 18: ‘Every reading is different from every other reading; once again there is no text-in-itself, but only a series (potentially endless?) of competing (or complementary) readings’.

74

Middleton

largest, and they bear the title ΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ A (ILIAD 1), although a later hand has filled in the space before the alpha in Venetus A to spell out the numeral, ΑΛΦΑ. As these books share a title, we might assume they present the same text. The verse each book presents is very nearly the same, although capitalisation varies and, for example, a nu is added in Venetus A to finish ἔθηκε[ν] in line 2. The Greek script is appreciably different, though we may not think this matters, shifting between minuscule handwriting and the typescript of Oxford’s Clarendon Press. The most significant difference, however, may not be perceived by comparing folios. This is the place of each Iliad within its contemporary readership. Unlike Venetus A, the OCT is a printed edition of the Iliad, one of many near-identical copies rather than a unique manuscript, and this encodes a huge difference in the text’s social position. This Cambridge copy of the Iliad OCT belongs to a single location and community, just like Venetus A, but the book has come to this community by chance, as mass-production has provided copies which look, feel and behave in the same way to uncountable readers and reading communities across the globe for more than a hundred years.6 One can consult this object’s set of marks in any number of other places, and can own them for the price of a relatively inexpensive evening meal. More accessible than Venetus A, and suitable for a wider range of purposes, the OCT Iliad presents its verses more openly on the page, clean of interlinear or marginal annotation. Minimal scholarly commentary is subordinated to the bottom of the page and restricted to history of the text’s form. Observations are compressed out of continuous prose into an esoteric set of abbreviations, presuming less interest in these issues from its reader than Venetus A. For all their similarities, Venetus A and the OCT Iliad evoke emphatically different scenarios of readerly engagement and different positions for the Iliad in literary culture. In his work on modern textual edition, Sean Gurd suggests this difference affects how each engages with the poem’s tradition, as the twentieth century apparatus criticus encodes textual plurality in a way that manuscript scholia do not. He argues, In essence, the text above the apparatus is a finding aid, an ordered series to which manuscript and critical variants are keyed; and its function as an index to the archive of textual production equals, if it does not completely dwarf, its role of representing an authorial original. In other words, the critical text serves as a singular container of textual plurality.

6  On the social impact of textual mass production, principally among scientific communities, see Eisenstein (1979).

Of Mice and Manuscripts

75

For those who are editors in their own right, this will be true: they will appreciate the textual variety recorded by the OCT Iliad. Yet the wider reception of the OCT series also means that this version of the text appears definitive, and the suppression of its textual commentary is targeted at readers who wish to read this book’s Iliad with that belief.7 Gurd rejects the commonly held view that critical editions like the OCTs attempt to evoke authoritative ‘original’ visions of the text,8 but this is how the extended community of lay students and literary critics are accustomed to using the series. The great number of objects which make up this imprint of the Iliad collectively offer a shared target for all manner of scholarly activity, from undergraduate examinations to doctoral dissertations to professorial monographs. The app. crit. reassures its reader of the editorial labour which has gone into this volume and reminds them of the editor’s authority, which depends on their mastery of those other editions the reader now has no need to consult. The OCT Iliad is a work of reception in its own right – a modern book for a modern readership – but it also shapes the expectations of those who approach the Iliad through it. The number, availability and social role of the edition used by the reader allows contemporary classicists to engage with the fiction that there is an Iliad they may read in the closest detail and always imagine readers in the ancient world concerning themselves with the same verse. It is a book for Classics as we practise it today, reflecting Classics as it has been practised since the late nineteenth century. Material books position texts in society, and mean that reception is an act not only contextualised by the time, place and position of the reader, but one shaped by the history of social function and engagement built into the text through the object that the reader engages with.

2

How does appreciating the problem of material books in reception improve our understanding of literary works? Craig Kallendorf (2015) traces the impact of the Aeneid’s material production on the longue durée of Virgilian reception, and this approach provides one model. We may also consider the dynamics of reception exposed by the material book in literary analysis, and reflect on the 7  This approach is taken further by facing translations, commentaries, monographs, volumes and journal articles which reproduce selections and full texts from series such as the OCT without full apparatus. 8  This is an argument Gurd pursues further in Iphigenias at Aulis (2005).

76

Middleton

significance of a work’s social position as a literary quantity, made part of the text by the material book. In a tradition going back to Julia Kristeva’s work on intertextuality and Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on dialogism, it has long been common practice to consider the act of writing as one which is shaped and defined by reading: texts are defined by their relation to other texts and conscious or else unconscious intercommunication with them.9 Reception, most commonly modelled as an act of reading,10 is much more rarely understood in this way. The relationship between literary and material text, however, suggests this act of reading is one shaped and defined by writing: the process through which texts are constituted. The reader’s expectations for a text’s narrative do not only follow from their own experience, but from the vehicle they approach the text through and the position that vehicle proposes for the work within society and culture. We may observe how this works in an example. The most widely circulated pseudo-Homeric text in both the middle ages and the Renaissance,11 the Batrachomyomachia is a three-hundred line narrative hexameter poem, most often understood as a parody of the Iliad and to a lesser degree the Odyssey, although it also alludes to Callimachus’ Aetia and specific Aesopian fables.12 It tells of the encounter between a mouse and a frog at the side of a pond. Introducing themselves to each another, the pair decide to cross the water and visit the frog’s home, the mouse travelling on the frog’s back. During the crossing they encounter a water snake, which causes the frog to dive away in fright, leaving the mouse to drown. When the news of this reaches the mouse’s family, 9  See for example Kristeva (1969) 113 for discussion of text as ‘une permutation de textes’; also Bakhtin (1981) on dialogism. For more recent discussion of allusion as the manipulation of intertextuality, see Hinds (1998). 10  The affiliation between approaches to reception and reader-response may be traced through Martindale (1993) to Fish’s (1980) discussion of interpretative communities and Derridean ideas of différance. For a recent assertion of this relationship, see Peirano (2012) 9: ‘“Reception” … is here understood as a study of the “phenomenology of reading,” the strategies by which meaning is produced’. 11  See Fusillo (1988) 53. Recent interest in English has also been piqued by Martin West’s (2003) Loeb edition and English translation, which follows the editions and commentaries of Glei (1984) and Fusillo (1988). 12  This dates the poem to around the first century BC, although the date (and authorship) of the Batrachomyomachia remain extensively debated, most recently by Garnier (2011). Glei (1984) 34 follows common consensus when he asserts there can be no more doubt over the poem’s dating to the first century BC. The poem’s author is unknown. In transmission the poem is usually attributed to either Homer himself or the apocryphal figure Pigres of Halicarnassus, a contemporary of Herodotus, neither of which follows. For literary discussion of the poem, see Most (1993), Sens (2005) and Kelly (2009).

77

Of Mice and Manuscripts

the community decides to declare war on the frogs and set out for a one-day battle, which is overseen and ultimately brought to an end by Zeus and the other gods. The lines below (178–186) are from around halfway through the poem, just before the frogs and mice go into battle. Zeus has called the gods to council to ask them which sides they will support, and he calls on Athena to declare whether or not she will support the mice, given how much time they spend in her temple. Athena says that she will not:13 ὦ πάτερ οὐκ ἄν πώ ποτ’ ἐγὼ μυσὶ τειρομένοισιν ἐλθοίμην ἐπαρωγός, ἐπεὶ κακὰ πολλά μ’ ἔοργαν στέμματα βλάπτοντες καὶ λύχνους εἵνεκ’ ἐλαίου. τοῦτο δέ μοι λίην ἔδακε φρένας οἷον ἔρεξαν. πέπλον μου κατέτρωξαν ὃν ἐξύφηνα καμοῦσα ἐκ ῥοδάνης λεπτῆς καὶ στήμονα μακρὸν ἔνησα, τρώγλας τ’ ἐμποίησαν· ὁ δ’ ἠπητής μοι ἐπέστη καὶ πράσσει με τόκον· τὸ δὲ ῥίγιον ἀθανάτοισιν. χρησαμένη γὰρ ἔνησα καὶ οὐκ ἔχω ἀνταποδοῦναι.

[180]

[185]

Father, there is no way I would ever go and help the mice in their suffering, not after all the trouble they have caused me, ruining garlands and lamps, trying to get to the oil. This is what really gnaws at me, the sort of thing they did: they chewed up my peplos, which I had worked hard to finish with fine thread, weaving on a long warp – they nibbled holes through it. Now the haberdasher is hassling me, demanding interest payments – the most awful thing for immortals to deal with. I got into debt so I could weave, but now I cannot pay him back. The problems Athena relates are familiar from an episode in Callimachus’ Aetia. In that poem, the invention of the mousetrap is narrated by the peasant Molorcus, whom Heracles stays with on his way to Nemea. Molorcus tells how mice similarly stole into his house to ruin lamps with their tails and chew through his clothes.14 Over the course of the Batrachomyomachia’s passage, Athena’s character becomes increasingly reminiscent of that peasant host, as 13  This translation is my own. 14  This story is told in fragment 54c (Harder) = 177 (Pfeiffer). See Harder (2012) ad loc.

78

Middleton

the mice of the Batrachomyomachia act in the same way as those in the Aetia’s story and she becomes a poor woman making garments on credit. The passage’s humour responds to and ‘reads’ the Iliad, but also reconstitutes that poem, transforming Athena into a character from an alternative genre. This depends on two competing sets of expectations, those of the Iliad and its world and those of the Aetia and its epyllion.15 Rather than an instance of reception in which one’s horizon of expectations for the Iliad are not met but denied, this parody confronts the reader with two conflicting worldviews, writing the text in opposite directions. Here as elsewhere, the Batrachomyomachia evokes ‘the appearance of Homeric “formularity”’, in the words of Alexander Sens (2005:229–30), only to play with those models and the reader’s expectations. This is the first appearance of the gods in the Batrachomyomachia, and the scene is preceded by the mice and frogs’ respective calls to arms, which leads the mice to arm themselves – so Zeus makes explicit – in the manner of Centaurs or Giants (168–172). When Zeus calls the gods together, the reader expects this concilium deorum to produce declarations of various partisan positions. Athena refuses to help the mice in this passage, and similarly refuses to help the frogs as it continues (187–192), which confounds these expectations. This is humorous enough, but the absurd, Callimachean reasons why she does so put further stress on that moment, transforming how Athena’s character reads. When Athena talks about her weaving, the reader is reminded of her typical epic characterisation as a master weaver,16 and the various beautiful items of clothing Athena is said to have woven in the Iliad. The formula of Iliad 5.733– 737 and 8.384–388 describes Athena putting on her armour, and on both occasions this means changing out of her fine peplos, which she is noted to have woven herself (5.735, 8.386). In 14.178–179, Hera dresses herself for the seduction of Zeus in a beautiful embroidered robe Athena is also said to have woven. The goddess’s ‘fall’ into the role of impoverished seamstress not only reacts to this trope, but reframes it such that Athena’s weaving becomes a sign of her low status, rather than her prestige. She has moved into the role of Callimachus’ Molorcus. As the passage continues, the goddess speaks with the expectations of the Iliad, worrying that the gods might be hurt if they go down into battle (193–196). This in turn becomes absurd, in part because of the statement’s new context in a poem where the threat only comes from mice and frogs, and in 15  For recent discussion of ‘epyllion’ as a term, see Tilg (2012), as well as the other contributions to Baumbach and Bär’s (2012) companion. 16  Most persistently represented, naturally, in the myth of Arachne. See Ovid Metamorphoses VI 1–145.

Of Mice and Manuscripts

79

part because Athena is no longer a character to respect. She is simultaneously received and reconstituted as a character from the Iliad. The piquancy of this joke arises from the different social positions of the Iliad and Callimachus’s Aetia. While both highly respected works, the Aetia presents itself as a much more peripheral poem, one produced by a youthful scholar for other scholars to enjoy.17 Athena similarly falls from the lofty heights of divine warfare to the mundane activities of a seamstress, which sets the long tradition of revering the Iliad against poetry written to be enjoyed as a witty sideshow to scholarly endeavour. This joke about character becomes a joke about genre, which becomes a joke about the clash of high and low literature, as scholars have argued lies at the core of the Batrachomyomachia’s parody,18 which becomes a clash of two real-world methods of approach to the text. The material text is not an inchoate ‘set of marks’, but a reader’s determination of the text’s appropriate appearance. This act of reading is inextricable from the production of the text and shapes the text’s future realisation. We may call this Martindale’s ‘chain of receptions’ (1993:7), but this image tempts us to believe there may be a route back to the original text and its first interpretation. Acknowledging the materiality of text reminds us that receptions are less sequential than simultaneous, and that the processes of reading and writing are coincident. For literary works, this complicates their engagement with earlier texts, as they may not only react, but re-create, and need not only conform to or deny a reader’s expectations, but manage those expectations into new contexts. The Batrachomyomachia manages readers’ expectations for the Iliad against those for Callimachus’ Aetia, producing its sense of the absurd which calls on the issues evoked by the material book as part of reception.

Further Reading

For theoretical discussion of the role played by material objects in society, it is worth consulting Alfred Gell (1998) and Tim Dant (e.g. 1999). These authors respectively discuss the way social actions might be perceived in objects and how objects act in our day-to-day lives as social agents. Recent decades have seen a great deal of attention paid to the history of book production and exchange, and Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979) is 17  See Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 42–88 for an overview of the Aetia’s themes and significance. 18  See Most (1993) for detailed discussion of this.

80

Middleton

one landmark discussion of technology’s effect on literary culture. In their discussions of Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome, Sarah Culpepper Stroup (2010) and Sean Alexander Gurd (2012) identify the social bonds developed through literary exchange and revision of Latin texts. Damien Nelis (2010) addresses some of the issues involved in thinking through the logistics of Virgil’s compositional practice, while Craig Kallendorf (2015) discusses the significance of material books in the reception of Virgil at length. Numerous scholars have explored how the reproduction of texts shapes their meaning. Glenn Most’s volume, Editing Texts | Texte edieren (1998) examines the issue from numerous angles, while Richard Tarrant (1989) discusses the potential for ‘collaboration’ in the practice of interpolation. Bart Ehrman (1993) and Kim Haines-Eitzen (2012) both discuss the cultural politics of editing the New Testament in Late Antiquity. Bibliography Bakhtin, M.M., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Holquist, M., Ed., Emerson, C., and Holquist, M. (Austin, 1981). Baumbach, M. and Bär, S., eds., Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Epyllion and Its Reception (Leiden, 2012). Blackwell, C.W. and Dué, C., “Homer and History in the Venetus A,” in Dué, C. ed., Recapturing a Homeric Legacy: Images and Insights from the Venetus A Manuscript of the Iliad (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 1–18. Dant, T., Material Culture in the Social World (Buckingham, 1999). Ehrman, B.D., The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament [updated with a new afterword] (Oxford, 2011 [1993]). Eisenstein, E.L., The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (Vols. I and II) (Cambridge, 1979). Fantuzzi, M. and Hunter, R., Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge, 2004). Fish, S., Is there a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA, 1980). Fusillo, M., [Omero] La Battaglia delle Rane e dei Topi: Batrachomyomachia (Milan, 1988). Garnier, R., “‘La Batrachomyomachie: un texte polyphonique’,” in Acosta-Hughes, B., Cusset, C., Durbec, Y., and Pralon, D. eds., Homère revisité: Parodie et humour dans les réécritures homériques (Franche-Comté, 2011), 107–121.

Of Mice and Manuscripts

81

Gell, A., Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, 1998). Genette, G., Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré (Paris, 1982). Genette, G., Seuils (Paris, 1987). Glei, R., Die Batrachomyomachie: Synoptische Edition und Kommentar (Frankfurt am Main, 1984). Gurd, S.A., “On text-critical melancholy,” Representations 88 (2004), 81–101. Gurd, S.A., Iphigenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology (Ithaca, NY, 2005). Gurd, S.A., Work in Progress: Literary Revision as Social Performance in Ancient Rome (Oxford, 2012). Haines-Eitzen, K., The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (Oxford, 2012). Hall, E., “Towards a theory of performance reception,” in Hall, E. and Harrop, S. eds., Theorising Performance: Greek Drama, Cultural History and Critical Practice (London, 2010), 10–28. Harder, A., Callimachus Aetia, Volumes 1 and 2 (Oxford, 2012). Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998). Hunger, H., Schreiben un Lesen in Byzanz: Die byzantinische Buchkultu (Munich, 1989). Jauss, H.R., “Literary history as a challenge to literary theory,” New Literary History 2.1 (1970), 7–37. Kallendorf, C., The Protean Virgil: Material Form and the Reception of the Classics (Oxford, 2015). Kelly, A., “Parodic Inconsistency: Some Problems in the Batrakhomyomakhia,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 129 (2009), 45–51. Kristeva, J., Σημειωτική: Recherches pour une sémanalyse (Paris, 1969). Martindale, C., Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge, 1993). Monro, D.B. and Allen, T.W., Homeri opera: Tomus I (Oxford, 1978 [1902]). Most, G.W., “Die Batrachomyomachia als ernste Parodie,” in Ax, W. and Glei, R., eds., Literaturparodie in Antike und Mittelalter (Trier, 1993), 27–40. Most, G.W., ed., Editing Texts; Texte edieren (Göttingen, 1998). Nelis, D.P., “Vergil’s library,” In Farrell, J. and Putnam, M.C. eds., A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its Tradition (Malden, 2010), 13–25. Peirano, I., The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context (Cambridge, 2012). Sens, A., “‘τίπτε γένος τοὐμὸν ζητεῖς;’: The Batrachomyomachia, Hellenistic epic parody, and early epic,” Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique 52: ‘La Poésie Épique Greque: Métamorphoses d’un Genre Littéraire’ (2005), 215–248.

82

Middleton

Stroup, S.C., Catullus, Cicero, and a Society of Patrons: The Generation of the Text (Cambridge, 2010). Tarrant, R.J., “The reader as author: collaborative interpolation in Latin poetry,” in Grant, J.N., Editing Greek and Latin Texts (New York, 1989), 121–162. Tilg, S., “On the origins of the modern term ‘epyllion’: some revisions to a chapter in the history of classical scholarship,” in Baumbach, M. and Bär, S. eds., Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Epyllion and Its Reception (Leiden, 2012), 29–54. West, M.L., Homeric Hymns; Homeric Apocrypha; Lives of Homer (Cambridge, MA, 2003).

Approaching Classical Reception through the Frame of Social Class Edith Hall and Henry Stead 1

Frames, Prisms, and Definitions

‘Classical Reception Studies’ denotes an enormous area of cultural and intellectual history. It is commonly understood as consisting of the study of the continuing presence of the ideas, texts and material culture of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds since the end of pagan antiquity. ‘Reception’ of ideas, texts and objects of course actually begins the moment each one is created, and is a continuous (if fluctuating) process. Ancient Rome ‘received’ ancient Greece, and ancient Greece ‘received’ elements in its culture from all of its ancient neighbors, especially those in western Asia and North Africa. A few studies have traced the history of the reception of a specific piece of ancient material from antiquity continuously until the present day, for example those explaining the impact made by ancient Greek plays in Roman and Byzantine culture as well as from the Renaissance onwards.1 Yet ‘Classical Reception Studies’ is not normally understood as addressing itself to reception in the ancient world. Within academic institutions, the reception of pagan ancient Greece and Rome by the cultures of Byzantium and Medieval western Europe is usually studied by specialists in Byzantine and Medieval history. ‘Classical Reception Studies’ is usually taken to focus on the period beginning with the fall of Byzantium in the fifteenth century. But the continuing presence of ancient Greek and Roman ideas, texts and artefacts in European and world culture since the fifteenth century is probably the biggest single, discrete area of Humanist study ever invented by the human brain. Its relatively recent emergence as a central sub-field within the traditional discipline of Classics, an emergence which can be traced to the 1970s, has coincided (and is connected) with the increasing secularization of society and the almost universal decline of the teaching of Latin and Greek in schools and universities. It is a significant development and is changing the nature of our practices as Classicists, not only when we are doing ‘Reception’ but in all our scholarly endeavours. Yet it presents an acute challenge. How do we delimit its scope and define its objectives? Nobody can claim to be an expert 1  See e.g. E. Hall, 2013.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_006

84

Hall and Stead

on everything connected with Mediterranean antiquity that has happened in the world since the fifteenth century, which is what ‘Classical Reception Studies’ implies. Although this emergent field is still engendering its own immanent boundaries, certain trends in the choice of subject-matter and in method of approach are now apparent. Individual research may be focused on an ancient author, text, genre, medium, figure, concept, practice, region, or historical period: Sophocles, Sophocles’ Antigone, satire, frescoes, Pericles, piety, athletics, Crete, or the Hellenistic era. Or it may focus on the ‘receiving’ element – an author, text, genre, medium, figure, concept, region, or historical period: Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, novels, oil painting, feminism, France, or World War I. It may use more than one of these categories to define the evidence it analyses – the reception of Aristophanes in colonial British India, for example.2 In our project, Classics and Class in Britain 1789–1939, we mark off our area of interest both geopolitically and chronologically. But the other ‘frame’ we impose is that of social class. We are looking for the presence – or absence – of engagement with Greek and Roman antiquity, in Britain, between 1789 and 1939, through the frame of our consciousness of the class structure of the society conducting that engagement. It is important that we clarify what we mean by the word ‘class’ in the framing of our project, especially since ‘class’ is such a contested term. We use it in the sociological sense. ‘Class’ in the sociological sense, however, means two different things, although they are often commensurate: ‘objective class’ is an economic category, while ‘subjective class’ defines the way individuals and groups are perceived by themselves and others. Everyone has an ‘objective’ class identity in that everyone has a position in the economic working of society. Everyone acquires their subsistence (food etc.) from somewhere, and plays a role in the way that goods and services are consumed and distributed. Objective ‘class analysis’ simply asks what the source of subsistence and the role are. All the people in our historical period of study derived their subsistence from one or more of a number of sources, just as everyone does today. There are nine basic ways to acquire it: 1) Earn it: this means people who work for pay, selling either their physical or mental labour to other people or to organisations. A very few people are self-employed and employ nobody else. 2  P. Vasunia (2007).

Approaching Classical Reception

85

2) Extract it legally from the labour of others. This includes people who own factories, restaurants, farms, or other businesses and derive their income from the profits made by work of people they hire. 3) Steal it or otherwise obtain it illegally, e.g. by fraud or blackmail. 4) Live off interest on capital or rent on property. This category includes people who possess sufficient means to provide a constant income flow without requiring them to work. 5) Inherit it. Some people receive unearned financial capital or goods that can be converted into money from when their parents or others die. 6) Win it or be given it. A few people acquire large amounts of money suddenly from betting, lotteries, competitions or receiving gifts. 7) Derive it from the state. People on state pensions, studentships, unemployment or other benefits financed by taxation of other citizens fall into this category. 8) Derive it from charity, whether institutionalised or begging on the street. 9) Be supported by another individual (this includes ‘marry it’). Children, and dependent relatives, spouses and partners, if they do not earn money, fall into this category. During the period under consideration in our project, the vast majority of British people fell into the first category, in that they earned their livelihood from physical labour, or were dependent on someone who did. This means that they were objectively ‘working-class’. In everyday usage, however, most people understand class as a subjective category rather than the (actually more significant) objective socio-economic status and role. Class position is often ‘subjectively’ diagnosed or conjectured by noticing a whole cluster of identifying markers, ranging from style of speech and accent, hairstyle and clothing, to recreational tastes and educational attainments. The ‘subjective’ markers of class, especially where there is social mobility, are by no means always co-extensive with ‘objective’ class position. People whose lifestyle may define them as ‘working-class’ may be very rich and employ others; some people, especially the young and precariously employed, whose speech patterns and appearance and education might be subjectively ‘middle-class’, are often struggling to survive in low-paid ‘working-class’ jobs in catering and service industries. Moreover, any individual or group may subjectively define themselves as members of one class, while other people may place them, through identifying class markers subjectively, in another. Identifying a class position in oneself also requires positioning others in classes lower or higher, constructing a relative relationship. Class identity, as perceived in both self and other, is subjective and relative.

86

Hall and Stead

We are interested in both types of class definition – objective and subjective – and in subjective class as a constituent of personal identity, appraising others, and relating to them relatively. We preface our analysis of any manifestation of interest in ancient Greece and Rome by asking a series of class-conscious questions, taking both objective and subjective class identities into account. A provisional formulation of these questions was published by Edith several years ago in the Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions, edited by Lorna Hardwick and Chris Stray.3 The two primary questions are the class profile (both objectively and subjectively defined) and political position of the ‘Receiver’ of the ancient Greek or Roman text. Conservative Members of Parliament with inherited wealth will have talked differently about, for example, Thersites in the Iliad book II from the way in which a committed Chartist labourer is likely to have talked talk about him. On the other hand some aristocrats have always espoused radical causes, and some working-class people have always espoused conservative views. But there are several other questions which we need to ask before we can interpret the relevance of the engagement with antiquity to the issue of social class. Who were the intended and actual audiences? What was the amount of classical education, formal or informal, to which everyone involved had enjoyed (or not enjoyed) exposure? What were the ancient materials involved? Through what cultural intermediary – translation, edition, performance, painting, fiction, edifice etc. – were they consumed, and what were the ‘class’ associations of that intermediary at the time? Is the pertinent ancient material frequently to be found in contexts where social class distinctions are prominent (for example, in Parliamentary debates, where quotation in Latin was once standard practice)? Is the issue of social class disguised by euphemism or made explicit, and if so, what language is used and what attitudes are manifested? The multiplicity of these fundamental questions, involved in the practice of class-conscious Classical Reception, even within a firmly demarcated geopolitical and chronological frame, means that the metaphor of the ‘frame’ – commonly understood as a two-dimensional structure delimiting a visual field – becomes inadequate. At the Nijmegen conference, Edith proposed that it was more helpful, in our particular project at least, to think in terms of the metaphor of a prism, in particular of what in Optics is called a dispersive prism. We refract the metaphorical white light, as given off by the eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultural phenomena we analyse, through a prism which breaks the white light down into a series of different constituent spectral colours, according to their frequency. Class-consciousness is our 3  E. Hall (2008).

Approaching Classical Reception

87

prism, and the bands of coloured light which we try to distinguish are the objective and subjective class position, political agenda, and classical experience of everyone involved – receiver or creator as well as imagined and actual audience. This leaves the question, however, of the precise nature of the beams of white light to which we apply the prism. In our project, three principles guide our selection of the white light beams – the primary evidence – to prioritise from amongst the plethora evinced by our vast historical period. First, we are committed to a multidisciplinary approach, using resources which have long been central to social history, theatre history, history of the book, and translation studies, for example, but which classicists have largely been unaware. Here previous ‘crossover’ scholars, such as Christopher Stray, a sociologist and historian of education as well as classicist, have proved invaluable.4 Secondly, we privilege sources with the potential to afford opportunities to listening to lost voices and recreating lost experiences, such as the unpublished writings and artworks of autodidacts and working-class individuals in regional collections and archives. Thirdly, we have designed four subject headings under which to range our findings as we assemble and collate them: 1) recreation (e.g. sport, theatre, games, lighter forms of literature designed primarily to entertain); 2) education (not just the history of school and universities, but of autodidacticism, workers’ reading groups, public libraries, mass-market translations of ancient authors); 3) activism (the presence of classical imagery, narratives and ideas in the political arena, especially the Trade Union Movement, radical journalism, Chartist oratory); 4) environment (the presence of classical material in the material world in Britain during our period – in public statuary and architecture, advertising, public house signage, design, museums and art galleries). Inevitably, some of the phenomena we are studying belong in more than one category – public libraries may have self-consciously neoclassical architecture, and the reading societies which workers created often studied books for recreational and activist purposes as well as straightforwardly educational ones. But these four headings are useful in controlling our material and honing our interpretations of the many hues refracted from the basic white light of the historical evidence when we apply the prism of class-consciousness.

4  See C. Stray (1998).

88 2

Hall and Stead

Case Study: James Lackington

One type of voice that has hitherto been lost to the history of British Classics belongs to the people associated with the ‘economy’ bookshops which served the reading needs of the poorer members of society. These shops crop up in our discussion both of education and of recreation. An important example was the extraordinary bookshop opened in Finsbury Square, London, by James Lackington, who promoted his shop as both a “Temple of the Muses” and “the cheapest booksellers in the world”. Cheap Classics was, in today’s jargon, at the heart of Lackington’s brand identity. Although the bookseller was a remarkable man and his shop a cultural oasis which literally changed lives by bringing literary and artistic nourishment to less-than-wealthy social groups in his locality, neither he nor his temple would attract much attention in the historical record had it not been for the reflected light of his soon-to-be-famous patrons. As a schoolboy the English poet, John Keats – who was not working-class but whose family had neither the economic stability nor the inclination to send him to a school that taught ancient Greek – used to frequent this bookshop to marvel at the towering shelves and read the books for free in the ‘lounging rooms’.5 It was in this shop that Keats first met his future publishers, John Taylor and James Augustus Hessey, who both worked there as young men under Lackington. As can be seen in its name and the shop’s classicizing décor (think Greek temple façade and white busts strewn about), the Temple of the Muses was designed to feel like a classical shrine to reading and learning. You could even pay for books with specially minted tokens, bearing its eccentric owner’s portrait on one side and a classical figure such as Fama, or Fame, on the other. One of our priorities is to examine the kinds of classical books that were sold by Lackington, how inexpensively, and to customers of what class background and class identity. Lackington himself was born to working-class parents. His mother was a weaver and his father a journeyman shoemaker. The family was too poor to afford schooling for James for more than a few years. At the age of ten therefore he left home to become “the agent of an eminent pie merchant”. Four years later he took up his father’s trade, becoming apprentice to a Taunton shoemaker. In 1768 he moved to Bristol, where he met his cobbling partner John Jones. The money they made as shoemakers (and was not spent in the company of women) went on building their collection of second-hand books. Years later, after the death of his grandfather (who left a legacy of ten pounds, with which 5  Nicholas Roe (2012) John Keats 18.

Approaching Classical Reception

89

they opened up their first bookshop in East London) these books would form part of their early selling stock. Lackington, an entrepreneur who prided himself on his success as a businessman, shrewdly emphasized his working-class origins by appropriating, only to subvert, an ancient anecdote. Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia (35.85) tells the story of how a shoemaker once pointed out that the famous painter, Apelles, had inaccurately rendered a sandal. On admitting the fault, Apelles corrected his work. Bolstered by his successful input the shoemaker began to criticise further the painter’s work, to which criticism Apelles responded shortly: Sutor, ne ultra crepidam – “a shoemaker [should not judge] beyond the sandal”. Lackington proudly (and wittily) twisted this adage, placing it at the head of the frontispiece of his memoir, directly above a defiant and deep-browed portrait: “Sutor Ultra Crepidam Feliciter Ausus” – “a shoemaker [who] dared successfully [to judge] beyond the sandal”. He continues in English, “Who a few years since, Began Business with Five Pounds, / Now sells one hundred thousand volumes annually”. Inside his opulent Temple of the Muses, with its antique paintings, busts, classical knick-knacks, and Romanesque cupola, Lackington prided himself on selling affordable books, and claimed with pride that he had “been highly instrumental in diffusing the general desire for reading, now so prevalent among the inferior orders of society”.6 In an innovation in the world of bookselling, he bought in high volume and sold his books cheap, and by cash exchange only. On his carriage were inscribed the words ‘Small profits do great things’. 3

Conclusions: Back to the Future

In principle, our model could work for any form of social category and consciousness, in any location, at any time. We could investigate the Reception of Classics in Britain during the long nineteenth century from a viewpoint which privileged gender, or age group, or race, or religious denomination (in practice, we find it impossible to avoid addressing these perspectives alongside class, especially those of gender and religion). Or we could be conducting a classconscious analysis of French classical Reception in the seventeenth century, or of England, France, and the Netherlands in the years 1939–89. But we believe that the most pressing sub-fields within the vast territory of international Classical Reception since the fifteenth century are those which are most relevant to contemporary concerns and to debates within today’s society. It is good 6  James Lackington (1794).

90

Hall and Stead

to frame the questions asked in Classical Reception, or to chisel the faces of the hermeneutic prism, in a dialectical way that allows investigating the past to reflect and direct rays of light – illumination – into the present and future state of things. In the specific case of class and classics, these two phenomena remain today, or have become once again, locked in the love-hate struggle which (at least in Britain) has characterized their historical relationship. There is an urgent need to prevent access to education in Classics being commandeered by the small minority of people with sufficient money to send their children to private school. Public access to education of the quality enjoyed by children and teenagers at the elite schools (Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse, etc.), and therefore the potential for social mobility, was made at least a possibility after the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act of 1907. This required all grant-aided secondary schools (mostly known as ‘grammar’ or ‘high schools’) to make at least one quarter of their places free to pupils from public elementary schools by means of 100% scholarships. A new, heavily subsidized system was introduced in England and Wales by the 1944 Education Act (in Scotland the circumstances are different). This created three different tiers of school after ‘primary’ or ‘elementary’ level. Which type of school each child attended was decided by a controversial intelligence test (the ‘Eleven Plus’ exam) taken at the age of eleven. The highest achieving quarter of the entire population, theoretically regardless of class background, was then awarded full scholarships, funded by a direct grant from the state, to attend either an otherwise fee-paying school, or a new, purpose-built grammar school. The overall effect of this policy was to make Classics accessible to a minimum of one in four children, supposedly based on intellectual merit, as assessed by the ‘Eleven Plus’, rather than on the financial and class profile of their parents. In practice, however, the proportion was even higher than this, since some parents continued to purchase their children’s places at the elite schools, and some of the second tier of schools – the ‘Secondary Modern’ schools – offered at least some Latin and Ancient History. This all changed after the Education Act 1976, which abolished the statefunded grammar schools and private schools receiving direct grants (as well as the third tier, the ‘technical schools’). They were all required to convert and sometimes amalgamate either to form comprehensive schools, which were fully funded by the state, or to become private schools. The latter might offer a few scholarships if they chose and had the resources, but were fundamentally for children whose parents were able and willing to pay fees. In terms of Classics, the abolition of state-funded places at grammar school has proved disastrous. Although some comprehensive schools put up a struggle to maintain

Approaching Classical Reception

91

teaching in classical subjects, especially Latin, Ancient History and the new subject of ‘Classical Civilisation’, the Greeks and Romans have now died out in all but a depressingly small minority. It is very difficult to get access to Latin in state schools in Britain, and it is virtually impossible to learn Greek. Even where schools would like to (re)introduce teaching in any of the classical subjects, they face serious problems finding teachers. There are only two institutions left in Britain where graduates can qualify to teach Classics in state schools, at Cambridge University and King’s College London, so there is a dire shortage of manpower available in the state sector (no teacher training qualification is required to teach in the private sector). A similarly regressive pattern marks Classics in Higher or Tertiary Education. The ‘Robbins Report’ (1963) recommended extending free public education to universities, and the expansion of the number of university places available. Maintenance grants were also awarded, depending on the assessed means of the parents. But public access to Higher Education has over the last decade been drastically affected by the step-by-step removal of all state funding not only for maintenance grants but for tuition fees in Arts and Humanities subjects, a process which began with the Dearing Report in 1997 and culminated in 2010. The restructuring of secondary schools, and introduction of full university fees in Britain, mean that we have swiftly returned to the position prevalent in our designated period of study, when schooling in Classics, or lack of it, functioned to distinguish members of the lower classes from those with means to educate their children, rather than put them out to work at young ages. Because knowledge of Latin and Greek now, once again, comes with a hefty price tag,7 it will begin again to appeal to people who want to display their financial assets and demarcate themselves from those who have none. A classical education, moreover, indicates not just possession of money but the type of cultural refinement which has ramifications for subjective class identity – Classics and classicists are inherently elitist, or ‘posh’ in common parlance. We feel, therefore, that our project has a contemporary relevance. Despite the undoubted function of classical education as of social division and exclusion, there have been countless ways in which people who did not go to elite schools have historically been informed about the classical world and often inspired by it. By investigating this ‘alternative’ history of British Classics, we want to offer the contemporary struggle to make this exciting material available to everyone its own ‘back-story’, ancestry, heroes and aetiology. 7  See J. Paul (2013) for a cogent analysis of elitism and classics with a focus on primary and secondary educational pedagogy in Britain.

92

Hall and Stead

Refracting the history of classics through the prism of class has also made us newly aware of the continuing reverberations of the integral symbiosis between the social category of class and our subject area, the languages and cultures of Greek and Roman antiquity. That is the reason why we have chosen to keep the traditional label ‘Classics’ in our title, as shorthand for everything which might be understood as belonging to ‘the languages and cultures of Greek and Roman antiquity’. This is what the term most often meant in the period we are primarily researching (1789–1939), and is what it means in educational contexts today. The words classic, classical and Classics all stem from the same Latin term, classis, as our word ‘class’. When the Romans heard this noun, it contained a resonance that we do not hear when we say class: deriving from the same root as the verb clamare (‘call out’), a classis consisted of a group of people ‘called out’ or ‘summoned’ together by a trumpet. In Virgil’s Georgics, the plural neuter noun classica actually means ‘trumpets’ (2.539). A classis could be the men in a meeting, or in an army, or the ships in a fleet, or sub-divisions of such groups. The word has always been associated with Servius Tullius, the sixth of the legendary kings of early Rome, who held a census in order to find out, for the purposes of military planning, what assets his people possessed. It is this procedure that explains the ancient association of the term class with an audible call to arms. In Servius’ scheme, the men in the top of his six classes – the men with the most money and property – were called the classici. The Top Men were themselves the ‘Classics’. This is why, by the time of a Roman writer in secondcentury AD, Aulus Gellius, by metaphorical extension the Top Authors could be called ‘Classic Authors’, scriptores classici, to distinguish them from inferior or metaphorically ‘proletarian’ authors, scriptores proletarii (Attic Nights 19.8.15). The opposition between ‘classics’ and ‘proletarians’ was born! From the early sixteenth century, the word classicus is used by scholars writing in Latin to describe admired authors of antiquity, both Greek and Latin. The German Protestant humanist Philipp Melanchthon called Plutarch a classicus writer in 1519. So when a term was needed in the eighteenth century to describe the canonical texts of Greek and Roman antiquity, the ones studied by youths privileged enough to receive more than a rudimentary education, it was inevitable that the term Classics, meaning the ‘top authors’, was adopted to describe the subject area – the term is first used with this meaning in 1711. We are acutely aware, therefore, of the social elitism inherent in the choice of the term to describe a particular type of curriculum in the early eighteenth century. Some British departments of Classics actually changed their names, or at least discussed changing them, during the debates over the imperial

Approaching Classical Reception

93

and colonial history of the subject at the time of the controversy surrounding Martin Bernal’s Black Athena in the late 1980s. Some departments considered de-privileging the languages and cultures of the ancient Greeks and Roman relative to their ancient neighbours and widening the remit of ‘Classics’ to cover ‘Ancient Mediterranean Studies’. We have, however, self-consciously retained the term in the title of our project, for three reasons. First, historical accuracy: it was the term used during the period of our project. Secondly, it is relatively all-embracing. We don’t just mean the written texts of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but their entire cultures, following the example of the Victorian classicist and author Charles Kingsley, who referred to them jointly as ‘classical civilisation’. Ancient philosophy, history and material culture were by the end of the nineteenth century added to the ‘classical curriculum’. But the third and surely the most important reason for using the term is that it continuously reminds us of the historic connection between socio-economic hierarchies (‘class’) and also the differences between the cultural and imaginative lives of people in different classes. It helps us ask retrospectively whether and how ‘Classics’ has been used to maintain class distinctions, and to challenge them, but also prospectively, how to demonstrate that Classics’ elite connotations are not inevitable. Classical Reception Studies need to excavate the past, but if they are to fulfill their potential, they simultaneously need to address the challenges inherent in moving forwards into the future. 4

Further Reading

This chapter was written at the commencement of our research project Classics and Class in Britain 1689–1939, which has now come to fruition in two volumes, Henry Stead and Edith Hall (eds.) Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform (London, 2015) and Edith Hall and Henry Stead, A People’s History of Classics: Class and Greco-Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland 1689–1939 (London, 2020), which will be made freely available online on the RTF platform in 2023. There is much more evidence and further online publications and films collated on the project website https://www. classicsandclass.info. Foundational studies had been published earlier, including David Konstan’s ‘The classics and class conflict’, Arethusa 27 (1994) 47–70 and Nita Krevans, ‘Class and Classics: a historical perspective’, Forum, Classical Journal 96 (2001) 293–34 as well as Edith Hall’s ‘Putting the class into classical reception’ in Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray (eds.) A Companion to Classical Receptions (Oxford, 2008) 386–97. Phiroze Vasunia’s The Classics and Colonial India (Oxford, 2013) reveals how social class was enmeshed

94

Hall and Stead

with classical education and colonial ideology, while Laurie O’Higgins’ The Irish Classical Self: Poets and Poor Scholars in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Oxford, 2017) is a rare and fine study of the relationship between Classics and social class in a particular national and colonial context. Henry Stead’s ‘Classics down the mineshaft: a buried history’, in Edmund Richardson (ed.) Classics in Extremis (London, 2018) 136–56 shows how a particular industry can be analysed using the twin analytical concepts of class and Classics, while Neville Morley’s Classics: Why It Matters (London, 2018) is underpinned by a class-conscious theoretical framework. For class-conscious readings of the reception of individual classical authors, see Edith Hall, ‘The English-speaking Aristophanes’, in Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley, Aristophanes in Performance (Oxford, 2007) 66–92; Stephen Harrison, Victorian Horace: Classics and Class (London, 2017); and Henry Stead, A Cockney Catullus (Oxford, 2015). What is now needed is class-sensitive research into Classical reception in other contexts and time periods internationally. Bibliography Hall, E., Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris (New York, 2013). Hall, E., “Putting the Class into Classical Reception,” in A Companion to Classical Receptions, ed. Hardwick, L. and Stray, C. (Oxford, 2008), 386–397. Lackington, J., Memoirs of the forty-five first years of the life of James Lackington, the present bookseller in Chiswell-street, Moorfields (London, 1794). Paul, J., in ed. Hardwick and Harrison, Classics in the Modern World: a ‘Democratic Turn’? (Oxford, 2013), 153–156. Stray, C., Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England, 1830–1960 (Oxford, 1998). Vasunia, P., “Aristophanes’ wealth and Dalpatram’s Lakshmi”, in Aristophanes in Performance 412 BCE–2005 CE, ed. Hall, E. and Wrigley, A. (Oxford, 2007), 117–134.

part 2 Cases, Contexts and Frames

∵

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching: Pyramus and Thisbe in Three Fifteenth-Century Sermons Pietro Delcorno Ovidio fabuloso, Ovidio pazzo! While preaching in Florence in 1496, Savonarola complained bitterly about the use of Ovid in sermons, recalling that, in recent years, the audience had become accustomed to hear about ‘Ovid the imaginative, Ovid the fool’ rather than the Scriptures from pulpits.1 However, in the fictional dialogue constructed by the preacher, a listener rebutted that ‘Ovidian Metamorphoses was indeed good for preaching’, giving Savonarola a pretext to reassert his radical exclusion of “pagan” authors and to emphasize the centrality of the Bible.2 Similar complaints were not new among preachers.3 Later on, authors who moved from quite different positions such as Erasmus and Luther harshly mocked the use of classical stories in preaching.4 However, Ovidian myths were relatively widespread in fifteenth-century sermons, which suggests that other preachers had an opposite opinion about the utility of these stories. Introducing Ovidian myths in their sermons, preachers showed great freedom in appropriating and re-adapting them. This approach was determined by their specific goals. Their texts had to function as sermons before a liturgical congregation. What could appear to present-day scholars as a distortion of an Ovidian story (even a disfigurement, one might say) was part of a form of communication that mixed very different elements into one single discourse in order to involve, persuade, and move the audience. A sermon had in fact to follow its own criteria. A medieval sermon is ‘an oral discourse spoken in the voice of a preacher, who addresses an audience to instruct and exhort them 1  I first presented this work at the conference “Framing Classical Reception Studies” (Radboud University Nijmegen, 6–8 June 2013). I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers (Maarten De Pourcq, Nathalie de Haan and David Rijser) and to the participants, since their scholarship – directly or indirectly – provided me with valuable suggestions to further develop my research. Part of this chapter is an abbreviated and updated version of Delcorno (2016). 2  Savonarola (1961) vol. 2, 88. On the contemporary debates on the relationship between classical myths and Christian faith, see Guthmüller (1997). On the previous period, see Mésoniat (1984). 3  See Wenzel (2011) 173. 4  See Brisson (2004) 148. The change of the intellectual climate was summarized by the 1559 Church ban on the Ovidius moralizatus; McKinley (2001) 112–113.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_007

98

Delcorno

on a topic concerned with faith and morals and based on a sacred text’.5 Every element within the sermon, even an Ovidian myth, eventually had to serve this overarching purpose. Analysing three sermons that include the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in their communicative strategy will clearly evidence the fact that, from the perspective of simple transmission, the story of the two lovers and their tragic death appears increasingly distant from Ovid’s version. One could say that the story became irredeemably ‘medieval’. On the contrary, the perspective of classical reception studies supports an investigation of the chain of reception that shaped these versions of the Ovidian myth and their multiple functions in preaching, based on the assumption that ‘reception becomes decisive when traditions intersect, […] when classical material interacts with non-classical material’.6 From this perspective, medieval preaching can be seen as a peculiar framework for the reception of classics and as an influential medium for the dissemination of classical stories to a large audience. Moreover, sermons (with the potentialities and limits of this genre) provide scholars with a promising and largely unexplored area for classical reception studies. In the following pages, I first introduce preaching as medium of communication and the presence of classics in sermons. Next, I summarize the longstanding tradition of allegories on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Finally, I analyse how three fifteenth-century Franciscan preachers appropriated and transformed this Ovidian story in their sermons, pointing out the characteristics of this type of source and the presence of a wealth of texts virtually untapped by scholars working on the reception of classics. 1

Preaching as Communication Medium

As medieval sermon studies have increasingly pointed out in the last decades, preaching was one of the most pervasive media of religious instruction of the time.7 In the late medieval period, the preachers’ voices progressively reached larger strata of society, particularly in the urban context, where the effects of the project of religious acculturation promoted by the mendicant orders were more incisive. With a few exceptions, model sermon collections (the type 5  Kienzle (2000) 151. This volume is the reference point on medieval sermon studies. A recent useful introduction is Thayer (2012), and an updated bibliography is available in Delcorno (2017a). 6  Hardwick and Stray (2008) 9. 7  See d’Avray (1985) and Pettegree (2005) 10–39.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

99

of sources that this chapter analyses) were written in Latin and addressed a readership of clerics. The most successful collections enjoyed a European dissemination and were used by entire generations of preachers, who drew on them to craft their own sermons. While model sermons were written in Latin, preachers usually addressed their audience in the local vernacular, mediating and adapting the texts according to the circumstances. Model sermons, therefore, were the backbone of a pervasive communication system that reached thousands of people. Hence, the repeated use of model sermons enormously multiplied their impact on society. Moreover, in the late fifteenth century, they enjoyed an unprecedented diffusion through printing. For instance, the sermon collection for the Lenten period written by Conrad Grütsch (or Gritsch) – one of the preachers we will consider – knew a striking dissemination with 24 incunabula editions and at least 10 other early sixteenth-century editions. With no less than 15.000 copies in circulation, Grütsch’s Quadragesimale was a real bestseller on the European book market.8 2

Classics in Medieval Preaching

A thorough discussion of the topic of ‘the classics in late-medieval preaching’ – the title of a valuable article by Siegfried Wenzel9 – would include a wide range of genres and ancient authors. To mention only a few of them, one finds quotations of authors such as Cicero and Seneca; episodes of Roman history; Aesopian fables and so forth.10 Besides, since Augustine’s De doctrina christiana argued for the use of Roman rhetoric in Christian oratory, preaching itself was framed by a dynamic reception and creative appropriation of classical rhetoric. This is visible in the studies of the Artes praedicandi, that is, the manuals on the art of preaching that became influential by the early thirteenth century.11 These texts discussed also the possibilities and limits of using classical non-Christian authors in preaching. For instance, the seminal Ars praedicandi of Alain of Lille (d. 1202) approved the use of ‘dicta gentilium’ in sermons on the basis of the example of the apostle Paul, who introduced quotations of philosophers to reinforce his arguments.12 In a few cases, Alain of Lille even adopted a sentence from Virgil’s Aeneid or Ovid’s Metamorphoses 8  See Thayer (2002). 9  Wenzel (1995). 10  On Aesopian fables in sermons, see Polo de Beaulieu (2011). 11  See Briscoe (1992) and Wenzel (2015). 12  Alain of Lille, Ars praedicandi, Patrologia Latina 201, col. 114.

100

Delcorno

as the basis for an entire sermon, explicitly approving the use of Gentile poets not only in schools, but also ‘in the assembly of the faithful’.13 Late-medieval preaching was indeed an omnivorous creature that was able to eat everything, to digest everything, and to use everything. In other words, a sermon was like a sponge that absorbed all elements that suited its goals from any other literary genre.14 Everything could be used in the ‘wide rhetorical arsenal that was at the disposal of late-medieval preachers’.15 They combined these different materials with a freedom that might appear chaotic or even tendentious to modern readers. Rather than considering this as a limit, the perspective advanced by classical reception studies acknowledges the agency of medieval readers and their appropriation of texts.16 Going beyond the all-embracing concept of reception, scholars working within the project Transformationen der Antike proposed in 2011 precise criteria for a nuanced consideration of the multiple types of transformation of the classics – both as texts, concepts, and artefacts. They coined the term allelopoiesis to describe the reciprocal change («Reziproke Veränderung») that characterizes the actors and cultures involved in the process, which therefore produces structurally bidirectional results.17 This seems a promising methodology in evaluating the presence, meaning, and function of classical texts in sermons, since it does not consider the medieval transformations of the classics as a negligible (when not an adulterated) by-product of the ancient sources, but as a mutually influential form of dialogue with them. Instead of listing all the possible interactions between classics and preaching, through the analysis of the presence and function of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in sermons, this contribution aims to show the mixture of materials characterising sermons as well as the need for studying an area of the reception of antiquity that has not yet received enough scholarly attention. Some attention has been given to the picturae (ekphrastic devices, in which the descriptions of ancient gods were presented as allegorical personifications of virtues and vices) that were elaborated by the so-called fourteenth-century

13  «Sunt enim aliqui qui susurant de verbis poeticis in conventu fidelium nunquam debere fieri mencionem […]; sed talibus invencionibus retroiectis ad ea que premisimus recuramus [i.e. the Regia Solis]»; Alain of Lille, Sermo Regia Solis, quoted by Dronke (2009), 29. This intriguing sermon presents an allegorical interpretation of Ovid’s description of the palace of the Sun. See also Siri (2011). 14  The simile of the sponge is used by Sánchez Sánchez (2011) 16. 15  Wenzel (1995) 130. 16  As introduction, see Martindale (2007). 17  See Böhme et al. (2011) 39–56.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

101

classicizing friars and widespread in late-medieval preaching.18 More recently, the striking (allegorical) use of Virgil’s Aeneid, sometimes in combination with Dante’s Commedia, has been traced in some early fifteenth-century Lenten sermon collections structured as an imaginative journey in the afterlife.19 Apart from these specific topics, preaching is generally overlooked as a source for studying the reception of classical texts. This is true even for classical authors whose medieval reception has been the object of considerable scholarship, as is certainly the case with Ovid.20 While studies of allegorical interpretations of the Metamorphoses are numerous, scholars mention the possibility that these allegories were used by preachers but do not refer to their actual presence in sermons. The flourishing studies on the Ovide moralisé and on Pierre Bersuire’s Ovidius moralizatus are a case in point. These texts are often considered as preaching aids, yet the actual adoption of their allegories in sermons has not been closely investigated.21 An important exception is the volume Ovid in the Middle Ages, which devotes a chapter to ‘Ovid from the pulpit’.22 However, it is possible to say that this field of research largely remains a terra incognita. I present here three fifteenth-century sermons that incorporated the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in order to highlight some possible directions for research and some methodological cautions on late-medieval preaching as a framework for the reception of classics. In these sermons, the two lovers and their tragic destiny were read mainly as an allegory of the perfect love between Christ and the soul. As Grütsch wrote: ‘Quid Piramus est nisi Dei filius? Tysbe vero anima devota’. Each detail of the Ovidian fabula was deciphered as a 18  See Smalley (1960). Smalley’s seminal work and its limits are reconsidered in Clark (2010). On picturae in preaching, see Rivers (2010), who underlines their success in fifteenthcentury Germany, and Palmer (1983). Moreover, on the peculiar case of Johannes Geiler von Kaysersberg (d. 1510), preacher of the cathedral of Strasbourg, who combined classical sources with medieval authors such as Boccaccio, see Steinmetz (2008) and Steinmetz (2013). 19  See Delcorno (2018) and (2019). 20  See McKinley (1996); Baumgartner (2002); Bury (2003); Harf-Lancner et al. (2009); and Clier-Colombani (2017). See also Knox (2009). 21  See Possamaï-Perez (2006) 789–868, who reads (like other scholars) the whole structure of the text as «un recueil de matériaux pour les prédicateurs» (835). Also McKinley (2001) repeatedly labels these texts as «a type of handbook for preachers» but without specific references to sermons. See on this theme, Delcorno (2016) 40–41. 22  Wenzel (2011). Other examples of the use of Ovidian myths in preaching in Giordano da Pisa (1974) 66–67 and Masson (2009) 171–182. For a status quaestionis on Ovidian myths in sermons, see Delcorno (2016).

102

Delcorno

Christian symbol, and the account of the intense love of Pyramus and Thisbe was thought to be able to inflame the audience to an equally passionate love for Christ. Or at least, this was the expectation of the preachers who introduced this story in a sermon that had to produce calculated effects. 3

Moral and Allegorical Readings of Pyramus and Thisbe

The moral and allegorical interpretations of Pyramus and Thisbe date back to the twelfth century and, for the sake of simplicity, can be divided into two main branches: Ovidius ethicus and Ovidius theologicus.23 The moral reading of the tale condemns the passion that leads the young couple to death. Developing this interpretation, many commentators played with the change of colour of the mulberries. As John of Garland (d. c. 1272) wrote, their change from white to black «indicates that death is hidden in the sweetness of love».24 This interpretation was recurrent in commentaries on Ovid and lasted well into the sixteenth-century. One would imagine that this reading of the myth was perfect for a sermon against deathly lustful passion. Still, as far as I know, there is no trace of this interpretation in preaching.25 This reminds us that the passage from clerical readings of classical myths to their actual presence in sermons should not be taken for granted and needs to be carefully investigated. The allegorical reading exalted the story of the two lovers in a Christological perspective, in which Pyramus voluntarily offers himself to death as Christ did for human salvation. This interpretation dates back to early fourteenth-century texts. It recurs in a few manuscripts of the Gesta romanorum, and yet became influential in the version provided by the Ovide moralisé and then introduced in the Ovidius moralizatus of Bersuire.26 In this allegorical interpretation, each detail of the Ovidian tale was deciphered as a symbol of the relationship between Christ and the soul, as we will see in the sermons. 23  See Schmitt Von Mühlenfels (1972) 26–65. On medieval reworkings of this myth, see also Ferlampin-Acher (2003); Tilliette (2008); Gaggero (2015); Klein (2017). Moreover, in the early sixteenth-century Netherlands, plays on Pyramus and Thisbe could include an allegorical reading of the story; see Happé (2006). 24  «Alba prius morus nigredine mora colorans / signat quod dulci mors in amore latet»; quoted in Schmitt Von Mühlenfels (1972) 28. See also Moussy (2003). 25  Beside the sermons presented in this article, the only other mention of Pyramus and Thisbe that I know is an early fifteenth-century preacher who complains that some of the clergymen were not well versed in the Bible and the Church fathers but instead knew very well this and other myths; Grisdale (1939) 75. 26  See a detailed analysis of these texts in Delcorno (2009) 78–84.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

4

103

The Passion Sunday Sermon of Conrad Grütsch

The first text that I consider is part of the Lenten sermons of Conrad Grütsch (d. 1475c.), a Franciscan friar of the Upper Germany province.27 This sermon collection was written around 1440 and, among fifteenth-century sermons, is characterized by a remarkable presence of classical stories.28 They were attentively registered in the index, as items that should be easy to find for preachers who used this sort of encyclopaedia for preaching. The entry fabula lists twenty-four fables and myths (fig. 1), from the Aesopian story of the cicada and the ant to the Ovidian myth of Atalanta.29 The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is listed among these fabulae. Grütsch introduced it in a sermon for an important liturgical celebration, namely Passion Sunday. In its last part, the sermon deals with the cardinal virtues and, rather unpredictably, the section on prudence ends with the story of the two lovers. How is it possible to connect the story of a tragic suicide with prudence? Grütsch used a snake and a stone. The Gospel reads ‘Estote prudentes sicut serpentes’ (Matthew 10,16). Drawing on the medieval bestiaries and encyclopaedias, Grütsch singled out and allegorized the characteristics of the snake’s prudence. For instance, he stated that ‘the snake blocks its ears before the snake charmer; in fact, it puts one ear on the stone and blocks the other with its own tail’.30 This image may seem odd for modern readers but was common in medieval descriptions of the snake.31 Grütsch’s interpretation is ingenious, since it states that to combat worldly seductions one has to close his or her ears like the snake. This can be done by thinking of Christ, who is the true stone, and of death, which is the tail, the end of life.32 The last characteristic of the 27  On this friar, see Roest (2004) 109–110. The printed editions wrongly ascribed this collection to Conrad’s younger brother, Johann Grütsch. I use the editio princeps: Johann [i.e. Conrad] Gritsch, Quadragesimale, [Nuremberg, not after 1472] (GW 11538). 28  See Palmer (2005) and Delcorno (2017b) 164–170. 29  The story of Atalanta recurs also in other sermons and has two possible readings, in which Hippomenes is either the devil or Christ, while Atalanta is invariably the human soul; see Wenzel (1995) 130. On other Ovidian myths used by Grütsch, see Delcorno (2016) 44. 30  ‘Seconda prudentia quod obturat aures suas ne audiat incantatorem. Nam unam aurem applicat ad petram et aliam cum cauda obturat’; Gritsch, Quadragesimale, 32P. 31  Augustine and Isidore already used the image of the snake that closes its ears with its tail as a symbol of those who do not listen to the Scripture; see Maldina (2011) 145. 32  «Sic nos facere debemus contra corruptores hominem allicientes […] ad vicia mundi […]. Quando ergo tales incantant superiorem partem racionis unam aurem Christo, qui est petra, coniungiamus, 1 Cor 10. Et inferiorem obturemus cogitatione finis et mortis nostre, que est cauda corporis et vite nostre, ne illi qui blande nobis voluptates suggerunt protrahant ad consensum»; Gritsch, Quadragesimale, 32P. On this less diffuse tradition of a positive reading of the snake blocking its ears, see Harris (1994) 302–306.

104

Delcorno

figure 1 Entry fabula in the index of Johann [Conrad] Gritsch, Quadragesimale [Reutlingen: Michael Greyff, not after 1479], unpagined Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt, Inc-v-106 © Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

105

prudent snake is that it renews itself when it sheds its skin by passing through holes in a stone. In the allegorical reading, «the stone is Christ and its holes are his wounds».33 Therefore, believers should reject their sinful lives (like the snake its old skin) by passing through these holes, i.e. through the meditation on the Passion.34 At this point, the Franciscan preacher introduced the two Ovidian lovers in order to depict the ideal relationship between Christ and the soul: ‘Est enim de Christo et de anima compassionata sicut de Piramo et Tysbe, de quibus narrat Ovidius’. Grütsch referred to Ovid here. Yet, he copied both the narrative and its interpretation form the Ovidius moralizatus almost word-by-word.35 Therefore, Grütsch’s reception of Ovid was indeed the appropriation of the previous reception by Bersuire, who in turn relied on the Ovide moralisé. In this interpretation, Pyramus is Christ and Thisbe the soul. They are similar because the human being ad imaginem Dei factus est. The wall that separates the two lovers indicates the original sin, while the fissure through which they talk is the voice of the prophets. They arrange a tryst under at fountain, which symbolizes the baptism, while the lioness that disrupts their meeting is the devil (Appendix 1). The same reasoning is used until the death of Pyramus under the mulberry tree, which symbolizes the Cross that Christ ‘covered in his own blood’ (proprio sanguine cruentavit). The suicide of Thisbe represents the voluntary death of the soul, who renounces to the world and its temptations. From the point of view of Grütsch, this spiritual union with Christ’s Passion represented the supreme form of prudence, since it saved the soul from worldly dangers. In this way, each detail of the Ovidian tale finds its Christian meaning, with the same mechanism used for the snake. From the rather utilitarian perspective of late-medieval preaching, the ‘naturalistic’ description of a snake and the classical story of Pyramus did not radically differ. Preachers looking at Grütsch’s collection when preparing their sermons had both at their disposal to introduce their listeners to a meditation on the Passion and on prudence. Grütsch limited his work to selecting, excerpting, and copying a page of Bersuire, without making significant additions. Still, the presence of this allegory in a sermon should not be underestimated for several reasons. First, this is not just a passing reference to a classical myth without further development, as 33  «Petra est Christus cuius foramina sunt ipsius plurima vulnera»; Gritsch, Quadragesi­ male, 32P. 34  «Cum ergo veterem pellem, id est nostram conversationem corruptam et abominabilem, deponere volemus, devota contemplatione et recordatione passionis Christi per illa foramina transeamus»; Gritsch, Quadragesimale, 32P. 35  The texts of Bersuire and Grütsch and their translations are available in Delcorno (2016) 46.

106

Delcorno

in many other sermons.36 Grütsch presented the story at length and in full detail. He did so not only as a cultured reference to reinforce the preacher’s profile, but as an element of the sermon that was meant to affect the emotions of the audience. Second, the recurrence of the Ovidius moralizatus in preaching is often assumed in the academic literature, yet without an effective validation. In this passage of Grütsch it is possible to see how Bersuire’s reading was actually adapted to a sermon. Third, the interpretation of Bersuire is encapsulated in a text that shed new light on it. The idea of presenting Pyramus and Thisbe as an example of prudence was highly innovative and even audacious, particularly considering the opposite reading that portrayed them as an example of the ruinous consequences of lust. Finally, as I said, the value of this sermon collection also lies in its impressive dissemination. This was one of the most successful sermon collections in Germany and France, with more than 35 printed editions between 1472 and 1520. Generations of preachers used it to prepare their sermons and were suggested to present this allegory to their congregations. Mediated and controlled by the clergy, this version of the Ovidian myth was not restricted to the literate elite. It represented instead one of the possible entry points to classical heritage for people who did not have direct access to Latin texts, but were among the listeners of sermons. Indeed, Grütsch’s Quadragesimale spread this interpretation of the Ovidian myth well before the Ovidius moralizatus was available as a printed book (1509) and even before the publication of the Bible de poetes (1484), which made accessible Bersuire’s allegories in the French vernacular.37 However, did preachers really mention Pyramus and Thisbe when they preached to their congregations? In other words, in the mare magnum of Grütsch’s sermon collection, was this part actually used by preachers? The relationship between written model sermons and their actual performance remains elusive, since it is difficult to trace out what was really said to a concrete audience.38 Nevertheless, there are evidences of the interest of other preachers in Grütsch’s section on Pyramus and Thisbe. I mention three of them. First, on the page of a 1486 copy of the Quadragesimale, one of its users wrote Fabula de Priamo et Cyspe, following the mistake of this printed edition, which constantly misspelt the names of the two Ovidian lovers.39 Within the twelve pages of the sermon, this is the only item of marginalia. For this reader, this was the most interesting point of the sermon, something that he wanted 36  See Wenzel (1995) 129. 37  See Engels (1971) and Moisan and Vervacke (2003). 38  See Garfagnini (1989). 39  Johann [Conrad!] Gritsch, Quadragesimale, [Strasbourg: Printer of the 1483 ‘Vitas Patrum’], 1486, 32Q, held by the Universitäts und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt, Inc. III 190.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

107

to be able to find quickly when browsing the book. The fact that he did not correct the misspelt names shows that either he was not so familiar with the Ovidian myth or he did not care too much for it. While this is only a small detail that hints at the interest of other preachers for this section of the sermon, more significant is the fact that, from 1484 onwards, some printed editions of Grütsch’s sermons presented a reworked and expanded reading of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe.40 In this sophisticated rewrite of the allegory, someone added biblical quotations, stressed the sinful condition of the human nature, and emphasized the voluntary sacrifice of Christ. Whoever introduced these changes must have been a clergyman who considered the allegory of Pyramus and Thisbe as a particularly valuable part of the sermon and who wanted to further enrich it, probably with the purpose of using it in preaching. His anonymous voice joined the dialogic reception of the Ovidian myth and represented another layer in a complex stratification. Finally, another preacher, Johann Meder, imitated Grütsch by reworking in a highly creative way this Ovidian myth for the same liturgical occasion. This case deserves specific attention. 5

Johann Meder’s Parabola and a Twelfth-Century Capital

The 1495 edition of the Quadragesimale novum of the Observant Franciscan Johann Meder (d. 1518) states that it was first preached in Basel in 1494. This allows us to know exactly the original audience and cultural setting of these sermons.41 This peculiar cycle is entirely based on a lively retelling of the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15,11–32). In sermon after sermon, Meder presented the itinerary of the prodigal son in a semi-dramatic form, with dialogues between the characters of the story. Hence, the entire sermon collection is an example of creative reception and bold transformation of a biblical parable. Within this fictional framework, Meder ended each sermon with a parabola, which indeed is an allegorical vision. In order to explain something to the prodigal son, his guardian angel (a key character introduced here by Meder) asks him to look at a vision. The prodigal son describes what he has

40  The two versions are attested already by the manuscript tradition. The expanded version is present in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, CLM 3540, fol. 221rv (1468) and Roma, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 384, fol. 243r (1466). The first edition presenting this reworked passage is Johann [Conrad] Gritsch, Quadragesimale, [Strasbourg: Printer of the 1483 ‘Vitas Patrum’], 1484 (GW 11549). The comparison between the two versions and the list of the different printed editions is provided in Delcorno (2016) 48–50 (where the manuscript tradition was still not considered, leading to some inaccuracies). 41  See Delcorno (2017b) 310–369.

108

Delcorno

figure 2 The prodigal son is in misery, and his guardian angel speaks to him (fol. c8r). Meister des Haintz Narr’, woodcuts, in Johann Meder, Quadragesimale novum de filio prodigo (Basel: Michael Furter, 1495) Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt, Inc-i-85, © Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt

seen but cannot understand and the angel interprets the symbolic meaning of the vision. In the sermon of the Passion Sunday, the parabola is based on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. The allegorical interpretation largely derives from the Ovidius moralizatus and it is highly plausible that Meder took the idea from Grütsch’s Quadragesimale. As we have seen, Grütsch had presented this myth on the same liturgical day and his sermon collection was enormously popular in the south of Germany, where Meder spent all his life as a friar. However, Meder wrote an entirely new text by introducing significant differences in the presentation of the Ovidian story, its interpretation, and its function within his sermon collection.42 This sermon represents the decisive turning point of Meder’s collection. In the first part of Lent, the prodigal son engages in a dialogue with his guardian angel (fig. 2), who guides him in a penitential journey 42  Meder omitted the names Pyramus and Thisbe and any historical reference to Babylon, since this should not be an historical account (like in Ovid) but a parable. More details on this sermon in Delcorno (2009) 67–106, in which I did not identify Grütsch as Meder’s closest antecedent. In his sermons, Meder introduced only this Ovidian myth.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

109

figure 3 The father welcomes his returned son (fol. n4v).

to go back home. There, the father welcomes his son (fig. 3), provides him with new clothes, and, unexpectedly, hands him over to Christ, who replaces the guardian angel as his master (fig. 4).43 Therefore, Christ enters as a character within the narrative framework of Meder’s Quadragesimale. At the end of his first dialogue with the prodigal son, Christ introduces him to the vision of the day – the parabola – that indeed results to be a peculiar version of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. As Christ says to the prodigal son, he presents this story and interprets it so «that you love me with all your heart and participate in my Passion» (Appendix 2). Meder intervened not only in the allegorical explanation but also in different points of the story-line. For instance, while the medieval tradition stressed the original paritas between the two lovers, Meder stated that one was the son of a king and the other a beautiful poor girl who was prisoner of a nasty prince. 43  The images of this very peculiar Lenten sermon collection were produced by one of the artists who had worked with Albrecht Dürer on the illustrations of Sebastian Brant’s Narrenshiff; see on this Delcorno (2017b) 354–363 and, for more details, Delcorno (2011) 448–468.

110

Delcorno

figure 4 The father provides his son with new clothes and hands him over to Christ (fol. q6r).

Hence, the story is already oriented towards its allegorical interpretation, in which the girl is the human soul prisoner of the devil. The most striking novelty is the description of the death of Pyramus. The connection between the mulberry tree and the Cross was normally reserved for the allegorical explanation (as in Grütsch), while here Meder changed the story itself to shift it closer to the Passion of Christ. Meder’s version reads: «for the excess of love and compassion, hanging himself on a tree, he pierced his heart with his own sword». This death on a tree (se per nimio amore et compassione in arbore suspendens) does not have parallels in the medieval tradition of the Ovidian myth.44 There is only one exception, namely a twelfth-century capital of the cathedral of Basel that depicts this myth (fig. 5–8) and shows Pyramus, who pierces himself hanging on a tree (fig. 7).45 This sculpture represents the oldest Christological interpretation of this myth, predating all the texts that are known. 44  See Delcorno (2009) 87–88. The text echoes some famous passages of the New Testament: «et occiderunt [Iesum] suspendentes in ligno» (Acts 10,39). 45  On medieval images of Pyramus and Thisbe and on this capital, see Delcorno (2009) 84–93.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

111

figure 5 Thisbe hides from a lion, which shreds her veil. Cathedral of Basel, twelfth-century capital © The Author

figure 6

Pyramus fights the lion and recovers Thisbe’s veil.

112

Delcorno

figure 7

Pyramus pierces himself while hanging on a tree and holding the veil; the desperation of Thisbe.

figure 8

Thisbe kills herself with Pyramus’ sword.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

113

Meder was undoubtedly familiar with this image, which was located (and still is) in a perfectly visible part of Basel cathedral. By saying that Pyramus died se in arbore suspendens, Meder probably evoked what he and his listeners could see in the cathedral of their city. He was not only making use of a universally famous love story, but also silently referring to the image of this capital, which was familiar to his audience – or at least part of it. The capital provided Meder with a previous visual reception and allegorical interpretation of the Ovidian myth. While this sculpture probably influenced Meder’s reception of the Ovidian story, he skillfully connected his sermon with an image of the cathedral. This would have been constantly accessible and visible for his listeners, thus, transforming the capital into a support for their memory, as an imago agens. After Meder’s sermon, the people seeing this capital might have been prompted to think of the words of the preacher, prolonging their effect.46 Concerning the allegorical interpretation, Meder followed broadly Grütsch. The main innovation was the authority of this interpretation. In Meder’s fictional construction, Christ interprets this story and identifies with Pyramus by saying to the prodigal son: ‘I am the son of the king […] I loved the human soul […] I offered myself voluntarily on the Cross’. In this way, the allegory of the Ovidian fabula receives the highest possible validation and is elevated to the level of the evangelical parables. Finally, while in the sermon of Grütsch the story of Pyramus and Thisbe was an optional element, this time it played a strategic role in the sermon and the entire collection.47 In fact, it redefines the identity of the two main characters – Christ and the prodigal son – who occupy the fictional stage during the whole second part of the Quadragesimale. While in the previous sermons the listeners are invited to identify with the prodigal son, from this sermon onwards, they are progressively asked to regard Mary Magdalene and the bride of the Song of Songs as their models.48 Without expanding further on this aspect, one has to note that the construction of the identity of the sponsa Christi begins when Christ exhorts the prodigal son – and so each listener – to become like Thisbe. From Meder’s point of view, this parabola should actively involve the response of the listeners and affect their life; it asked for a transformative reception.

46  See Bolzoni (2002) XXV. 47  It is valid here what has been noted for another sermon: ‘The preacher appropriates a classical story […] because its totality connects with what has been said and at the same time moves the development of his discourse forward’; Wenzel (2011) 173. 48  See Delcorno (2009) 93–101 and Delcorno (2017b) 333–350.

114 6

Delcorno

The Good Friday Sermon of Jacobus de Lenda

The last preacher considered here is Jacobus de Lenda, a Franciscan friar, magister in theology (probably) in Paris, where his Lenten sermons were published in 1500.49 In this collection, the Ovidian story is again found in a strategic position, namely at the beginning of the Good Friday sermon.50 This was the most important sermon of the year. Prominent preachers were asked to lead their congregations in a poignant commemoration of the Passion of Christ with sermons that lasted up to five hours.51 Jacobus de Lenda placed Pyramus and Thisbe at the threshold of such a demanding oral performance, as a moving story to introduce his audience to the contemplation of the Passion. The sermon begins with a theological discussion of the causes of the Passion to draw attention to its necessity and the free will of Christ.52 The fourth and last cause would have been the causa formalis, yet, instead of analysing it, Jacobus closes the introduction (prothema) by presenting the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, which serves as an overture to the body of the sermon. As the preacher states, the remainder of the sermon deals with the formal cause, since it offers the listeners a step-by-step description of the Passion. In this way, the allegorical presentation of the Ovidian myth serves as a transition from the preliminary theological discussion to the meditation on the events of the Passion. It is conceived to emotionally involve the audience. Jacobus de Lenda identified his source in Ovid (legitur in tertio libro metha­ morphoseos), yet he radically reshaped the story to match his own goals (Appendix 3). He started by saying: Once upon a time there was a king who had a son and this king lived in a great castle. Close to the castle there was the house of a poor man, who had a very beautiful daughter. The son of the king often gazed at her from his window and she looked very nice to him … 49  Jacobus de Lenda, Sermones quadragesimales (Paris: Félix Baligault, 1499/1500) (GW M17770). Nothing is known about this preacher apart from what is written on the front pages of his sermon collections, which present him as magister in theology and canon law and as vivacissimus predicator. His convent of provenience might have been that of Lens, near Arras; see De Troeyer (1974) 168–169. 50  Like Meder, Jacobus omitted the names of Pyramus and Thisbe. In his sermons, Jacobus included a few stories of the Metamorphoses, such as Phaeton as an example of wrath (fols. 45v–46r) and a curious version of the myth of Proserpina, which he introduced by saying: ‘Ovidius dicit in primo metamorphoseos’ (fol. 72v). 51  See an overview, with the consolidated bibliography, in Johnson (2012). 52  Jacobus de Lenda, Sermones quadragesimales, fols. 63v–64v.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

115

Some element recalls the version provided by Meder (the absence of proper names as well as the disparitas between the two protagonists), yet this time the preacher developed a Marian interpretation. In the story, the prince makes his marriage proposal to this sort of Cinderella and their dialogue is technically a parody of the Annunciation to the Virgin, as the last line spoken by the girl makes clear. She says «Domine mi, ancilla vestra sum […]», echoing the «Ecce ancilla domini» of the Gospel – a reference that everyone in the audience would understand. Hence, the Ovidian story completely yields to the purposes of the preacher. He probably developed here an element of Bersuire’s allegory, which had proposed – as secondary reading – to identify Thisbe with the Virgin Mary on the basis of the Gospel prophecy: tuam ipsius animam per­ transibit gladius (Luke 2,35).53 While the connection with the Annunciation was an absolute novelty, the remainder of Jacobus’ version of the story matches more closely the usual description of the tragic destiny of the two lovers: the appointment at the fountain, the arrival of the lion, the escape of the girl and so forth, until their dramatic death by means of the same sword. Noteworthy is the absence of any mention of the mulberry tree, which usually symbolized the Cross, while the detail of Thisbe who goes to the fountain with her jar (potum) probably is a reference to the wide-spread legend of the Virgin Mary’s encounter with the angel at the fountain, where she had gone with a pitcher to fill it with water (cf. Protoevangelium of James 11,1–3).54 The details of the story were perfectly disposed towards an accurate allegorical reading: the king as God the Father, the castle as heaven, the poor house as the world and so on. However, this time an articulated allegorical explanation is missing, since Jacobus de Lenda only specifies its general meaning: «This symbolizes the mystery of the Passion of Jesus Christ, in which two died, Christ and the Virgin Mary». Identifying Thisbe with Mary, the preacher preferred instead to stir up the audience’s compassion for the Virgin by echoing the Gospel of Luke (‘O qualis dolor! O qualis tristitia, ipsius animam pertransivit gladius’) and to exhort his listeners to look at the Cross and pray with the solemn words of the hymn of Good Friday: O crux, ave, spes unica. The process of hybridization between the classical myth and the biblical story is complete. The freedom of expression of the preacher (as in the previous cases) was ruled by his concrete aims. His text had to serve as sermon, 53  “Vel dic quod ista puella est beata Virgo, ad quam Dei filius per incarnationem venit et sub crucis arbore mori voluit, qua in passione per conpassionem eius gladio se transfodit. Luc 2: tuam ipsius animam pertransibit gladius”; Pierre Bersuire, Ovidius moralizatus, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS D 66 inf, fol. 40r. 54  While in the Protoevangelium of James the angelic salutation at the fountain precedes the annunciation, here the encounter at the fountain follows the dialogue.

116

Delcorno

within a liturgical celebration, in the emotionally intense context of Good Friday. What could appear to present-day readers as a distortion of the Ovidian myth was part of a form of communication that was able and eager to mix in one single narrative those stories that could vividly involve the audience: the Passion of Christ, the sorrows of the Virgin, and the tragic destiny of the two Ovidian lovers. 7

Conclusion

The sermons here considered demonstrate how preachers interacted with and contributed to a multifaceted tradition of allegorical readings of the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe. These sermons were part of a complex chain of reception that involved written texts, oral performances, and images. The analysis of these sermons argues that a proper evaluation of classical myths in preaching should not be limited to highlighting their presence, as this would isolate them from their contexts. Each occurrence must be studied by considering the structure of the sermon, its liturgical setting, and its intended audience. In this way, it becomes possible to appreciate how a classical story was used by looking at its transformation, its recombination with other materials, and its function with a sophisticated communicative strategy. Finally, the wide dissemination of the sermon collections here considered reminds us that in the same age of the humanistic (re)discovery of the classics, preaching was a highly influential medium for the dissemination of classical stories to a large audience. The voice of the preachers could provide an entry point to antiquity for illiterate people, who did not have a direct access to Latin texts. Notwithstanding the complaints of preachers such as Savonarola or humanists such as Erasmus, who argued for a rigid separation between the Bible and the classics and for the exclusion of ancient myths from the pulpits, the sermons here analysed prove the presence of a concomitant and concurrent attitude towards allegories of classical stories, which were considered powerful instruments to instruct, entertain, and move the audience.

Appendix 1. Conrad Grütsch

Quid Piramus est nisi Dei filius? Tyspe [sic!] vero anima devota, qui se a principio mirabiliter dilexerunt, per caritatem et amorem coniungi invicem decreverunt. Dato tamen quod ad ymaginem Dei factus esset homo, quidam tamen paries, id est peccatum Ade, coniunctionem impediebat, et ipsos ab invicem distinguebat. Ipsi tamen sibi,

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

117

per prophetas sepissime colloquentes, dixerunt per beatam incarnacionem insimul convenire et sub moro arbore, id est sub cruce, ad fontem baptismi et gratie invicem consentire. Sic ergo factum est quod illa puella, anima, propter leenam, dyabolum, ad fontem gratie ire non potuit, sed adventum amici sui, Dei filii, sub silentio expectavit. Aggei 2: Si moram fecerit expecta eum quia venit et non tardabit [Habakkuk 2,3]. Ista igitur iuxta cumdictum venit finaliter et sub arbore crucis amore Tyspe, id est anime, se morti exposuit. Ita quod arborem ipsam crucis proprio sanguine cruentavit et colore ipsius denigravit. Anima ergo fidelis instar Tyspe debet per compassionem eodem passionis gladio se transfigere et iuxta sponsum inseparabiliter permanere.55



Appendix 2. Johann Meder

Filius: ‘O amantissime Iesu, tibi inexhaustas refero gratiarum actiones, et rogo ut me (quomodo id possim peragere) informatum me velis’. Iesus eum ducit ad parabolam, cui semper consuetum fuit ad turbam loqui in parabolis ut dicit Mat. XIII [Matthew 13,34], dicens: «Vide». Et vidit huiuscemodi parabolam. ‘Vidi – inquit – civitatem magnam valde, in qua due domus sibi coniuncte site erant. In una morabatur rex inclitus habens unicum filium sibi in omnibus equalem. In alia morabatur quidam turpis princeps sub ipso habens quasi captam puellam, que corpore quidem formosa erat, sed vestibus ipsa plebeia. Attamen filius regis multum diligebat eam cupiens ei matrimonialiter copulari. Erant autem bene utrique custoditi, nec poterant in invicem convenire, sed solum hoc habebant quod per fissuram parietis colloqui obscure valebant. Factum autem est post multum tempus pacti sunt mutuo quatenus, relictis paternis domibus, circa fontem quendam sub quadam moro situm convenirent, ut mutuam dilectionem perfectius ac iocundius sibi invicem ostenderent. Et ecce, die statuto puella prevenit iuvenem, properans quamtotius ad fontem. Cui appropinquanti leo occurrit caloribus estuans intensissimis ac sitibundus. Quo viso aufugit e fonte puella, relictis ibidem cum pepulo [sic!] vestibus qui­bus induta erat albis. Sed cum sitibundus leo os posuisset in aquam, cruor haut modicus de ore eius exiens pepulum [sic!] cum vestibus cruore suo labefactavit. Quid plura? Venit interim (iam de loco recedente leone) iuvenis et vidit puelle vestes cruore bestiali maculatas et, ex hoc ipsam suspicans ob sui occasionem morte tam turpi interisse, se pre nimio amore et compassione in arborem suspendens, proprio gladio cor proprium penetravit, seipsum morti ob puelle amorem ultro exponens. Quo facto revertitur puella, relicto leonis timore, ad priorem locum, et vidit que circa iuvenem contingerunt, ac per hoc coniciens ob ipsius amorem hec facta, gladium de corde iuvenis eximens 55  Johann [Conrad] Gritsch, Quadragesimale [Nuremberg, not after 1472], 32R.

118

Delcorno

proprium cor suum pre nimia compassione et amore cum eodem gladio penetravit. Hanc vidi parabolam. O amantissime Iesu, dic cuius sit interpretationis’. Iesus: ‘Hec civitas est totum universum, domus regis celum, filius regis ego sum, domus turpis mundus est, dyabolus princeps qui puellam, id est humanam animam, captivam tenebat, quam et ego dilexi, cupiens per humanam naturam mihi eam copulari, quod fieri non poterat multo tempore quousque plenitudo ipsius veniret. Sed per fissuram, id est prophetias, obscure sibi loquebar promittens meum adventum. Sed, veniente tempore, veni et ego ad aquam ut ei virtutem regenerandi tribuerem. Sed ante hec vidi puellam a leone dyabolo laceratam et maculatam. Cui pre nimio amore, quo eam diligebam, meipsum voluntarie cruci exponens, dirissimam mortem (ad quam non obligabar) libenter sustinui, videns quia propter me hanc suam miseriam sustineret eo quod primus homo voluit rapere in paradiso quod meum erat, id est scientiam Dei patris. Hunc igitur amorem meum cum anima devota mente conceperit, debet et ipsa in meo amore inardescere, et propter me omnia mala libenter sustinere, etiam mortem. Et talis anima est que se reddit dignam communicando meis passionibus. Tu ergo fac similiter et mente tua concipe que propter te sustinui’.56



Appendix 3. Jacobus de Lenda

Quarta causa est formalis. Unde legitur in tertio [sic!] libro methamorphoseos quod erat quidam rex qui habebat unum filium et ille rex habebat unum magnum castrum, domus autem cuiusdam pauperis erat sibi contigua. Ille pauper habebat unam pulcherrimam filiam. Filius autem illius regis sepe intuebatur eam de fenestra sua et erat filio valde grata et dicit semel quod si pater suus vellet quod eam duxeret in uxorem, ipse esset contentus eam duxere in uxorem. Ipse vero descendit de castro et salutavit eam et dicit ei: «Veni ad me». ‘O – dicit filia – non auderem ire, domine!’. Dicit ei filius: ‘Ne dubites quia nolo tibi facere quicquid quid sit in dedecus tuum nec meum’. Tunc dicit filia: ‘Domine mi, ancilla vestra sum et ero, si vobis placuerit, toto tempore vite mee’. Filius regis videns humilitatem huius puelle incitatus est amore eius et dicit ei: ‘Vade ad talem fontem et ibi loquemur adinvicem’. Ipsa vero accepit potum suum cum capitergio suo et ivit ad fontem et cum fuit iuxta fontem vidit teterrimum leonem et relicto poto fugit et reliquit capitergium. Et veniens filius regis ad fontem, reperit capitergium et potum, credidit quod leo devorasset eam et cum spada sua seipsum interfecit. Filia autem surrexit de loco in quo erat absconsa 56  [Johann Meder], Quadragesimale novum (Basel: Michael Furter, 1495), fol. r2rv.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

119

propter leonem et veniens ad fontem reperit filium regis mortuum et pre nimio dolore amici sui cepit eandem spadam et transfodit per medium cordis sui et mortua est. Istud figurat misterium passionis domini Iesu Cristi ubi duo mortui sunt, scilicet Cristus et virgo Maria. O qualis dolor! O qualis tristicia, ipsius animam pertransivit gla­ dius [Luke 2,35]. Sed video nunc totam curiam celestem desolatam, ideo ad illam non oportet accedere, nec ad deum patrem propter mortem filii sui, nec ad Mariam sicut consuetum est propter eius desolationem. Ideo, ad illam que hodie suscepit Cristum redemptorem convertemus nos eanque devote salutabimus salutatione qua salutatur ab ecclesia dicentes: O crux, ave, spes unica etc.57



Further Reading

For a rich overview on medieval preaching, see Kienzle (2000) and Thayer (2012). Two contributions of Wenzel (1995, 2010) and Delcorno (2016) highlight different strategies of appropriation of Ovidian myths in preaching and provide a framework that goes beyond the cases presented here. Earlier occurrences of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in preaching are in Alain of Lille (Dronke 2009; Siri 2011) and in a 1306 sermon by Giordano da Pisa (1974), 66–67. For a general overview on the use of classical picturae in preaching, see Rivers (2010), Palmer (2005) and the chapter «Le Panthéon antique de Nicoluccio di Ascoli» in Masson (2009), 171–182. On fifteenth-century debates about the relationship between classical myths and Christian faith see Guthmüller (1997). Further examples of medieval allegorical readings of Pyramus and Thisbe are in Schmitt von Mühlenfels (1972), Tilliette (2008), Moussy (2009), Gaggero (2015) and, for sixteenth-century dramas, Happé (2006). On the allegorical interpretations of Aeneid VI in fifteenth-century sermons, as an example of the use of another classical author in preaching, see Delcorno (2018) and (2019). Bibliography Baumgartner, E., ed., “Lectures et usages d’Ovide (XIIIe–XVe siècles),” in Cahiers de re­ cherches médiévales 9 (2002). Baumgartner, E., ed., Lectures d’Ovide publiées à la mémoire de Jean-Pierre Néraudau, ed. Bury, E. (Paris, 2003). Baumgartner, E., ed., Ovide métamorphosé: les lectures médiévaux d’Ovide, eds. HarfLancner, L. et al. (Paris, 2009). 57  Jacobus de Lenda, Sermones quadragesimales (Paris: Félix Baligault, 1499/1500), fol. 64rv.

120

Delcorno

Böhme, H., Bergemann, L., Dönike, M., Schirrmeister, A., Toepfer, G., Walter, M. and Weitbrecht, J., eds., Transformation. Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels (München, 2011). Bolzoni, L., La rete delle immagini: predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin, 2002). Briscoe, M., Artes praedicandi (Turnhout, 1992). Brisson, L., How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology (Chicago, 2004). Clark, J.C., “The Friars and the Classics in Late Medieval England,” in ed. Rogers, N.J., The Friars in Medieval Britain (Donington, 2010), 142–151. Clier-Colombani, F., Images et imaginaire dans l’Ovide moralisé (Paris, 2017). d’Avray, D., The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford, 1985). De Troeyer, B., Bio-bibliographia Franciscana Neerlandica ante saeculum XVI: Pars bio­ graphica (Nieuwkoop, 1974). Delcorno, P., “La parabola di Piramo e Tisbe. L’allegoria della fabula ovidiana in una predica di Johann Meder (1494),” in Schede Umanistiche 23 (2009), 67–106. Delcorno, P., “Un sermonario illustrato nella Basilea del Narrenschiff. Il Quadragesimale novum de filio prodigo (1495) di Johann Meder,” in Franciscan Studies 68 (2010), 215–257 and 69 (2011), 403–475. Delcorno, P., “‘Christ and the soul are like Pyramus and Thisbe’: An Ovidian Story in Fifteenth-Century Sermons,” in Medieval Sermon Studies 60 (2016), 37–61. Delcorno, P., “Late Medieval Preaching,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies, ed. Szarmach, P.E. (New York, 2017a). Delcorno, P., In the Mirror of the Prodigal Son: The Pastoral Uses of a Biblical Narrative (c. 1200–1550) (Leiden, 2017b). Delcorno, P., “Un pellegrinaggio nell’inferno dantesco: Il Quadragesimale peregrini cum angelo,” in Strinna, G. and Mascherpa, G. eds., Predicatori, mercanti, pellegrini. L’Occidente medievale e lo sguardo letterario sull’Altro (Mantua, 2018), 219–250. Delcorno, P., “Enea, la Sibilla e Dante: primi appunti su un quaresimale virgiliano,” Cahiers d’études italiennes 29 (2019), online journal. Dronke, P., “Metamorphoses: Allegory in Early Medieval Commentaries on Ovid and Apuleius,” in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 72 (2009), 21–39. Engels, J., “L’edition critique de l’‘Ovidius moralizatus’ de Bersuire,” in Vivarium 9 (1971), 19–24. Ferlampin-Acher, C., Piramus et Tisbé au Moyen Âge: le vert paradis des amours enfan­ tines et la mort des amants, in Lectures d’Ovide (2003), 115–147. Gaggero, M., “Pyrame et Thisbé. Métamorphoses d’un récit ovidien du XIIe au XVe siècle,” in Les romans grecs et latins et leurs réécritures modernes, ed. Pouderon, B. (Paris, 2015), 77–125.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

121

Garfagnini, G.C., ed., Dal pulpito alla navata. La predicazione medievale nella sua re­ cezione da parte degli ascoltatori (secc. XIII–XV), monographic issue in Medioevo e Rinascimento, n.s. 3 (1989). Giordano da Pisa, Quaresimale Fiorentino 1305–1306, ed. Delcorno, C. (Florence, 1974). Grisdale, D.M., ed., Three Middle English Sermons from the Worcester Chapter MS F.10 (Leeds, 1939). Guthmüller, B., “Concezioni del mito antico intorno al 1500,” in Guthmüller, B., Mito, poesia, arte. Saggi sulla tradizione ovidiana nel Rinascimento (Rome, 1997), 37–64. Happé, P., “Pyramus and Thisbe: Rhetoricians and Shakespeare,” in eds. Strietman, E. and Happé, P., Urban Theatre in the Low Countries, 1400–1625 (Turnhout, 2006), 149–168. Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., “Introduction: Making Connections,” in eds. Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., A Companion to Classical Receptions (Oxford, 2008), 1–9. Harris, N., ed., The Latin and German “Etymachia”: Textual History, Edition, Commentary (Tübingen, 1994). Johnson, H., The Grammar of Good Friday. Macaronic Sermons of Late Medieval England (Turnhout, 2012). Kienzle, B.M., ed. Kienzle, B.M., “Introduction,” in The Sermon (Turnhout, 2000), 143–174. Klein, D., ed. Töpfer, R., “Tragische Minne? Die Geschichte von Pyramus und Thisbe und ihre mittelalterlichen Bearbeitungen,” in Tragik und Minne (Heidelberg, 2017), 85–108. Knox, P.E., ed., A Companion to Ovid (Chichester, 2009). Maldina, N., “La serpe in corpo. Per il bestiario di Giordano da Pisa,” in Erebea, 1 (2011), 137–156. Martindale, C., ed. Kallendorf, C.W., “Reception,” in A Companion to the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 2007), 297–311. Masson, X., Une voix dominicaine dans la cité. Le comportement exemplaire du chrétien dans l’Italie du Trecento d’après le recueil de sermons de Nicoluccio di Ascoli (Rennes, 2009). McKinley, K.L., “The Medieval Commentary Tradition 1100–1500 on Metamorphoses 10,” in Viator 27 (1996), 117–149. McKinley, K.L., Reading the Ovidian Heroine. ‘Metamorphoses’ Commentaries 1100–1618 (Leiden, 2001). Mésoniat, Claudio, Poetica theologia: La ‘Lucula noctis’ di Giovanni Dominici e le dispute letterarie tra ’300 e ’400 (Rome, 1984). Moisan, J-Cl. and Vervacke, S., “Les Methamorphoses d’Ovide et le monde de l’imprimé: la Bible des Poëtes, Bruges, C. Mansion, 1484,” Lectures d’Ovide (2003), 217–237. Moussy, M., “La moralisation du mythe: Pyrame et Thisbé dans la Bible de Jean Malkaraume,” Ovide métamorphosé (2003), 83–107.

122

Delcorno

Palmer, N.F., “‘Antiquitus depingebatur’. The Roman Pictures of Death and Misfortune in the Ackermann aus Böhmen and Tkadlecek, and in the Writings of the English Classicizing Friars,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 57 (1983), 171–239. Palmer, N.F., eds. Lutz, E.C., Thali, J., Wetzel, R., Bacchus und Venus, in Literatur und Wandmalerei II: Konventionalität und Konversation (Tübingen, 2005), 189–235. Pettegree, A., Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge, 2005), 10–39. Polo de Beaulieu, M.A., “Les fables au service de la pastorale des Ordres mendiants (XIIIe–XVe siècles),” in Harf-Lancner, L., Les fables avant La Fontaine, eds. Boivin, J.-M., Cerquiglini-Toulet, J. (Genève, 2011), 153–180. Possamaï-Perez, M., L’Ovide moralisé: essai d’interpretation (Paris, 2006). Rivers, K., Preaching the Memory of Virtue and Vice: Memory, Images, and Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2010). Roest, B., Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden, 2004). Sánchez Sánchez, M.A., “Dos décadas de estudios sobre predicación en la España medieval,” Erebea 1 (2011), 3–20. Savonarola, G., Prediche sopra Ruth e Michea, ed. Romano, V. (Rome, 1961). Schmitt Von Mühlenfels, F., Pyramus und Thisbe. Rezeptionstypen eines Ovidischen Stoffes in Literatur, Kunst und Musik (Heidelberg, 1972). Siri, F., ed. Palazzo, A., “I classici e la sapienza antica nella predicazione di Alano di Lilla,” in L’antichità classica nel pensiero medievale (Turhout, 2011), 149–170. Smalley, B., English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960). Steinmetz, R.-H., eds. McLelland, N., Schiewer, H.-J., Schmitt, S., “Die Rezeption antiker und humanistischer Literatur in den Predigten Geilers von Kaysersberg,” in Humanismus in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 2008), 123–136. Steinmetz, R.-H., eds. Mertens, V. e.a., “Über Quellenverwendung und Sinnbildungs­ verfahren in den Narrenschiff-Predigten Geilers von Kaysersberg. Am Beispiel und mit dem lateinischen und dem deutschen Text der Predigt über die ‘Bùlnarren’,” in Predigt im Kontext (Berlin, 2013), 89–124. Thayer, A.T., Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot, 2002). Thayer, A.T., ed. Rosenthal, J.T., “The Medieval Sermon: Text, Performance, and Insight,” in Understanding Medieval Primary Sources (London, 2012), 43–58. Tilliette, J.-Y., “Le Cantique des Cantiques relu par l’Ovide moralisé: interprétations allégoriques du conte de Pyrame et Thisbé,” in ed. Guglielmetti, R.E., Il Cantico dei Cantici nel Medioevo (Florence, 2008), 553–564. Wenzel, S., eds. Welkenhuysen, A., Braet, H., Verbeke, W., The Classics in Late-Medieval Preaching, in Medieval Antiquity (Leuven, 1995), 127–143.

Classical Reception in Medieval Preaching

123

Wenzel, S., eds. Clark, J., Coulson, F., McKinley, K., Ovid from the Pulpit, in Ovid in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2011), 160–176. Wenzel, S., Medieval ‘Artes praedicandi’: A Synthesis of Scholastic Sermon Structure (Toronto, 2015).

Rutilius Namatianus’ De reditu suo: The Anthropology of Reception Piet Gerbrandy 1

Reception Studies and Anthropology

Reception studies focus on correspondences between cultural phenomena across time, usually trying to establish causal connections between them. When concentrating on texts, we may point to quotations, allusions, topical correlations, or imitations of a more structural kind.1 The terminology used to assess these techniques highlights the agency of the receiver as opposed to the one exerting ‘influence’.2 In addition, postmodern theories of intertextuality rightly emphasise the important part played by the ‘situatedness’ of the scholar studying instances of reception, which actually duplicates the process: scholar A interprets text B possibly responding to text C.3 It is clear that subsequent phases of reception are strongly determined by their cultural and historical circumstances, so our view on how, for instance, Claudian responded to Virgil will inevitably differ from what future generations of scholars may surmise. As a matter of fact, it cannot be attributed to mere coincidence that classical reception studies are flowering these days, when intellectual elites in the Western world are apprehensive of what may happen to their cultural heritage, seeing that the number of students making the effort to learn Greek and Latin decreases rapidly. By demonstrating the presence of classical elements in different social contexts across history, we can underscore the importance of studying the classics. Political consciousness is a major factor here. The Classics and Class in Britain project initiated by Edith Hall and Henry Stead, for instance, points to ‘the many lost voices of British working-class men and women who engaged with ancient Greek and Roman culture’;4 and, to give another example, there is a lot of research concentrating on the classical aspects of fascist Italy.5 By studying subjects like these, classicists suggest the relevance 1  Broich and Pfister (1985) 31–47; Hinds (1998) in particular 1–51. 2  On the aquatic metaphor of ‘influence’ see Claes (2011) 27–36. 3  Surveys of intertextuality studies are given by Allen (2000) and Orr (2003). 4  http://www.classicsandclass.info/about-us/ (accessed 28 July 2014). 5  Cagnetta and Schiano (1999).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_008

Rutilius Namatianus ’ De reditu suo

125

of classics to everybody, including those who do not read Greek and Latin. In sum, perhaps we study classical receptions in order to safeguard a cherished tradition in jeopardy. Still, some things will not change, as may be explained by taking an anthropological perspective.6 First, phenomena such as imitation, tradition, and reception have defined humanity from the beginning, since civilisation at large presupposes continuity as well as innovation. Aristotle founded his concept of mimesis on this psychological fact, while rhetoricians like Quintilian propagated imitatio as the core of intellectual education.7 Second, only those elements may elicit reception that appeal to existential needs. Time and again, literature addresses problems every new generation has to cope with since they are part and parcel of the condition humaine, and if canonical texts formulated them in a probing way, it is inevitable that readers and writers will respond to those authoritative passages. Conversely, it may be these aspects which contribute to the texts’ canonical status. Odysseus’ nekuia, for example, was imitated numerous times because of man’s eternal worries about death and afterlife. The same holds for imagery taken from nature, since dealing with the seasons, with wild and tame animals, and with uncontrollable phenomena like storms and earthquakes, makes serious challenges to each generation. Third, we may feel attracted to ancient texts because we think, consciously or not, that their very interpretability confirms the unity of man’s existential experience – of which tradition as such is an important element. This supposed universality, though, may entail a difficulty to demonstrate direct connections when addressing similarities between texts. Did Homer have Odysseus enter limbo after hearing the story of Gilgamesh’s exploits, or did he invent it himself? Should any oedipal relationship found in literature be related to Sophocles or Freud? Does every description of rosy-fingered dawn belong to the epic tradition? Lived experience may well take precedence over literary conventions. As a case study, I will briefly analyse Rutilius Namatianus’ De reditu suo, an intriguing poem in two books from the beginning of the fifth century which, unfortunately, has only been partly transmitted.8 In the autumn of 417, the protagonist – purportedly the author himself – travels by boat from Ostia to Gaul. His successful career concluded, Rutilius decides to return to his family 6  A useful introduction to cultural anthropology is Eriksen (2010). 7  Aristoteles, Poetica 4; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria X.2. The concept of mimesis is discussed in Halliwell (2002). 8  Editions by Wight Duff and Duff (1982), Doblhofer (1972–1977), Wolff (2007).

126

Gerbrandy

estates, which have suffered severe devastations by raids of Visigothic bands. Sailing North in rainy November, he often finds himself confronted with unmistakable signs that the Roman Empire is falling apart. Here is an ageing character anxiously facing retirement in a ravaged country. This gives Rutilius’ poetry an atmosphere of deep melancholy, notwithstanding the narrator’s explicit optimism in the first part of the work, where, on leaving Rome, he extols the vitality of the Eternal City. The metre of the poem is elegiac, a current format in late-antique narrative poetry. 2

De reditu within the Classical Tradition

In the last couple of decades, classical scholarship pointed to the poem’s intertextual ties with canonised models and genres. Rutilius explicitly mentions Homer and refers to characters from both Iliad and Odyssey, most Tuscan cities mentioned appear to hail from Vergil’s Etruscan catalogue in Aeneid X, the travelogue structure may be based on Horace’s satire on his journey to Brundisium (itself an imitation of a poem by Lucilius) or Ausonius’ Mosella, while in describing the coastline he may have been inspired by the genre of periplous, e.g. Avienius’ Ora maritima.9 Some scholars, emphasising the poem’s elegiac nature, believe Ovid’s Tristia to be the main source of Rutilius’ conception, rightly interpreting the poet’s nostos to Toulouse as an exile from his beloved Rome.10 Rather than assigning the poem to a particular genre, I propose to stress its generic indeterminacy,11 which may be an important factor in making it so fascinatingly elusive – and elusiveness is what the poem is about. Its uneven structure mirrors the poet’s state of existential uncertainty. This is not to dismiss other scholars’ intertextual inventiveness, of course, since Rutilius evidently did make use of available literary models. What is of the essence, however, assuming the narrative core of the poem is autobiographical indeed, is the inner urge the poet must have felt to put on record a critical phase of his life – which he actually did, while he could have chosen not to write a poem. In doing so, he consciously or unconsciously made a selection of literary motives fit to serve his goals, leaving out what he did not need. Moreover, some

9  Cameron (2011) 242, plausibly suggests the poet’s name was Avienius, not Avienus. 10  Rutilius’ models are discussed by, among others, Brocca (2003), Fo (1989), Paschoud (1978), Ratti (2005), Tissol (2002), Wolff (2007). 11  To Marjorie Perloff (1981) 3–44, indeterminacy, or undecidability, is a phenomenon typical of symbolist, modernist, and postmodernist literature, but I am convinced that the concept is relevant to the interpretation of late-antique poetry as well. Note that De reditu’s first book concludes in a formula of undecidability (I.643–644 siue … siue).

Rutilius Namatianus ’ De reditu suo

127

scholars have suggested he deliberately sacrificed historical truth to literary composition.12 To mention just one example, on the fourth day, under unfavourable meteorological circumstances, a distance of forty-five miles is covered in less than four hours, which is clearly impossible.13 Rutilius’ reason to distort the facts must have been his desire to describe a festival in Faleria dedicated to Osiris taking place at midday. Consequently, his attendance may be fictional. In sum, neither Rutilius’ dependence on literary models nor the actual events of his journey suffice to account for the poem’s composition. The poet did not fill in a given structure, nor did he faithfully record what happened. We should not read De reditu suo as an intertextual exercise or an historical chronicle but as the upshot of a personal crisis. To understand the poem’s meaning, it may be helpful to turn to anthropological theories. 3

Rites de Passage

Ever since the emergence of anthropology in the nineteenth century, scholars in this field have focused on rituals, which they interpreted as formalised practices developed to influence and give meaning to crucial events in the cycle of life. Typical of rituality is the exploitation of analogies between human, social, and natural or cosmological phenomena.14 Michael Jackson, to give just one example, speaks about ‘metaphorical connections between the human body, the social body and the body of the land’, which often make the basis for ritual action: In ritual, appeal is made to a domain analogous to the domain in which anxiety is located, and this […] neutral domain is then subject to manipulation and play in hope that it will change one’s immediate situation and alleviate one’s distress. The grounds for the possibility of such symbolic transferences and substitutions are the deeply engrained metaphors that fuse eigenwelt and mitwelt, a fusion that reflects the mutually defining mirroring of primary intersubjectivity in which whatever changes occur in the self will have repercussions in the other and vice versa.15 12  In particular Paschoud (1978). 13  Paschoud (1978) 323–325. 14  Douglas (1996), passim, stresses structural correlations between social life and ritual symbolism. Witzel (2012) 421–430, makes clear that all mythologies (and, consequently, rituals) are based on the fundamental analogy between, on the one hand, nature and cosmology, and, on the other, the cycle of human life. 15  Jackson (2008) 104–105.

128

Gerbrandy

Ritualisation, in Jackson’s view, is an aspect of everyday human action and speech in all societies. It has to be approached ‘not simply as a social phenomenon that reorders and reintegrates social relations, but existentially – as an ontologically “primitive” mode of action that plays upon the emotions, manipulates the body and changes consciousness’.16 Of course, literature is not ritual proper, but there are at least two reasons to connect both domains. First, the literary field can be seen as an instance of social space separated from everyday experience, in which traditions and conventional behaviour loom large. Second, both ritual and literature are based on man’s ability to shape and interpret symbols. The Scottish anthropologist Victor Turner stated that, in order to be acceptable to different people, ritual symbols tend to be multivocal, since each participant should have the opportunity to read them in her own way.17 Extensively studied are so-called rites de passage, in which transitions between physical, social, mental or emotional states are marked and actually constituted. Well-known are rites of initiation, usually consisting of three phases. Arnold van Gennep defined them thus: Je propose en conséquence de nommer rites préliminaires les rites de séparation du monde antérieur, rites liminaires les rites exécutés pendant le stade de marge, et rites postliminaires les rites d’agrégation au monde nouveau.18 These transitional steps may also be observed in cases of marriage, changing of jobs, and funerals. The marginal or, in the terminology of Van Gennep and Turner, liminal phase is particularly interesting, when the participant is located ‘betwixt and between’, in a social and often spatial no-man’s land where normal conceptual structures are temporarily suspended. Boundaries between life and death, man and nature, male and female seem to have become permeable, and the initiand is supposed to shed his former identity in order to be born again.19 In later work, Turner brought the concept of liminality to bear on a wider array of symbolically charged situations, even declaring all poets, writers, and religious prophets ‘liminal thinkers’.20 16  Jackson (2008) 107. See also Jackson (2013) 172–173, where art is described as a form of ritualism, indispensable to cope with the problems of life. 17  Turner (1974) 25–30. 18  Van Gennep (1909) 27. 19  Turner (1964) is the classic article on the subject. 20  Turner (1974) 28, 232–234.

Rutilius Namatianus ’ De reditu suo

129

Several aspects of De reditu suo seem to fit well into this model of a rite de passage. The protagonist faces a crucial moment in life when, possibly in his fifties, he is forced to retire from his professional career, insecure whether the final part of his existence will be comfortable or not. This personal situation is reflected by both (1) the infrastructural state of the Roman Empire, which from his perspective is utterly deplorable,21 and (2) the time of the year, usually deemed unsuitable for travelling by ship. As Jackson states, it is only natural to construe symbolic similarities between psychological, social, and cosmological phenomena. Moreover, during his trip the protagonist finds himself located at sea, in uninhabitable space, which suggests a geographical correlate of his existential situation – at least this is what he tells us, probably intentionally leaving unmentioned the inns, comfortable or not, where he stayed at night.22 This physical distance from the shore and the time it takes to reach Gaul create spatial and temporal room for detachment, reflection, mourning, and foreboding. I would argue that Rutilius’ poem is steeped in liminal symbolism. First I will point to a few motifs possibly charged with metaphorical overtones, then I will suggest this liminal tendency is visible on a metapoetical level too. 4

Indications of Liminality in De reditu suo

a. At several instances the poet pays attention to the impossibility of leaving Rome, the unwillingness to continue travelling, or the lack of progress.23 Rutilius thus gives the impression of experiencing his journey as a period of stagnancy, after having been cruelly separated from his beloved Rome, without much confidence in the future. Temporal non-linearity, or even the suspension of time, is suggested in these lines: lux aderat: tonsis progressi stare uidemur, sed cursum prorae terra relicta probat.24 21  It is important to stress that it is not a modern perspective, inevitably informed by Gibbon’s views on ‘decline and fall’, which makes De reditu such a melancholic poem, but the poet’s explicit distress concerning the turmoil of the times. 22  Paschoud (1978) 323. 23  D  e reditu I.43–46 (leaving home reluctantly); 185–206 (protracted delay at Ostia); 321–324 (eddies); 341–348 (the wish, and then the necessity to interrupt the journey); 615–630 (stormy weather used to advantage by organising a hunting-party); II.1–10 (a deliberate pause in the story of the voyage). 24  D  e reditu I.349–350; all translations by Wight Duff and Duff (1982).

130

Gerbrandy

Day came; though pushing on with oars, we seem to be at a standstill, and yet the receding land proves the movement of the bow. Significantly, it is the leaving (relicta) which indicates the travellers are making any progress at all. b. A few times sight is troubled by rain, fog, or geographical distance,25 which may symbolically stand for the narrator’s state of disorientation and sequestration. The following passage, with its emphasis on obscurity, may even evoke the darkness of the Underworld, an association that is reinforced by the allusion to Dido in Vergil’s Aeneid VI. A beautiful landscape is transformed into a locus of bereavement: incipit obscuros ostendere Corsica montes nubiferumque caput concolor umbra leuat: sic dubitanda solet gracili uanescere cornu defessisque oculis luna reperta latet.26 Corsica begins to show her dim mountains, and, matched in colour, the mass of shadow makes the cloud-capped crest look higher still: so ’tis the moon’s way with slender horn to fade leaving us puzzled, and e’en though found she yet lies hid for straining eyes. c. Boundaries between land and sea are blurred, in particular by sandbanks and seaweed, both phenomena being serious impediments to move on.27 The indeterminacy of the narrator’s situation is strengthened by the ambiguous wording of these lines: in Volaterranum, uero Vada nomine, tractum ingressus dubii tramitis alta lego.28 25  D  e reditu I.95 (confundunt … uagos … uisus); 190–192 (uisu deficiente); maybe II.11 (nimbosa … obsidione). Significantly, Book I concludes in a minor key with a digression on the rainy season (631–644, particularly 631–632: non desinit Africus … continuos picea nube negare dies). 26  De reditu I.431–434, cf. Vergil, Aeneid VI.454. The liminal phase of initiation rites is often seen as a temporary death, Turner (1964) 6. 27  D  e reditu I.181 (silted estuary of the Tiber); 279–280 (sandbanks); 453–462 (shallows near Volterra); 475–490 (saltpans); 533–540 (fields of seaweed near Triturrita); 639–640 (November storms make land and sea virtually indistinguishable: uidimus excitis pontum flauescere harenis / atque eructato uertice rura tegi). 28  D  e reditu I.453–454.

Rutilius Namatianus ’ De reditu suo

131

Wight Duff and Duff translate: ‘Entering on the region of Volaterra, appropriately called “The Shallows”, I thread my way through the deep part of the treacherous channel’, the final part of which might also be rendered as: ‘I read the depths of an uncertain path’. d. The fact that Rutilius points to numerous ruined cities, some of which had actually disappeared centuries ago, enhances the impression he is travelling in the abode of the dead.29 On arrival in Pisa, he meets his deceased father represented by a statue, which neatly parallels Aeneas’ katabasis in Aeneid VI: hic oblata mihi sancti genitoris imago, Pisano proprio quam posuere foro. laudibus amissi cogor lacrimare parentis; fluxerunt madidis gaudia maesta genis.30 Here was shown to me the statue of my revered father, erected by the Pisans in their market-place. The honour done to my lost parent made me weep: tears of a saddened joy wet my cheeks with their flow. e. Frequent is the theme of renascence and the longing for a new beginning, which would correspond to the third phase of a rite of passage, when the initiand is born again with a transformed identity. The theme appears in different domains. Roman architecture gives the illusion of eternal spring.31 Rome also has the power to repeatedly be born again.32 Two times Rutilius refers to fertility gods; paradoxically, a statue of Pan is seen to be displaying its sexual potency in front of a ruined city,33 while the autumn rites for Osiris are contrasted with the barren way of life of Jews and, possibly, orthodox christians.34 As suggested 29  D  e reditu I.21–30 (Gaul ravished); 37–41 (Italian roads and villages); 119–122 (sack of Rome); 223–224 (Alsium and Pyrgi); 227–228 (the ancient gate of half-ruined Castrum); 281–284 (sparsely populated Grauiscae, oppressed by marshy smells); 285–286 (ruins of Cosa); 295 (traces of a campsite near Porto Ercole); 409–412 (ruins of Populonia). 30  D  e reditu I.575–578. Cf. Vergil, Aeneid II.560 (obstipui: subiit cari genitoris imago), VI.695– 699 (genitor, tua tristis imago … largo fletu simul ora rigabat). See Maaz (1988) 245–246. 31  D  e reditu I.111–114 (uere tuo numquam mulceri desinit annus 113). 32  D  e reditu I.115–140, the final line being: ordo renascendi est crescere posse malis. I translate: ‘the pattern of your rebirths consists in being able to rise from (or: thanks to) catastrophes’. 33  D  e reditu I.229–236; the statue appears to watch over (praesidet) the ruins of Castrum. 34  D  e reditu I.375–376 (reuocatus Osiris / excitat in fruges germina laeta nouas). This is immediately followed by the notorious broadside on the Jews (383–398), the conclusion of which may refer to christians (pro: Ratti (2005) 80–81; contra: Cameron (2011) 210–211). In either case, the conquest of Judaea is to blame for the eventual decline of the Roman

132

Gerbrandy

above, the logistic unlikeliness of Rutilius’ presence at the Osiris festival may indicate he inserted the episode for reasons of symbolism, not autobiographical accuracy. In addition, seven times the beauty of daybreak is described, while nightfall is hardly mentioned at all, again suggesting the poet’s yearning for light at the end of the tunnel.35 Significantly, dawn may be described in ambivalent terms: it is a moment of uncertainty (dubio … tempore I.216), the shadows have not yet been torn apart (necdum discussis … umbris I.313), daylight covers the stars, as if transparency is a veil concealing the secrets of the dark (tegit astra dies I.400). These elements taken together may point to the poet’s hope of cosmological, political, and personal renascence, while simultaneously expressing, consciously or not, his doubts and anxieties. f. The poet is a solitary man, apparently not having a family, who at several occasions takes leave of old friends he will probably never see again.36 His ardent desire for companionship is contrasted with the demeanour of christian monks and hermits who, having the opportunity to lead a social life, deliberately choose to be transformed into mute animals.37 Once he compares them to Bellerophon, the mythical hero suffering from depression.38 No doubt, his harsh criticism is informed by his own loneliness. 5

Metapoetical Symbols

Recapitulating, many elements in the poem’s narrative seem to be indicative of the protagonist’s state of liminality. Moreover, the form of the poem itself, reluctant to belong to a distinct genre, appears to underscore the indeterminacy of the hero’s situation. Some possibly metapoetical passages point to the same theme.

35  36 

37 

38 

Empire (395–398). The Jewish way of life associated with sterility: 387–388 (genti quae genitale caput propudiosa metit: circumcision seen as a kind of castration), 391–392 (the sloth of sabbath as an emasculate mirror, or symbol (mollis imago), of a tired god). De reditu I.216–217, 277, 313, 349, 400, 430, 511. De reditu I.167 (Rufius), 207–212 (Palladius, who seems to be a substitutional son to Rutilius: filius affectu), 493–510 (Victorinus), 541–557 (Protadius). Both Victorinus and Protadius appear to have lost much of their previous wealth and power, something Rutilius politely chooses not to expand upon. De reditu I.439–452 (hermits on the island of Capraria, who ‘shun the light’ (lucifugis), 517–526 (a young Roman nobleman turned hermit, on the island of Gorgon; his metamorphosis is compared to what Circe did to Odysseus’ companions). The isolated locations emphasise the monks’ asocial behaviour. De reditu I.449–450. In the Iliad (VI.201–202) Bellerophon’s (or Bellerophontes’) unsociable character is hinted at, but Rutilius appears to refer to a christian tradition in which the hero, killer of the Chimaera, is a figura for Christ (Doblhofer II.205–206).

Rutilius Namatianus ’ De reditu suo

133

To begin with, in the ecphrasis of Roman architecture, its capacity of enclosure is stressed, in that aqueducts and gardens manage to control and to domesticate the unruly forces of nature.39 This desire to tame nature may also be recognised in descriptions of harbours and straits.40 I propose to interpret these architectural and environmental phenomena as metapoetical symbols, expressing the poet’s urge to create safe havens in stormy weather. The poem, being an artefact like houses, gardens, and dockyards, could embody an attempt to control the uncontrollable, since poetry may well be the sole domain in which our author still has an opportunity to manage his affairs. Particularly fascinating is a short digression on the saltpans near Volterra, again a location where the boundaries between sea and land are dissolved. Salt production is seen as a miraculous kind of opus in which, contrary to the process of frost and thaw, water is coagulated under the influence of sunlight: subiectas uillae uacat aspectare salinas; namque hoc censetur nomine salsa palus, qua mare terrenis decliue canalibus intrat multifidosque lacus paruula fossa rigat. […] rimetur solitus naturae expendere causas inque pari dispar fomite quaerat opus: iuncta fluenta gelu conspecto sole liquescunt et rursus liquidae sole gelantur aquae.41 We find time to inspect the salt-pans lying near the mansion: it is on this score that value is set upon the salt marsh, where the sea-water, running down through channels in the land, makes entry, and a little trench floods the many-parted ponds. […] Let him who is given to weigh natural causes examine and investigate the different effect worked in the same material: frost-bound streams melt on catching the sun, and on the other hand liquid waters can be hardened in the sun. The emphasis on the paradoxical nature of water may be compared to a famous cycle of epigrams on the crystallisation of water by Rutilius’ near contemporary

39  D  e reditu I.97–102 (aqueducts); 111–114 (enclosed gardens, immune against winter). 40  D  e reditu I.239–248 (the harbour of Centumcellae as a marine amphitheatre, with docks even ‘invited into the houses’, which construction is compared to the baths of Cumae); 378–380 (a fishing pond at Faleria, described as ‘spacious water of an imprisoned maelstrom’); 401–406 (the bay of Populonia, where the flood is tamed ( fluctus domitos 406)); 457–458 (lines of piles adorned with laurels in the dangerous shallows near Volterra, to guide navigators); 527–530 (the villa Triturrita, built on an artificial peninsula). 41  D  e reditu I.475–478, 487–490. The water is ‘fixed’ in 482 ( fixos latices).

134

Gerbrandy

Claudian, now generally interpreted as metapoetical symbols:42 the flux of life is petrified into the mineral fixity of literary form. If we take salt production as a metaphor for writing, the poet of De reditu intimates his hope that future summers may yield a rich and life-giving sediment of poetry. However, he is himself the first to put in perspective the pretensions of literature, when, sailing past the ruins of Populonia, he has to concede that tempus edax left no trace of the city’s walls: agnosci nequeunt aeui monumenta prioris: grandia consumpsit moenia tempus edax. sola manent interceptis uestigia muris, ruderibus latis tecta sepulta iacent. non indignemur mortalia corpora solui: cernimus exemplis oppida posse mori.43 The memorials of an earlier age cannot be recognised; devouring time has wasted its mighty battlements away. Traces only remain now that the walls are lost: under a wide stretch of rubble lie the buried homes. Let us not chafe that human frames dissolve: from precedents we discern that towns can die. If the allusion to Horace’s monumentum aere perennius (reinforced by the adjective edax) is intentional,44 Rutilius may suggest the utter futility of any aspiration to erect perennial monuments, including literary ones. Also, his numerous parallels with epic journeys and exploits may highlight an atmosphere of mild self-mockery.45

42   Guipponi-Gineste (2007), Harich-Schwarzbauer (2007). 43  De reditu I.409–414. 44  Horace, carmen III.30.1–4: exegi monumentum aere perennius … quod non imber edax … possit diruere. Of course, Rutilius may have had in mind the conclusion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XV.871–872) as well. 45  De reditu I.192–196 (Rutilius looking back to Rome like Odysseus hoping to get the opportunity to watch smoke rising from his native island); 251–266 (the Taurine baths compared to Hippocrene); 287–291 (the inhabitants of Cosa purportedly expelled by mice, like cranes warred by pygmies in Iliad III.3–6); 315–320 (Mount Argentarius seen as a miniature Peloponnesus); 382 (the greedy Jewish innkeeper compared to Antiphates, king of the cannibalistic Laestrygonians); 450 (Bellerophon); 515–526 (the island of Gorgon, where civilised people are transformed into monks like Odysseus’ men into swine); 607– 614 (corrupt officials compared to mythic monsters); 627–628 (Rutilius and companions killing a wild boar compared to Meleager and Hercules).

Rutilius Namatianus ’ De reditu suo

6

135

Conclusions

What conclusions may be drawn from this succinct analysis? First, Rutilius is an eager recipient of his canonised predecessors’ works, but his selection of elements apparently deemed fit to be received is primarily informed by lived experience. Evidently, he did read and responded to Vergil, Horace, and Ovid (to name the most obvious), but he seems to take a qualified, at times even ironical, attitude towards these classics. While Aeneas gets the opportunity to extensively talk with his father, Rutilius has to put up with a silent statue. Ovid is banished from where he lives and belongs, while Rutilius experiences his journey home as exile. Horace and Ovid are full of confidence concerning the perennial popularity of their monuments, Rutilius seems to realise that, in the end, all artefacts face decay and extinction. The fact that De reditu suo abounds in variations on traditional descriptions of daybreak might point to a deeply felt desire for relief and salvation. Second, anthropological concepts and frames may contribute to our understanding of the poet’s response to his existential crisis and, consequently, to an interpretation of his words. In the case of Rutilius, it is perfectly conceivable he had written a poem like De reditu suo as we have it without ever having heard of Homer, Vergil, and Ovid. Of course, he did read his classics, so it was only natural to refer to them, but it is not this literary context which makes De reditu the compelling poem it is. By reading it, and its intertextual elements, from the perspective of liminality, we may start to appreciate it as the expression of a struggle with real issues of life and death, not as the playful intellectual musings of a bored aristocrat. Third, my proposal to bring in anthropology may reflect a typical twentyfirst century need to justify the potentially elitist project of classical reception studies, which in themselves, precisely by problematising it, heroically struggle to establish the continuity of human civilisation. Making explicit that reading classics is part of human experience, that it is one of many ways to give meaning to man’s implausible existence in an incomprehensible universe, we assess the core of classical reception studies to be interesting and important to each and everyone alive. 7

Further Reading

Thinking about the meaning of space in literary texts has been prominent in criticism since Michel Foucault published his well-known essay ‘Les espaces autres’ (1984), in which the concept of the heterotope is introduced. Equally

136

Gerbrandy

influential were two books by Gaston Bachelard: L’eau et les rêves (1942), focussing on imagination prompted by the presence of rivers and lakes, and his 1958 study on the experience of space, now available in English translation (1994). An overview of the so-called ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities is given by Tally (2013), while space in ancient and modern literature is the subject of a recent collection of papers edited by Heirman and Klooster (2013). Roberto Mandile wrote a stimulating book on landscape and nature in late-antique poetry (2011), large parts of which are devoted to Rutilius Namatianus. Joëlle Soler’s papers on Rutilius concentrate on ideological aspects of his poetry (2004, 2005). A survey of ancient navigation and geography is offered by Kowalski (2012). An interesting attempt to integrate anthropology, psychoanalysis, and reception studies is Renger (2013). Bibliography Allen, G., Intertextuality, The New Critical Idiom (London, 2000). Bachelard, G., L’eau et les rêves. Essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Paris, 1942). Bachelard, G., The Poetics of Space, trans. Jolas, Maria (Boston, 1996). Brocca, N., “A che genere letterario appartiene il de reditu di Rutilio Namaziano?” in Forme letterarie nella produzione latina di IV–V secolo. Con uno sguardo a Bisanzio, ed. Consolino, F.E. (Rome, 2003), 231–255. Broich, U. and Pfister, M., Intertextualität. Formen, Funktionen, anglistische Fallstudien (Tübingen, 1985). Cagnetta, M. and Schiano, C., “Faschismus,” trans. Lienert, B., in Der neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike. Rezeptions- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Band 13, 1084– 1105 (Stuttgart, 1999). Cameron, A., “Rutilius Namatianus,” in The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011). Claes, P., Echo’s echo’s. De kunst van de allusie (Nijmegen, 2011). Doblhofer, E., ed., Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, De reditu suo sive Iter Gallicum, 2 vols. (Heidelberg, 1972–1977). Douglas, M., Natural Symbols. Explorations in Cosmology (London, 1996). Eriksen, T.H., Small Places, Large Issues. An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (London, 2010). Fo, A., “Ritorno a Claudio Rutilio Namaziano,” in Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 22 (1989), 49–74. Foucault, M., “Des espaces autres,” in Dits et Écrits, vol. IV (1984; repr. Paris, 1994), 752–762. Gennep, A. van, Les rites de passage (Paris, 1909).

Rutilius Namatianus ’ De reditu suo

137

Guipponi-Gineste, M.-F., “Poétique de la réflexivité chez Claudien,” in Lateinische Poesie der Spätantike, eds. Harich-Schwarzbauer, H. and Schierl, P. (Basel, 2007), 33–62. Hall, E. and Stead, H. eds., Classics and Class in Britain (1789–1939), website King’s College, London: http://www.classicsandclass.info/about-us/ (Accessed Nov. 30 2017). Halliwell, S., The Aesthetics of Mimesis. Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, 2002). Harich-Schwarzbauer, H., “Prodigiosa silex. S. Lektüre der Carmina minora Claudians,” in Lateinische Poesie der Spätantike, eds. Harich-Schwarzbauer, H. and Schierl, P. (Basel, 2007), 11–32. Heirman, J. and Klooster, J. eds., The Ideologies of Lived Space in Literary Texts, Ancient and Modern (Gent, 2013). Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext. Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998). Jackson, M., Existential Anthropology. Events, Exigencies and Effects (New York, 2005). Jackson, M., The Other Shore. Essays on Writers and Writing (Berkeley, 2013). Kowalski, J.-M., Navigation et géographie dans l’antiquité gréco-romaine. La terre vue de la mer (Paris, 2012). Maaz, W., “Poetisch-mythologische Realität in De reditu suo des Rutilius Namatianus,” in Roma Renascens. Beiträge zur Spätantike und Rezeptionsgeschichte. Festschrift Ilona Opelt, ed. Wisseman, M. (Frankfurt, 1988), 235–256. Mandile, R., Tra mirabilia e miracoli. Paesaggio e natura nella poesia latina tardoantica (Milan, 2011). Orr, M., Intertextuality. Debates and Contexts (Cambridge, 2003). Paschoud, F., “Une relecture poétique de Rutilius Namatianus,” Museum Helveticum 35 (1978), 319–328. Perloff, M., The Poetics of Indeterminacy. Rimbaud to Cage (Evanston, IL, 1981). Ratti, S., “Le De reditu suo de Rutilius Namatianus: un hymne païen à la vie,” Vita Latina (2005), 173, 175–186. Renger, A.-B., Oedipus and the Sphinx. The Threshold Myth from Sophocles through Freud to Cocteau, trans. Smart, D.A., Rice, D. and Hamilton, J.T. (Chicago, 2013). Soler, J., “Le sauvage dans le De Reditu de Rutilius Namatianus: un non-lieu,” in Les espaces du sauvage dans le monde antique, ed. Charpentier, M.-C. (Besançon, 2004), 223–234. Soler, J., “Religion et récit de voyage. Le Peristephanon de Prudence et le De reditu suo de R. Namatianus,” Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 51 (2005), 297–326. Tally, R.T. Jr., “Spatiality,” in The New Critical Idiom (London, 2013). Tissol, G., “Ovid and the Exilic Journey of Rutilius Namatianus,” Arethusa 35 (2002), 435–446.

138

Gerbrandy

Turner, V.W., Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors. Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, 1974). Turner, V.W., “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage,” in Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. Helm, J. (Seattle, 1964), 4–20. Turner, V.W., The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure (1969; repr. New Brunswick, 2008). Wight Duff, J. and Duff, A.M. eds., Minor Latin Poets vol. 2 Loeb 434, (1934; repr. Cambridge, MA, 1982), 751–829. Witzel, E.J. Michael, The Origins of the World’s Mythologies (Oxford, 2012). Wolff, É., Lancel, S. and Soler, J. eds., Rutilius Namatianus, Sur son retour (Paris, 2007).

Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz (G.W. Leibniz, In Johannem Amosum Comenium) Cecilia Pavarani 1

Classics Readers of Classics: A Conceptual Setting1

The distinction between ‘ancient’ and ‘classical’ proposed by Emanuele Narducci is extremely useful in defining the status and identity of classical reception studies. Narducci suggested using the term ‘ancient’ to refer historically to the Graeco-Roman world, and ‘classical’ to indicate the path that the ancient has accomplished and is accomplishing in time and, I would add, in ‘space’, a journey through the centuries that often proves to be complex and extremely tortuous.2 The concept of ‘classical’ thus defined implies that a work of literature or visual art lives on in different contexts and comes to be inserted in ever new ‘frames’ in its history of Fortleben. These ‘frames’ are often disciplines other than the strictly literary (mathematics, theology, education, philosophy, etc.), in which the ancient is transformed and renewed. One particular area in the fertile and varied terrain of reception studies investigates how great intellectuals of modernity, exponents of not specifically literary disciplines, but imbued with the Greek and Roman culture that was the essential basic training of scholars, re-elaborated their familiarity with that culture and transposed it into new forms and new contexts.3 I will try to offer a methodological sample of this field by analysing a Latin epigram written by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz on the death of Jan Amos Komensky – in Latin Iohannes Amos Comenius – considered the founder of the modern science of education. My scope is not only to illuminate, in the frame of classical philology, Leibniz’s reception of antiquity, but also, or above all, to examine the specific content of the epigram from the frame of history of education: Leibniz, thanks to his familiarity with the expressive medium of Latin poetry not only composed a poem to glorify a man, he also expressed clearly his own belief in the Comenian renewal of pedagogy, endorsing ideas and instruments that would be revalued in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by learning specialists. In this way the text, finally, also makes it possible to tease out some 1  The English translation of this chapter is by Richard Sadleir. 2  Narducci (2007), Audano (2012) 10–11. 3  See Audano (2012) whose title Classici lettori di classici I transposed in naming this paragraph.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_009

140

Pavarani

reflections about the role of Latin in the new paradigms of the seventeenth century. But how to present in a single research the ‘ancient’ and the ‘classical’, i.e. how to achieve what I believe is the purpose of reception studies? I am convinced that, whatever the frame from which reception studies are performed, there remains in them a considerable difficulty (also present in studies of comparative literature) resulting from the fact that the scholar is required to deal with two orders of knowledge. The first, the knowledge of ancient languages, literatures and cultures is in my view an indispensable premise (as such it is regarded, at least at present, in the Italian tradition) in order to avoid distortions and errors in the interpretation of the use of ancient material (whether linguistic or visual). From the perspective of classical studies, which is my own, the second tier of knowledge, namely that concerning the age of secundum comparandum, is – as stated by Ermanno Malaspina – a ‘mandatory requirement’, but ‘difficult to ensure, except by reducing the field of investigation’.4 I will term this approach the ‘ascendant’, proceeding from the data directly related to antiquity – which we may call a – to the most recent b. Those who operate starting from a modern disciplinary position follow the reverse path, from the most recent datum to the most ancient, from b to a (which could be termed a ‘descendant’ approach) and in this case the problem arises that is the opposite to that of the classicist, namely of not being at ease with the ancient phases of the history of a cultural datum. Exchanges between disciplines and scholars seeking to construct a credible and scientifically founded framework on both sides of reception studies are not always easy and interdisciplinarity threatens to stray into vagueness or superficiality, without cooperation as co-authors in a research project. When working individually, one can instead adopt the suggestion made by the abovementioned Ermanno Malaspina, which is to ‘reduce the area of investigation’, which is found in a (the ancient in its genesis and in its reflexes linked to the period contemporary with it) or reduce the area of investigation related to b (where the ancient becomes classical), but still giving the research a broad scope, namely one that does not omit to consider the vast chronological horizon of reception and context to which the phenomenon studied belongs. It is, perhaps, not superfluous to add a second methodological desideratum: to conduct reception studies by starting from specific spheres of study that have been for various reasons explored in one’s career. As for me, I will seek to adhere to both the principles expounded above by examining one fragment of ancient memory from the perspective of the history of education, a discipline 4  Malaspina (2015) 183.

Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz

141

that I had the occasion to study some years ago during the course of qualification for the teaching of Latin and the Greek in Italian secondary schools. 2

Verses for Comenius: A Pedagogical Frame

Born in 1592 at Niwnitz, a Moravian town near the Hungarian border, and now located in the Czech Republic, Comenius was a theologian but devoted much of his life to developing a reformist educational system based on the concepts of naturalness (‘the seeds of education, virtue and religion are in us by nature’ states the title of Chapter V of the Didactica magna) and universality (the famous motto: ‘teach everything to everyone’).5 Comenius’s thought was soon opposed by the spread of Cartesianism,6 especially in the Enlightenment century, which disliked its mystical dimension and its ties with theology. Among many of his contemporaries, however, it received widespread recognition. The universalist afflatus that animated it fascinated and inspired the leading European thinkers of his age. One of the most important examples of this inspiration is the Latin epigram that Leibniz7 composed on Comenius’s death, which occurred in Amsterdam in November 1670. The twenty-four-year-old philosopher responded readily to a letter from the German historian Magnus Hesenthaler (1621–1681), who invited him and other men of letters to compose celebratory poems, interpreting in his turn the wish of Comenius’s son Daniel.8 The epigram, unpublished at the time, was discovered and published by J. Kvačala in Prague in 1902. The following is the Latin text printed in this edition:9 5  This is the subtitle of the Didactica Magna. 6  Descartes, a contemporary of Comenius, disapproved of Comenius’s work because of its compromise with theology and praxis, making it remote from the conception of philosophy as pure thought. On the other hand Comenius himself opposed Cartesian ontology and the exaltation of the independence of reason from the object of knowledge. Comenius believed thought was subordinated to things and truth was the discovery of an order intrinsic to them (see his pamphlet Cartesius cum sua naturali philosophia a mechanicis eversus). On the relations between Comenius and Descartes see in particular Rood (1970) Chap. 3 (Comenius and Descartes) 118–162. 7  For the relations between Comenius and Leibniz, for a comparison between the two figures and their systems of thought see Bittner (1929 e 1930), Brambora (1969), Brown (1999) 52, 174, Tschizewskij (1996). 8  In a letter dated 8 April 1671, Hesenthaler wrote to Leibniz confirming Comenius’s death and inviting him to contribute to a collection of poems in honour of the deceased (see Kvačala (1903) 373, already in Kvačala (1902) 151). 9  Kvačala (1902) 209. The composition is also found in the correspondence of Leibniz together with Leibniz’s answer to the letter from Hesenthaler cited in the previous note

142

Pavarani

Fortunate senex, veri novus incola mundi, quem pictum nobis iam tua cura dedit: seu res humanas insanaque iurgia liber despicis, aut nostris usque movere malis; sive apicem rerum et coeli secreta tuenti, interdicta solo, nunc data Pansophiae: spem ne pone tuam; superant tua carmina mortem, sparsaque non vane semina cepit humus. Posteritas non sera metet, iam messis in herba est articulos norunt fata tenere suos. Paulatim natura patet, felicibus, una, si modo conatus iungimus, esse licet. Tempus erit, quo te, Comeni, turba bonorum, factaque, spesque tuas, vota quoque ipsa colet.

1

5

10

O fortunate elder, new inhabitant of the real world which your diligence has presented to us in images: whether you now, free, disdain to turn your gaze on human affairs and our discordant follies, or whether, instead, you are still moved by our misfortunes, or whether what was forbidden to you on earth is yet granted to your encompassing wisdom (Pansophia), which now scans the highest summits of being and the secrets of heaven: do not give up your hope, your word survives death, earth has not received in vain the seeds that you scattered. Posterity will not be slow to reap, already the wheat has grown a stalk, and the fates are sure to keep their promises. Little by little, nature reveals itself and, if only we unite our efforts, we, then fortunate, are allowed to be together. The time will come, O Comenius, when whoever wishes to be numbered among the good will honour you, your acts, your hopes, your dreams. The poem raises Comenius to the highest honours. Since Leibniz was a notable figure already at an early age, having entered the University of Leipzig at fourteen and rapidly completed the academic course of studies, it is plausible that he helped promote and keep alive the fame of Comenius’s work in the decades following his death. In 1992 the epigram was the subject of an article by Hartmut Hecht, In Comenii obitum. Eine Leibnizperspektive, which sought to trace the philosophical ideas (Philosophischer Briefwechsel, herausgegeben von der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Ier Band, (1663–1685) 97. Leibniz an Magnus Hesenthaler; 98. Leibniz auf Joh. Amos Comenius, Darmstadt, Reichl (1926) 199–201).

Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz

143

of Leibniz himself in it by reading between the lines,10 but as far as I know it has never been given a literary commentary. My purpose is therefore to present some reflections on the poem, focusing first on its formal aspects, illuminating the significance of the ‘classical’ concepts and images which Leibniz brings together in the verses cited, not only in order to fulfil the eulogistic purpose dictated by the occasion, but also to present a summary of the key points of Comenius’s thought which he shared (I). I will then dwell on Comenius’s educational ideals, starting from the poem itself (II). Finally, I will try to bring out the value they retain in modern education, as evidenced by naming the European project for the mobility of teachers after Comenius11 (III). 3

Formal Aspects: Echoes of Latin Poetry

The poem opens in the form of a μακαρισμός:12 with fortunate senex Leibniz apostrophizes Comenius in the very words that Meliboeus, in Virgil’s First Eclogue, addresses to Tityrus, the shepherd who will not be compelled to abandon his fields or suffer exile.13 The life of a refugee, which Comenius led from 1628 until his death (the last city to welcome him was Amsterdam),14 will no longer be written into his new destiny, the poem suggests. His condition after death is the opposite of that experienced in life, when peace could only be yearned for and imagined, against the backdrop of the very real religious wars that ravaged Europe and its inhabitants for over a century. But the analogy between Comenius and Tityrus – both of whom have achieved peace and stability, one in life, the other in the afterlife – ends here. At first glance, moreover, the comparison between the fate of the educator and the fortune of the shepherd is hardly very original: that of tranquillity, depicted as rural peace, finally attained at life’s end, is an ancient consolatory topos of the kind that Leibniz might well have had in mind, and Pastoral is equated with Paradise in Christian 10  Hecht (1992). The scholar sees the epigram as something more than just an occasional poem (‘kein Auftragswerk’) and notes that expressions like verus mundus, apex rerum and conatus reflect the essential points of Leibniz’s thought in the early 1670s and, in particular, the idea of a science capable of uniting humanity and nature. 11  See http://ec.europa.eu/education/tools/llp_en.htm (accessed Nov. 29, 2017). 12  The best known example, limiting ourselves to Latin, is Verg. Georg. 2.490 (Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, ‘Happy he who has succeeded in investigating the causes of things’), which Mynors describes as ‘a hieratic formula with a long history’: see ad loc. Mynors (1990) for bibliographical references. 13  Verg. Ecl. 1.46 (Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt, ‘0 fortunate old man, then your farms will remain your own!’). 14  For Comenius in Amsterdam: Blekastad (1969) 332–339 and 559–560 and Rood (1970).

144

Pavarani

tradition. The quite explicit allusion to Virgil’s Tityrus, however, proves interesting if we subject it to a more careful reading: if Octavian, in the guise of a god, secures peace for the shepherd (O Meliboee, deus nobis haec otia fecit, l. 6), Comenius has himself procured his beatitude;15 to him it is given to view the whole of nature unimpeded (which, however far he succeeded in his life, was not completely possible on earth).16 Peace, moreover, lies not in the enjoyment of earthly possessions, such as small fields for the shepherd, but the acquisition of eternal good: Comenius is veri novus incola mundi (v. 1). Leibniz therefore employs a subtle oppositio in imitando, which suggests a higher value for the fate of Comenius, who is more fortunatus than Tityrus, because the divergence between the model and the new context brings out the significance of this modern version of the classical, a mechanism well-known to scholars who investigate the mechanisms of textual reuse and the phenomena of quotation. The repetition of the opening words of a well-known poem (in this case the opening words of Meliboeus), a procedure already customary among the ancients and particularly favoured by Horace,17 given the highly memorable quality of the first line of a poem,18 makes it possible to transfer with immediacy the thought from the original context to a new setting, while sometimes also paying homage to the author cited. In this epigram, however, homage is paid not so much to Virgil as to Comenius himself, because the evocation of one of the most famous works of Latin literature projects the light of his fame onto the laudandus. The image of Comenius who, liber in the heavens, now looks down with detachment on human events, evokes his commitment in life to the diffusion of culture as an instrument of peace (l. 2: tua cura) and the resolution of conflicts (l. 3: insana … iurgia19). This is expressed in terms that recall Lucretius’s 15  Pansophia (l. 6) is a metonymy for Comenius: sive apicem rerum et coeli secreta tuenti, / interdicta solo, nunc data Pansophiae, lines 5–6 (‘or whether what is forbidden to earth is yet granted to Pansophia, which scans the highest summits of being and the secrets of heaven’). The Latin construction, somewhat daring (tuenti is to be related to Pansophiae), makes it possible to contrast interdicta solo and data and couple both to Pansophiae in the pentamenter. 16  There may be also a conflation of allusion to the Fifth Eclogue of Virgil, where Daphnis is described first as cause for grief because he died and then as cause for joy because he was deified (cf. esp. 56 f.: Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi / sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis). 17  Studies of the Horatian ‘motto’ were begun by Giorgio Pasquali (following in his turn in the steps of Reitzenstein and Norden): see Cavarzere (1996) and the bibliography there cited. 18  Also because the opening line could serve as the title (Borgo 2007). 19  The nexus appears in Ovid, Fast. 73–74.

Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz

145

eulogy of Epicurus as the man who first with his vivida vis animi pervicit et extra / processit longe flammantia moenia mundi / atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque (De rerum nat. l. 72–74).20 The sublime of the famous representation of Epicurus, who with his mind travels the paths of the firmament, freeing them from the darkness of ignorance and superstition, inspired perhaps the vision of a Comenius who has now attained the apex rerum21 and contemplates the coeli secreta communicated to humanity in his work as a disseminator of knowledge. But the most important hypotext is here Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (with its Medieval afterlife): already in line 1 the link between veri novus incola mundi (new inhabitant of the real world) recalls the afterlife which is the dwelling of those just spirits who, like Africanus the Elder, have struggled to serve their country.22 In superant tua carmina mortem (l. 7) we recognise a consolatory purpose, clearly addressed to the son and loved ones of the deceased. Comenius’s celestial destiny compensates him for the misfortunes suffered in life. They included two grievously destructive fires in his library, where he kept the unpublished fruits of the labours of many long years. The first fire occurred in 1623 at Fulnek, a stronghold of the Unity of the Bohemian Brethren, to which Comenius belonged;23 the second was in 1656 at Leszno in Poland, where the community of the Brethren had moved, a city completely destroyed by the Polish Catholics. The conception is formulated by means of the topos of the eternity of poetry, elaborated in a new Christian perspective: while among the classical poets the aspiration to immortality coincided with the purely private ambition of surviving death, here we have the affirmation of a lasting benefit conferred on humanity by Comenius’s writings. The change of perspective is clarified by the successive allusion to the parable of the sower24 (lines 8–10: sparsaque non vane semina cepit humus / posteritas non sera metet, iam messis in herba est / articulos norunt fata tenere suos)25 in which the seed symbolises the Word that saves. A human word, true, but one which also speaks of God: for Comenius the ultimate goal of all knowledge was the glorification of the Heavenly Kingdom

20  ‘And thus he travelled far forward, beyond the world’s blazing ramparts of the world, until he had explored the unmeasurable all’. 21  See Prud. Perist. 11.17–18 (latentes / rerum apices veterum). 22  R  ep. 6.13–15. 23  A list of the manuscripts lost in the fire can be found in Blekastad (1969) 548. 24  Mark 4.1–20, Mt. 13.1–23, Lk. 8.4–15. 25  ‘Earth has not received in vain the seeds that you scattered. Posterity will not be slow to reap, already the wheat has grown a stalk, and the fates are sure to keep their promises’.

146

Pavarani

and preparation for eternal life,26 a characteristic of his thought that, as mentioned above, was the reason why he failed to win the respect of Descartes and later the Enlightenment. The metaphor of the spikes of wheat (l. 9: iam messis in herba est),27 modelled on a verse by Ovid,28 continues in line 11 (paulatim natura patet …).29 This contains probably a reminiscence of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, in particular the ways it described the adolescence of the puer marked by the arrival of summer and the yellowing of the ears of wheat in the fields: this is the summer of life, the period when the mind of the mysterious child will be so mature and fertile that it can understand the meaning of virtue: At simul heroum laudes et facta parentum iam legere et quae sit poteris cognoscere virtus, molli paulatim flavescet campus arista … Ecl. IV. 26–2830

Certainly a faint evocation of Ecl. IV does not warrant the identification of the topic of education here. But the adverb paulatim evokes a key concept of Comenius’s pedagogy, that of the gradualness of learning, a concept that relates Comenius’s thought to that of Leibniz: in the work of the later it was to be formulated with the famous motto natura non facit saltus and applied to geometry, physics and metaphysics (it is the so-called ‘law of continuity’). The mystical atmosphere of expectancy31 that pervades lines 9 et seqq. remembers the prophecies written by Comenius and concerning a new education of all men: although they have already received the Revelation, can and 26  D  id. Magna, Ch. II (The purpose of man lies beyond this life). 27  ‘Already the wheat has grown a stalk’. 28  E pist. 17.265 (et adhuc tua messis in herba est; ‘now is your harvest yet come to ripeness’). 29  The translation of lines 11–12 that I propose (‘Little by little, nature reveals itself and, if only we unite our efforts, we, that are fortunate, are allowed to be together’) presupposes that ‘one’ is an adverb (unā; the expression unā esse in the sense of ‘being together’ is found e.g. in Cicero (e.g. Fam. 5.13.5, Att. 13.23.1)). A problem of interpretation stems from felicibus and from the punctuation present in the edition by Kvačala, the one I referred to (for the manuscripts of Leibniz’s poetry the reader is referred to Hecht (1993)): if nobis is to be understood, we have to eliminate the comma after felicibus; but it cannot be excluded that felicibus is connected with what precedes and in that case the preceding comma should be eliminated (Paulatim natura patet felicibus: ‘little by little, nature reveals itself to us fortunate …’). 30  ‘But when you are capable of reading of heroes’ fame, and your father’s deeds, and inwardly learn what virtue is, the fields will grow golden with soft ears of corn …’. 31  See spem (l. 7), spesque tuas, vota quoque ipsa tua (lines 13–14) and the use of future for the verbs metet (l. 9), erit (l. 13), colet (l. 14).

Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz

147

must save themselves with all the strength of reason, educating themselves, therefore, to act in the world not as spectators but actors. Leibniz’s verses emanate the admirable synthesis of humanistic-Renaissance and Reformist elements found in Comenius. The analysis of formal aspects of the epigram therefore reveals elements of allusiveness but also the presence of expressive fragments useful to construct the Latin verse without a connection being possible between this and the context from which they were taken.32 The charm of the poem, moreover, goes beyond its literalness and consists in the encounter of two outstanding figures of seventeenth-century culture, illuminated by echoes of the voice of the ancient Latin poetry and, in particular, of Virgil. Of course, Leibniz’s reception of Virgil has to be read in the perspective of the broader reception of Virgil through the centuries, a tradition that has always, though variously, used the universal language of his poetry as a medium, a vehicle, for new ideas.33 These are great ideals, shared by two great thinkers who by their intense spirituality are distinct from the culture and philosophy dominant in their time;34 politicalreligious ideas such as the restoration of peace in Europe, the reunification of the Churches (alluded to in unā … esse licet, lines 11–12?) and the recognition of a purpose operating in the phenomena of reality (as against the prevalence of mechanistic doctrines), but also the creation of a language common to all,35 encyclopaedism, culture understood as an instrument of peace. 4

Aspects of Content: Latin Poetry as a Vehicle for New Educational Ideals

In Virgilian terms the epicedium thus expresses the dream of the universality of education, typical of the historical and cultural climate of the period when Comenius lived, but advocated by no other thinker with equal intensity and passion. 32  See e.g. the Ovidian syntagms of lines 3 and 9. 33  For Virgil and Christianity see now Hardie (2014) 127–147. 34  Leibniz was profoundly fascinated by Comenius, and often quoted him. A sphere of reflection present in the system of thought of both is, for example, cognitive innatism. 35  The linguistic reflections of the two thinkers fall into the irenic perspective that informs their work: to the ‘living’ Latin promoted by Comenius as a valid means of communication can be compared the symbolic language of formal logic that Leibniz was elaborating already in his early writings, but also the ambition, nurtured by the philosopher, to create an artificial language with which people could communicate with one another and establish closer ties of brotherhood.

148

Pavarani

‘Universality’ in Comenius means on the one hand the spread of education to all,36 rich and poor, men and women. As regards the education of women, whom he says are endowed ‘with acute intelligence and capable of wisdom’, Comenius discerned a contradiction, which he expressed in Chap. IX of the Didactica Magna: ‘Why do we admit them to the study of the alphabet, and then keep them from books?’. Even children who were apparently ill-fitted for study should not be neglected by their teachers: ‘there is no intelligence so unfortunate that there is no remedy for it in education’. But the concept of ‘universality’ also refers to the unity of the universe, to the sensible world, understood as a whole in which the individual parts are related to each other: a harmony that reveals itself only if people collaborate in its discovery.37 One is naturally moved to think that the epigram depicts the world of Comenius (a new world: verus mundus, novus incola). Many elements allude to the countryside (semina, humus, meto, messis, herba) and the poem strikes the mind of the listener or reader not only by its rhythm and musicality, but also the colour of its images. It is undoubtedly a rural world that Leibniz conjures up, and my interpretation explains these references as recognition of the role of nature in Comenius’s theories.38 Nature, depicted in the epigram in bucolic terms, is raised in Comenius to an essential pedagogical principle. He theorises learning by degrees, in imitation of the growth of plants: the educational process follows the phases of the laws of nature: its gradualness (paulatim natura patet), which consists in moving from the known to the unknown, from the general to the particular; the importance of waiting for the favourable moment for all learning; the preparation of the subject, before introducing a form into it; proceeding in keeping with a strict order … These are all concepts presented in the sixteenth chapter of the Didactica magna. Trust in nature creates in Comenius the conviction that teaching and learning can be ‘easy’, if those who teach and learn base their action on natural laws (ibid., Chap. XVII). Learning must take place through the senses, especially at first: the four types of schools (the maternal womb and the infants’ school: from birth to six years 36  Sadler (1966). 37  Bellerate (1984) 18–26 (Comenio tra patria e mondo) gives a picture of Comenius’s initial prevalent interest for his country’s language and culture, then extended to a universal dimension from the 1630s on, and exemplified in 1633 by the dedication to all humanity of his Didactica magna, an adaptation of the earlier Didactica ceca. 38  The epigram leaves in the shade the urban dream cherished by Comenius and recounted in The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, in the wake of the urban utopias devised by Plato, Thomas More, Leon Battista Alberti, and – the works closest to Comenius – in the Christianopolis of Johann Valentin Andreä, the New Atlantis of Bacon and the Civitas Solis of Campanella. In the city lies ‘the essence of society’ that Comenius is concerned to study and improve: Stroppa (2001).

Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz

149

old), the literary institution (or school of the national language, from six to twelve); the gymnasium (or ‘Latin school’, from twelve to eighteen), the academy and travel (from eighteen to twenty-four), are all based on the senses: respectively the external senses; the internal senses of imagination and memory; the world of intelligence and judgment; and the world of will and the harmony of the complete person. Childhood will explore the world in terms of the senses (orbis sensualis) and youth in terms of the intelligible (orbis intellectualis). This centrality of world and nature, in the thought of Comenius and his contemporaries, demythicised ancient culture as a paradigmatic and privileged frame of reference for education. It is at this point that we see that significant reduction of classicism which was common to Comenius and the whole of seventeenth-century culture, marking a watershed in relation to Humanism.39 This was not, however, a blanket rejection of classicism or its expressive language (Leibniz in fact chose the Virgilian form for his eulogy of Comenius). In a certain sense Comenius moves away from a pure and nostalgic classicism towards the Christian faith, which he lived intensely and dramatically, as evidenced by Leibniz’s own poetic interpretation, which places the stress on otherworldly ideals and in which beatitude of Comenius appears a compendium and at the same time a superseding of the condition of happiness of the ancients (Tityrus, Scipio Africanus, Epicurus). Of the ancients, Comenius rejected only their pre-eminence in education, which belonged, as he believed, rather to nature. Consequently, the pedantry of teaching in schools,40 evident above all in the teaching of Latin, should be eliminated by opening the door of the classroom to nature and the animals: that is to say, by restoring the link between words and things and admitting the mother tongue as the medium of learning.41 The figures of the Orbis sensualium pictus (1658) – shadowed forth in verse 2 of the epigram (pictum [mundum]) – ‘place things before the senses’, or the ‘faithful collaborators of memory’.42 Latin should become the key that gives access to the real world and Comenius offers us a compendious method for teaching the Latin language (or any other) together with the foundations of all the sciences and arts. The link between the Pansophic-encyclopaedic ideal and the teaching of language, 39  “Il carattere complesso e un po’ ambiguo della polemica contro l’umanesimo delle lettere per un umanesimo reale è comune tra la fine del ‘500 e il ‘600” Garin (1957) 225; 246–247 and Fritsch (2007). 40  Cfr. e.g. Did. Magna, Chap. XI.11. 41  Verbal communication also concerned Leibniz (see the essay Des mots, in Book III of the Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement par l’auteur du système de l’harmonie préestablie: see Gerhardt (1960) 253–336). 42  D  id. Magna, Ch. XX. 6, 9.

150

Pavarani

always clear in Comenius’s thought, was shared, moreover, by Leibniz, the deviser of the Kurfürstlich Brandenburgisch Sozietät der Wissenschaften (the future Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften). In a letter to Hesenthaler in 1672 Leibniz affirmed his commitment to a Comenian motto, namely that Januam linguarum et Encyclopaediam debere esse idem.43 5

An Opening to the Future: The Failure of a Reception

An opening phrase customary in Latin poetry (Tempus erit) confers on the last couplet of the epigram the form of a prophecy, though it is actually an appeal to posterity, urging it to be mindful of the works of Comenius and nurture his hopes. It is an invocation of the Fortleben of Comenius, his fortune with posterity, so circling back to reprise the initial vocative fortunate. The concluding lines urge us to reflect. In the century of Comenius, Leibniz’s prophecy would already have sounded anachronistic:44 the world in that age was heading towards the victory of science, true, but not as the common heritage which Comenius hoped to see. This period saw the start of a process that was the reverse of Comenius’s utopias, with the triumph of the vision of Bacon, a pioneer of the philosophy of science and technology for specialists. A closed vision of science, symbolized by the institution of ‘Solomon’s House’ in the New Atlantis (1627), in complete contrast with the ideal of openness of Comenius’s Pansophic school for all. This vision will prevail until the other dramatic utopia – or rather dystopia – of Bertrand Russell45 and down to the present day, in which overspecialization, even in the humanities, paradoxically coexists with a new encyclopaedism via Internet that turns everyone into the teachers of everyone, distorting Comenius’s concept, which was certainly of a universality, but of learning and not of teaching.

43  ‘The door of languages and the Encyclopaedia must be the same thing’. The sentence contains part of the title of the manual that Comenius published in 1631, the Janua linguarum reserata (or ‘The door of languages unlocked’). 44  Hence, of the three essential moments in the theory of the hermeneutic process – intelligere, interpret, apply – in Leibniz’s epigram the latter, though is not ineffective in the search for its intent (namely to make the meaning of an ancient text accessible in the contemporary situation), remains in fact vain (see Jauss (1989)). 45  Russell (1931).

Comenius: The New Tityrus of Leibniz

6

151

Further Reading

On Comenius’s profuse output (over 200 writings, in course of publishing in a comprehensive edition: J.A. Comenii Opera omnia, Academia, Praha 1969–) there are plenty of studies, often promoted by national institutes (such as the Istituto Storico Ceco di Roma and the deutsche Comenius-Gesellschaft) or cultural centres (among them, the Comenius Museum-Mausoleum of Naarden, The Netherlands, where Comenius is buried). For a profile see e.g. Blekastad 1969, Denis 1992; the revue Acta Comeniana (1969–), the continuation of the Archiv pro bádání o životě a díle Jana Amose Komenského, offers titles concerning the most various aspects of Comenius’ pedagogical, religious and political activity. On education in Europe and reception of classical theories on didactics see e.g. Garin 1957, Bellerate 2004. About the relationship Comenius-Leibniz, see – in addition to the references supplied in the footnotes – Berlioz – Nef 2004, about Leibniz’s investigation on language, an interest that Comenius too cultivated during his entire life. Bibliography Audano, S., Classici lettori di classici. Da Virgilio a Marguerite Yourcenar (Foggia, 2012). Bellerate, B., ed., Comenio sconosciuto (Cosenza, 1984). Bellerate, B., Società e educazione in Europa (secoli XVI–XVII) (Milan, 2004). Berlioz, D. and Nef, F., Leibniz et les puissances du langage (Paris, 2004). Bittner, K., “J.A. Comenius und G.W. Leibniz,” Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie 6 (1929), 115–145. Bittner, K., “J.A. Comenius und G.W. Leibniz,” Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie 7 (1930), 53–93. Blekastad, M., Comenius. Versuch eines Umrisses von Leben, Werk und Schicksal (Oslo, 1969). Borgo, A., “Quando il libro si presenta da sé: «arma virumque» e i titoli delle opere antiche,” Aevum 81.1 (2007), 133–147. Brambora, J., Komenský und Leibniz (Prague, 1969). Brown, S. (ed.), The Young Leibniz and his Philosophy (Dordrecht, 1999). Cavarzere, A., Sul limitare: il motto e la poesia di Orazio (Bologna, 1996). Denis, M., Un certain Comenius (Paris, 1992). Fritsch, A., “Das Erbe der Antike im Werk des Comenius”, in Jan Amos Komeński a kultura epoki Baroku – Johann Amos Comenius und die Kultur des Barock, ed. Sitarska, B. and Mnich, R. (Studia Comeniana Sedlcensia, Bd. 1) (Siedlce, 2007), 143–164.

152

Pavarani

Garin, E., L’educazione in Europa: 1400–1600. Problemi e programmi (Bari, 1957), 246–247. Hardie, Ph., The Last Trojan Hero. A Cultural History of Virgil’s Aeneid (London, 2014). Hecht, H., “«In Comenii obitum». Eine Leibnizperspektive,” in Comenius-Tagung Türen nach Europa (Herrnhut, 1992), 97–104. Hecht, H., “Die Handschriften des Leibnizschen Gedichtes auf Johann Amos Comenius,” in Comenius-Jahrbuch 1 (1993), 83–90. Jauss, H.R., “Il testo poetico nel mutamento d’orizzonte della lettura (la poesia di Baudelaire «Spleen II»),” in Teoria della ricezione, ed. Holub, R.C. (Turin, 1989), 201–258. Kvačala, J., Korrespondence Jana Amosa Komenského, II (Prague, 1902). Kvačala, J., Die pädagogische Reform des Comenius in Deutschland bis zum Ausgange des XVII Jahrhunderts (Berlin, Hofmann and Comp., 1903), erster Band: Texte [Monumenta Germaniae Paedagogica 26, 32]. Leibniz, G.W., Die philosophischen Schriften (repr. by Gerhardt, C.J., Hildesheim, 1960). Malaspina, E., “Educare il monarca in età moderna. Tra Seneca, Giovanni Calvino e gli specula principis,” in Aspetti della fortuna dell’antico nella cultura europea, Atti dell’Undicesima Giornata di Studi, eds. Audano, S. and Cipriani, G. (Foggia, 2015), 183–202. Mynors, R.A.B., ed., Vergil, Georgics, with a commentary by Mynors (Oxford, 1990). Narducci, E., “‘Classico’ e ‘antico’,” in La civiltà del testo. IV convegno nazionale sulla didattica delle lingue classiche, eds. Contessa, G.G. and Bordoni, S. (Rome, 2007), 105–115. Rood, W., Comenius and the Low Countries. Some aspects of life and work of a Czech exile in the Seventeenth Century (Amsterdam, 1970). Russell, B.A.W., The Scientific Outlook (New York, 1931). Sadler, J.E., J.A. Comenius and the Concept of Universal Education (London, 1966). Stroppa, C., Jan Amos Comenius e il sogno urbano (Milan, 2001). Tschizewskij, D., “Comenius und die abendländische Philosophie,” in Comenius und unsere Zeit. Geschichtliches, Bedenkenswerter und Bibliographisches, eds. Golz, R. (Baltmannsweiler, 1996), 100–112.

Innocence Framed: Classical Myth as a Strategic Tool in Jacob Duym’s Nassausche Perseus (1606) Jeroen Jansen 1

Introduction

Are there any limits to the effectiveness of a written text? An interesting question perhaps, asking for the conditions under which the reader holds opinions in resistance to the writer’s framing or reframing. In 1606 Jacob Duym, a Leiden rhetorician, published a ‘Memory Book’ (Ghedenck-boeck), a compilation of six stage plays based on and recalling collective experience. They dramatize episodes of the Dutch Revolt against Spain (1568–1648) to remind the readers of the atrocities committed by the Spaniards and the hardship endured by the Princes of Orange. Since the 1560s, the Netherlands became involved in a revolt against ardent militant religious policies of Spain. After a war of iconoclasm and violent attacks by Protestants on churches and monasteries spread through the Netherlands in 1566, the catholic Spanish king Philip II send the duke of Alba (nickname: ‘The Iron Duke’) to Brussels, to repress the rebellion and root out Protestantism. Alba acted with extraordinary rigour to suppress heresies. Thousands of people facing accusations of rebellion fled to England and Germany or were executed. In this paper I will focus on framing aspects in the first play of Duym’s Ghedenck-boeck: the Nassausche Perseus, i.e. a member of the House of Nassau as Perseus, thus a combination of the myth of Perseus and Andromeda and historical topicality.1 The myth of the ill-fated Andromeda is well-known.2 The girl had been chained to a rock and fallen prey to a sea monster because of her mother’s pride. She was saved by the hero Perseus who fell in love and took her as his bride. According to the subtitle of the Ghedenck-boeck, Duym used the dramatized episodes to have his readers 1  Full title: Een Nassausche Perseus, verlosser van Andromeda, ofte de Nederlantsche Maegt (‘A Nassovian Perseus, Rescuer of Andromeda, or the Dutch Virgin’). See Jansen (2014b) about the way in which Duym uses the Ovidian myth of Perseus in this play to illustrate historical progress in the period between the arrival of the Duke of Alba in the Netherlands and his leaving. I would like to acknowledge here the many helpful suggestions of Thomas Termeulen MA (University of Amsterdam), and Carmen Verhoeven. 2  Ogden (2008) 67 ff. In the Renaissance the main source must have been Ovid, Met. IV, vss. 663 ff.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_010

154

Jansen

forever memorize all evil and malevolence brought about by the Spaniards and their adherents, as well as the great love and fidelity displayed to the Netherlands by the princes of the Dutch House of Nassau.3 The different plays show both the treacherous Spanish enemy and the bravefearless actions of the Dutch, opposing individual Spanish characters to Dutch ones, military leaders from Spain and from the House of Nassau to simple farmers and servants, as well as soldiers of both camps. Concerning the selection of episodes used for the six plays Duym informs his readers that these treat ‘some of the most important and bravest deeds that happened in these countries in these sad times, so that the evil heart of our general enemies may be seen and kept in mind by all’.4 Duym’s compilation as a whole presents the author as a fanatic and religious combatant in the struggle for freedom of both the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Tragedies about the battle and fall of Antwerp, about the assassination of William of Orange in 1584, alternate with more hopefully disposed plays like that on the siege and relief of Leiden (1574) and the recapture of Breda (1590). Paradoxically, after these five demonstrations of misery mostly, of despair and acts of war, the volume culminates in an exhortation to employ every possible means to pursue the struggle. Duym argues in the final play that continuing the war is a far better choice than concluding peace by way of a truce. In the face of the contradictory pressures impelling either side towards both war and peace, intricate peace negotiations began in 1606 which, after lengthy and hard negotiation, resulted in the signing of the Twelve Years Truce at Antwerp on the ninth of April 1609.5 For Duym a peace or a truce meant the gravest danger to freedom.6 In the view of this Brabant exile with a military past in the Southern Netherlands, the freedom that a (temporary) peace would bring, would have been a pretended and 3  Jacob Duym (Leiden, 1606). There is not the slightest indication that any of these plays were publicly performed in their own time. Koppenol (2001) 11. 4  Duym 1606, Dedication, fol. *3v: ‘Ende verhalen in dit boeck sommighe van de voornaemste ende cloeck-moedichste daden die in dese bedroefde tiiden in dees Landen ghebeurt ziin, om dat het boos hert der alghemeyne vyanden van eenen yegheliicken soude moghen ge­ speurt, ende in ghedachtenis ghehouden worden’. 5  Israel (1982) 3. A good overview of the negotiations is offered by Van Eysenga (1959). 6  Duym understood this freedom by religious freedom and freedom of conscience. In spite of all military and economic prosperity since the 1590’s, the United Provinces had experienced serious problems in covering the increasing expenses of the war against Spain. Holland’s advocate Oldenbarnevelt was convinced that peace or a truce was the only way out of a financial impasse. On the other hand, as Israel ((1982) 1, 28 ff.) has described in The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World, along with new pressure to end the war, in both the Republic and Spain the wish to continue it remained.

Innocence Framed

155

l­ imited one, from Spanish quarters and their supporters. He projected himself as a spokesman of the exiles from the Southern Netherlands and argued for the liberation of the Southern provinces from Spain and for the independence of all the Dutch provinces.7 How has Jacob Duym made a reasonable and persuasive case by way of these six stage plays to explain his point of view and to make his standpoint acceptable? Apart from explicit steering and argumentation in paratexts, which will only be discussed here indirectly, Duym also implies his viewpoint within the plays, in utterances of the characters, in explanatory remarks of himself as the so-called ‘Dicht-stelder’ (‘the Poet’) in between, and in the representation of facts (the choice of words and images). They continually give the reader signals that continuing the war was to be preferred. The text shows all sorts of Spanish crimes, fraud and double-crossing and makes the most of the description of the own successes as logical results of unanimity and heroism. Objectivity is not involved in Duym’s discourse. He frames the issues in such a way that it is almost inevitable that readers will share his ideas in the end or at least feel some sympathy for it. Antiquity plays a significant role in the process of persuasion of at least some of the plays. Yet rather than analyzing a specific frame or perspective from which the use of antiquity may be seen, this article deals with the device of framing itself as a bridge between cognition and cultural memory in Early Modern drama and paratexts. It focuses on the notion of image framing and framing effects, considering their close resemblance to stereotyping, as the primary means to explain why portrayals of Spaniards in the drama’s affect readers’ perceptions. As discourse functions on the basis of both explicitly provided information and presupposed information (like shared collective memory), framing is a suitable means to give colour to reports and to interpret events for the reader, to promote a specific interpretation. The essence of it is, according to Minsky (1980): when one encounters a new situation, one selects from memory a structure called a frame. This is a remembered framework to be adapted to fit reality by changing details as necessary.8 Therefore, frames will bring about a framework, by which we may put a meaning on a text or an image. Frames are principles of selection, of emphasis and

7  See Duits (1999) 99–131; and Duits (2001) 7–45. 8  Minsky (1980) 1.

156

Jansen

presentation, referring to reality and selecting what matters in a specific case.9 Specific information is emphasized, in order to make it more significant so that the reader will notice it more easily.10 Thus frames invite the reader or incite him to read a message in a particular way.11 They organize information within a narrative account of issues or events and provide the interpretive cues for otherwise neutral facts.12 The composition and location of frames and the mechanisms and processes of framing are essential to the way framing works. Frames are mostly unconsciously adopted in the course of a communicative process. A frame may find expression in latent meaning structures that are not perceived directly by the readers. Robert Entman defines framing as a process of selection and salience: to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/ or treatment recommendation for the item described.13 In Nassausche Perseus the myth of Perseus and Andromeda functions as an allegory. Using the character ‘Dicht-stelder’ (i.e. Poet), the author interprets the allegory a few times in between, while steering the understanding of the play. For this reason, the author is mentioned in the list of dramatis personae as ‘Dicht-stelder’ as well.14 It is shown how Duym uses the mythical elements as a means of selection and salience (thus as framing), as to highlight certain meaningful elements in actual history. As I will argue, framing analysis, especially constructionist framing, enlarges our understanding of how exactly Duym uses the classical material not only to sing William of Orange’s praises, but also to support his argumentation that continuing the war against Spain was to be preferred above peace or a truce. 2

Perseus and Andromeda

Let me first introduce this rather curious and exceptional play by shortly explaining the historical and allegorical background. According to an introduction 9  Cf. Gitlin (1980) 6; Van Gorp (2007) 67. 10  Entman (1993); Van Gorp (2007) 67. 11  Van Gorp (2007) 63. 12  Kuypers (2010) 301. 13  Entman (1993) 52. 14  However, this does not mean that Jacob Duym actually contributed to any performances of the play. See Grootes (2001) 20.

Innocence Framed

157

by the poet, in Duym’s Een Nassausche Perseus, verlosser van Andromeda, ofte de Nederlantsche Maeght (‘The Nassau Perseus, liberator of Andromeda, or the Dutch Maiden’) Perseus represents the ‘Liberator of the country’ (‘Verlosser s’Lands’, i.e. William of Orange)15 and Andromeda stands for the Dutch maiden (i.e. the Netherlands). Therefore, the prince of Nassau is portrayed as a champion of the country’s freedom (‘s’Lands vrijheid’) and of course as Perseus who liberates and rescues Andromeda (the Netherlands) from the claws of the sea monster.16 This monster represents the Duke of Alba, with whom in historical reality Orange had entered into battle, although mainly indirectly. In the play the myth runs analogously to the historical developments in the period between the arrival and departure (1567–1573) of the Duke of Alba in and from the Netherlands, i.e. the disastrous beginning of the Dutch Revolt against Spain. In this period William of Orange intervened without success between 1569 and 1571, but with the help of the Sea Beggars the small Dutch city of Den Briel was liberated on the 1st of April 1572, which was a turning point. The highlight of the play, the moment that Andromeda is freed from the sea monster, coincides with this liberation, as the poet explains. Only one and a half year later, in December 1573, the barbaric Duke of Alba cleared off and returned to Spain, probably for reasons of health. The text of Perseus interferes between two worlds, as it tells the story of the myth and highlights historical events of the Revolt in between. At the same time it actualises the situation in 1606 and shows the readers in an argumentative way that continuing the war was a better choice than a feigned peace at that moment.17 In other words, next to classical mythology and history from the beginning of the Revolt there is a third layer: the actuality of the negotiations of the Truce. After all, in the epilogue the poet reports once again the departure of Alba. The poet encourages the readers to commemorate the benefactions of the House of Orange. Prince Maurice, the son of William, must be praised by everybody for his recent victories. 15  The element of ‘release’ is both in the historical frame of the country’s freedom and in the mythological frame of the bound up Andromeda. Cf. Duym 1606a, fol. F2r–v: ‘Als een verlosser sult ghy my [Perseus] bevinden schier …’ (‘You will soon find me [Perseus] a saviour [“releaser”] …’). The tying up and untying of Andromeda are explicitly described in the play. 16  Perseus = William of Orange, ‘die dees bedroefde Nederlanden van den Draeck die over Zee quam (dats vanden wreeden Hertogh van Alven) verlost heeft’ (‘who has released these sad Netherlands from the Dragon that came overseas (that is: from the crude Duke of Alba)’) (Duym 1606a, fol. *3v). Spies (1999) 76–77; Duits (1999) 106. 17  Jansen 2014a, describes how Duym managed to bring the content of the first five plays as premises into the final play: Een Bewys dat beter is eenen goeden Crijgh, dan eenen gheveyns­den Peys (‘A proof that a fair battle is better than a fake Peace’).

158

Jansen

During the play references to the myth have rigidly been sustained: at the beginning of the play Perseus praises the country in which he has arrived (in 1568 William of Orange came back from the German Dillenburg castle to the Netherlands). He discovers Andromeda, who is chained to a rock by soldiers, begins to feel compassion and takes a stand against the sea monster or dragon, and is encouraged by the prospect of a marriage with the girl (the poet explains: Orange is in a campaign against Alba). Perseus figures in the fourth act on the back of the horse Pegasus (interpreted as God’s grace in which William put all his trust), and fights with the monster that spits out fire and water, while Andromeda and her parents watch in fear. Contrary to Ovid, Perseus enters on the back of Pegasus, instead of a Perseus with Mercury’s winged sandals, as we may assume due to a pictorial convention. The winged horse appears on illustrations of this scene in vernacular editions of Ovid, for example in the Dutch one of 1557 (Excellente figueren ghesnede uuyten uppersten Poete Ovidius, Lyon), for which Bernard Salomon has made the woodcuts. A militant Perseus on the back of Pegasus is also depicted in the popular Dutch translation by Johannes Florianus (editions e.g. 1552, 1588, 1595, 1599) (comparable to the engraving by Hendrik Goltzius: Figure 1). According to Sluijter (2006, 77): the many book images printed in the profusely illustrated vernacular editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which were published as of the middle of the sixteenth century, had codified both the moment that was selected from the story of Andromeda and Perseus [Andromeda chained to the rock] and the general pictorial scheme. […] This basic image must have impressed itself in the minds of visually literate Dutch burghers and artists as the prototype of the scene. The appearance of Pegasus in this scene is already encountered in medieval miniatures, probably a confusion with the story of Bellerophon who did ride Pegasus.18 Moreover, the scene is explained by the poet as: Orange has won, sitting on the horse of God’s grace. The Netherlands has been freed as this monster is defeated, referring to Alba’s return to Spain. In the final act Perseus rescues Andromeda and they thank God. After the girl has agreed with a marriage,

18  Sluijter (2006) 78; 371, note 10; Tournoy (2000) 114.

Innocence Framed

figure 1

Perseus and Andromeda. Engraving by Hendrick Goltzius, 1593 Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: RP-P-OB-10.130

159

160

Jansen

her parents give away their daughter to her liberator and the country exhibits great joy.19 The structure of the play is remarkably scenic and static: in every act the first scene represents actual events from Spanish side, concentrating on the cruelty and the misbehaviour of the Spanish soldiers towards the Dutch citizens. The second scene in every act shows the myth from Dutch side, along with discussions between Perseus, Andromeda and her parents, in the fourth act cumulating in the defeat of the dragon. The poet comes in at the end of every second scene to give an explanation of the preceding scenes. He also explains the connection between certain historical events and the myth and steers the understanding by pointing at the necessity of total liberation, the danger of tyranny, and the cruelty of the measures taken by the Spaniards. He indicates historical developments that support the idea of unity, harmony, courage, fidelity and dedication by the House of Nassau. Obviously, the function of the poet is not only to give explanations and elucidations, and to interweave and relate the historical and mythological material, but as we will see also to interpret and frame the different events for the reader into his personal plan of the Ghedenck-boeck in its entirety: continuing the war was to be preferred. In Nassausche Perseus Duym uses the myth in acknowledgement of a continuous dichotomy between good and evil. In fact, all the episodes in the compilation function as narrative strategies with which he frames the struggle between both sides. By its narrative pattern the myth was extremely suitable for doing so. Besides, the myth was generally known. The stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses are ideas loaded with special values that express deep emotion, produce order, provide comfort and give answers to universal problems, about life and death, good and evil.20 Their ambiguous character enables people to read them according to their own wishes and use elements of them at will just as they fitted best one’s needs and purposes: they enabled people to resign themselves to cruelties, social inequality and contradictions in real life, by explaining them and to regard them as unavoidable. According to Roland Barthes, in his Mythologies (1957), people accept the answers myths offer, without dwelling on them in greater depth, because myths are quite natural and insurmountable.21 Mythic themes reflect the difference between good and evil. Duym used this quality in his reading of the myth as a simple cautionary tale by making the hero stand out in sharp relief to the victim as an innocent 19  This is shown by a song, in the final act, which illustrates the allegorical background once again, and glorifies Maurice as successor to his father (William of Orange). 20  Van Gorp (2006) 87. See also Jansen (2014b) 159 ff. 21  Cf. Baragwanath and De Bakker (2012) 37 ff.

Innocence Framed

161

person. Just as the impossible may come true in a myth, the same prospective suggestion emanates from the struggle between Orange and the Spanish enemy in Perseus. Because the poet emphasizes the departure of the Duke and the recent victories of Prince Maurice in his epilogue, the reader may imagine a future – after 1606 – following naturally from the myth, in which evil is defeated, the Netherlands liberated and the hero (Orange) will overcome. With that, next to antiquity, the historical period around 1570 and the current political interest of the 1606 discussion about a truce, the text has gained a fourth time-dimension (suggestively predicting a prosperous future under the guidance of Maurice), reinforcing the author’s underlying argumentation. Due to this presentation, the readers must have gained a positive attitude towards continuing the war, relying on a bright future for the liberated Netherlands. 3

Constructionist Framing

When we want to figure out how framing may influence the function of the myth with regard to the colouring of the historical discourse, we need to examine the nature of the supposed frames further. Frames are tied in with shared cultural phenomena. They are involved with structures of meaning that are deeply rooted in our culture and have a certain degree of truth, like a myth. They then connect these structures to concrete elements in reality or to the reproduction of it in a literary text.22 By way of reconstruction of frames one may decide which ideas the author has applied to the reader. If we want to know how frames can contribute to defining a given situation, as I will demonstrate the most preferable theoretical approach is that of a constructionist perspective, as proposed by Gamson and Modigliani (1987, 1989), and elaborated by Robert Entman (1993, 2003) and Baldwin van Gorp (2006). According to Gamson and Modigliani a frame ‘provides meaning’, it weaves a connection between ‘an unfolding strip of events’, and ‘suggests what the controversy is about’, or what the ‘essence of the issue’ is.23 It connects as it were the mental dots by suggesting a relation between two things, so that after exposure to the framed message, audiences accept or are at least aware of the connection.24 Entman emphasizes that ‘framing entails selecting and highlighting some facets of events or issues, and making connections among them so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution. They 22  Van Gorp (2006) 88; (2007) 65. Barthes 1957. 23  Gamson and Modigliani (1987) 143; Brewer and Gross (2010) 159. 24  Nisbet (2010) 47.

162

Jansen

use words and images highly salient in the culture, which is to say noticeable, understandable, memorable, and emotionally charged’.25 Van Gorp has applied the process of framing on the basis of this constructionist approach, by integrating several aspects of the communication process in a frame analysis. Each reconstructed frame is presented by a frame package, that is, ‘a cluster of logical organized devices that function as an identity kit for a frame’.26 A frame package consists in framing devices and reasoning devices. Framing devices are specific linguistic structures such as allusions to history, culture, or literature, historical examples from which lessons are drawn, depictions, concepts, symbols, metaphors, visual icons, (nick)names given to persons, ideas, actions, and catchphrases that communicate frames.27 In other words, they are textual and visual elements28 that point out to one side and are covered by one theme. Some of them are extremely powerful and immediately activate a mental schema (i.e. the attitude toward a subject based on systems of knowledge, like expectations, our experience with similar situations, as well as grammatical, syntactic and lexical knowledge).29 Framing devices structure and organize experience, and decide in a consistent way which parts of reality become noticed. Moreover, they construct a particular point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be viewed in a particular manner, with some facts made more noticeable than others.30 Within the frame package, the receivers tie in a causal chain of reasoning devices.31 Reasoning devices are explicit or implicit utterances that chronologically or causally deal with the cause, justification, reasons, and consequences.32 These complete the frame package and bring to mind a narrative account of events that describes the phenomena as a problem that has a causal interpretation, a moral evaluation, and a solution or recommendation.33 A frame analysis thus consists in a systematic reconstruction of the frame package, a

25  Entman (2003) 415–432. 26  The idea of such a package is based on Gamson and Modigliani (1989) 3–4. 27  Cf. Van Gorp (2010) 91; Kuypers (2010) 301. 28  See about the power of visual images: Coleman (2010). 29  Tannen (1977) 506–515 (‘syntactic elements that mark statements which run counter to expectation’); Gumperz (1982) 21. 30  Kuypers (2010) 300. 31  Van Gorp (2007) 66. 32  See Van Gorp and Van der Goot (2011) 379–381; Labov (1972). Cf. Entman (1993) 52, who distinguishes four functions of framing: defining the problem, assigning the causes, passing a moral judgment, and suggesting solutions. 33  See Entman (1993) 52; Van Gorp (2007) 65; Van Gorp and Van der Goot (2011) 379–381; Labov (1972).

Innocence Framed

163

message at a meta-communicative level that represents the structuring concept (the actual frame) that gives coherence and meaning to a message.34 In sum, the package for its part is composed of framing devices and reasoning devices, which are present in the text or are supposed to be there. By looking for specific properties within the text frames can be detected. Specific key words or images constitute the concepts underlying frames.35 4

Andromeda in the ‘Innocent Victim’-Frame

The constructionist approach offers a valuable way to make a connection between cultural memory (collective experience) and the effectiveness of the different texts in the direction of Duym’s ultimate purpose of continuing war. How does this all work out in Duym’s Nassausche Perseus? In my opinion, the text offers several frames to steer opinions in the direction desired by the author. One of them is to be identified as the so-called ‘innocent victim’-frame. Duym has made use of the existing image of Andromeda in this specific situation, probably present with his readers, visualized by her nude female body, as is clear from all kinds of descriptions but also from a lot of late sixteenth century depictions of the theme.36 In general, nudity offered pictorial artists a perfect opportunity to display their ability to depict naked female beauty.37 As in pictorial art this artistic value of nudity functions differently from that in written texts, it is not surprising that e.g. in the numerous paintings that portray scenes from P.C. Hooft’s Granida the pastoral characters are portrayed ‘more erotically than when they appear on stage’.38 Complete nudeness in any possible performance of Duym’s play does not seem to be at stake.39 In the 34  Van Gorp (2006) 46. 35  Cf. Van Gorp (2010) 95. 36  See Sluijter (2006) 75 ff.: ‘In the traditional pictorial scheme of this subject, the chained Andromeda is rendered frontally as a nude figure that forms the focal point of the composition’. Examples are prints by or after Hendrick Goltzius. According to Sluijter (2006) 77, it was especially the inventions of Goltzius ‘that must have been the ones to which any knowledgeable connoisseur consciously or unconsciously would have compared a subsequent depiction of Andromeda’. The tradition of her nudeness (in Greek sculpture) dates from the classical period. Ogden (2008) 81. 37  Brom (1957) 82–83. According to Brom (93) veils did not so much function to cover the scantily dressed body as to show it. 38  The same goes for illustrations in allegorical plays, which suggest nude characters, compared to the plays themselves. Cf. Meeus (2011) 86–87. 39  Cf. Meeus (2011) 85–92; Karel van Mander described in 1604 how Venus was represented in tableaux vivants in clothes that are so thin ‘that when the wind blew against it, one

164

figure 2

Jansen

Perseus and Andromeda. Tableau vivant by Pieter Nolpe, after Jan Wildens, after Pieter Symonsz. Potter, 1642. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: RP-P-OB-76.723. This allegorical tableau vivant presents stadholder Frederik Hendrick as Perseus who is to save Andromeda (the Netherlands). The seamonster is here Spain as well. This spectacle was envisaged – but not performed in the end – at the Amsterdam Damrak, on the occasion of the visit of the English Queen Henrietta Maria to Amsterdam in May 1642. The engraving is used as an illustration in: P. Nolpe, Beschrivinge van de blyde inkoomste, rechten van zeege-bogen en andere toestel op de wel-koomste van Haare Majesteit van Groot-Britanien, Vrankryk, en Jerland tot Amsterdam, den 20 May, 1642, Nicolaes van Ravesteyn, Amsterdam 1642, 19–20.

introduction to the reader it is stated that ‘the maiden should be dressed in an antique [classical] way, with upon her chest the arms of the United Provinces’.40 could see all the beauty of her well-formed limbs’ (‘dat wanneer daer den wint tegen blies, men con al de schoonheyt van haer wel ghemaeckte leden sien’). Cf. Van Herk (2009) 155–156; Meeus (2003) 442; Brom (1957) 86–93 (about nudity in sixteenth century literary texts). 40  Duym 1606a, fol. A2v: ‘De Maeght moet opt antijcsche ghecleet zijn, hebbende op haer borst de wapen vande Vereenichde Landen’. This ‘antique way’ is probably the way in

Innocence Framed

165

However, the captain of the Spanish soldiers suggests Andromeda’s nakedness after they have chained her to the rock.41 Representations of the nude with their distinctive erotic impact were under scrutiny, and met with a lot of resistance from spokesmen of the official moral.42 This doesn’t alter the fact that the pictorial image of Andromeda activated a mental scheme to Duym’s readers, strengthening the idea of her nudity and vulnerability in their minds.43 At another level visualization has been stimulated by Ovid’s text itself. When Perseus beholds Andromeda for the first time, she looked like a statue. Ovid’s ‘marmoreum opus’ (Met. IV, 675) becomes in Duym (1606a, fol. C4r) a ‘nice alabaster statue’ (‘schoon albasten beelt’), with ‘her white and clear countenance’ (‘haer aenschiin wit en clear’), that blushed of shame, because of her nudeness. Somewhat later her hands are called ‘snow white’ (‘sneeu witt’), suggesting purity and innocence, virginity and vulnerability as well.44 This idea of innocence serves as a prelude to the answer that she will give to Perseus at his question why she has been bound: ‘It is not my fault, though I am heavyhearted, Never I did wrong, though I must suffer now’.45 As the Netherlands were symbolized by Andromeda, her innocence and undeserved punishing in the well-known myth is transferred on the historical situation at the beginning of the Eighty Years War. Next to this visual idea which the girl is dressed in paintings (e.g. by Joachim Wtewael) in this time, with a veil reaching below the hip. See Figure 2. Cf. Meeus (2011) 85. 41  Duym 1606a, fol. B4v (captain against Andromeda): ‘Nu, ick vertreck van hier, ick laet u hanghen bloot …’ (‘Well, I leave this place, leaving you hanging nakedly’). However, apart from ‘naked, without clothes’ the Dutch word ‘bloot’ may also mean: ‘defenseless’ or ‘unprotected’. 42  Van der Stighelen (2011) 5; Meeus (2011) 91–92. 43  The story of Perseus and Andromeda was a subject in the ‘tableaux’ made by Johan Baptista Houwaert (1579, fol. ***r) in honour of the Entrance of archduke Matthew in Brussels in 1578. At one of them Andromeda was represented as ‘een ionghe maeght, met ketenen ghevetert, alsoo naeckt als zy van moederlyve gheboren was; men soude merckelyck geseydt hebben, dattet een marberen beeldt hadde geweest’ (‘a young virgin, chained, as naked as she was born from her mother; one would have remarked that it had been a marble statue’), the latter remark hinting at Ovid (Met. IV, vs 675) (see below). Meeus (2011) 84. 44  Duym 1606a, fol. C4v; G1v. 45  Duym 1606a, fol. C4v: ‘Ten is miin schult niet, al ist dat miin hert betreurt, / Noyt deed’ ick eenich quaet, al moet ickt nu ontgelden’; and ‘Ick en heb gantz geen schult’; ‘Nochtans so moet ick nu ontschuldich dees straff’ lijden’ (‘I am not guilty of anything whatsoever, nevertheless I must suffer this punishment, guiltlessly’) (fol. D1r). Elsewhere as well, in the fourth act (fol. E4v), Andromeda points to her innocence: (‘I know for myself that I am completely innocent in all respects’) (‘Ick ken my selven doch in alles heel ontschuldich …’).

166

Jansen

loose words also function as framing devices. In the prologue Duym explains the Ovidian myth, proclaiming that through no fault of Andromeda herself but by the vanity of her mother Cassiope the rage of the Nereids had been aroused. Jupiter had her tied up to a rock, her country was captured, and the dragon, bloodthirsty without fear, would devour her. Her innocence is further elaborated by Duym in the first act. Andromeda tells herself why others are jealous of her: to this envy not only her beauty has contributed, but also her ‘great wealth’ (‘oock rijckdom groot’) and her ‘virtue and power’ (‘deucht, en macht’) (fol. B3v). This is obviously a cross-reference of the two worlds, referring to the historical situation of the Netherlands. In fact, by using the word ‘macht’ (‘power’) she undermines her own impotence, but the readers’ schema will have been activated here that made them think rather about the attractiveness of the Netherlands as a rising superpower over the Spanish invaders. Indeed, in other situations Andromeda’s loss of power is expounded, like in the Ovidian scene in which she is not able, due to her bound hands, to cover her face in shame towards Perseus. The Spanish captain explains to her the situation (fol. B4v): T’coemt vander Goden hant: hebt vry in als ghedult, Ten is claer niemandts, dan u eyghen moeders schult.46 It comes from the hand of the Gods: just have patience in all, It obviously is nobody’s except your own mother’s guilt. Thereupon Andromeda asks herself why she, ‘who is very innocent’, must suffer, and has done so patiently till now (fol. E4v). Throughout the play innocence, the suffering and the fear of Andromeda and the country are opposed to the barbarism of the soldiers and the dragon, which is ‘the old Spanish hate’ (‘den ouden spaenschen haet’) that pursue her to death (fol. C1v). Explicitly she points to her ‘fragile and young body’ (‘teer en ionck lijf’), that will be mauled by the dragon (fol. E4v). Characteristics like these, sharply contrast with the cruel, bloodthirsty enemy, by which not only the aspect of innocence but also that of the role of the victim is underlined. The struggle in these early years of the war can be characterized as one of a perpetrator against a victim. The Netherlands are made an innocent and almost defenseless victim of the Spanish terror, by referring to the myth of Andromeda versus the dragon. The ‘innocent victim’-frame as opposed to 46  In the fourth act, when Perseus is just about to lead the attack on the dragon, he invokes Jupiter and states that ‘The Gods are with me’ (‘De Goden ziin met my’ (Duym 1606a, fol. F1v)).

Innocence Framed

167

the strong, militant liberator Perseus has been used in Duym’s story steers his public for an explicit interpretation of the morally ambiguous myth: Perseus is a hero who liberates, Andromeda an innocent victim and the sea monster an evil power to be defeated. The ‘innocent victim’-frame, that is directly associated with the victim as mythic archetype that is a projection of human weakness,47 refers to the vulnerable or invalid character that collapses under worldly, often evil forces, under injustice and the will of others. The victim immediately evokes compassion and is therefore sympathetic. She is the victim of oppression and tyranny, of the dominance of others (see Appendix 1). Frames are mostly unconsciously adopted in the course of a communicative process. The initial powerlessness of Orange in the historical situation, who after all fled from the Netherlands to Germany at the arrival of Alba, has been avoided by Duym, probably as being too little heroic, by letting Perseus first appear on stage in the second act. The latter performed more important and heroic tasks at the beginning of this myth, namely the killing of the Gorgon Medusa.48 From Perseus’s first appearance in the play, Andromeda sharply contrasts with him, radiating pity and the powerlessness of a victim, emotions that form the basis of her presence.49 In Appendix 1 the frame package of the ‘Innocent Victim’ is analyzed in a scheme, consisting of framing devices and reasoning devices. 5

Conclusion

The myth demonstrates emotions like innocence and defenselessness against heroism and the making of self-sacrifices, visualized by existing pictorial representations of the scene, and strengthened by loose words in the text, but also by the adaptation of the myth, for example the actual chaining of Andromeda by cruel soldiers in the first act. Duym’s praise of the House of Orange, to William and in the epilogue also to his son Maurice clears the way for the thought that the House of Orange would be very capable to definitively settle scores with the Spanish intruders in the near future. The weakness of the Netherlands in these early years (problem), reproduced in such an expressive form, 47  Silverblatt, Ferry, and Finan (1999) 164–165: Van Gorp (2006) 127. Cf. Sluijter (2006) 83: ‘It should not be forgotten that the image of a nude young women in distress, chained and helpless, threatened by a vicious monster and about to be rescued by a male hero, belongs to an obvious archetypal eroticism’. 48  Perseus refers to this heroic deed in the second act, where he presents himself, telling about his earlier adventures (Duym 1606a, fol. C4r). 49  Van Gorp (2006) 127–128.

168

Jansen

strengthens the image of the hostile lawlessness, violence, arbitrary rule, and tyranny (cause). This glaring contrast could have constituted an extra argument to pursue the struggle (recommendation), especially because the problem of weakness was solved by the virtuous prince of Orange as Perseus (solution). 6

Further Reading

The appliance of the myth enabled Duym to fully take advantage of the ‘Innocent victim’-frame to elucidate the vulnerable position of the Netherlands in this early period of the Revolt. A historical overview of this period is offered by Israel (1982), while the negotiations to the Twelve Years Truce in 1609 are discussed by Van Eysenga (1959). The literary background of the Ghedenck-boeck as a political manifesto is sketched by Duits (2001). Late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century depictions of Pegasus and Andromeda are discussed by Sluijter (2006). Jansen (2014a) argues that the frequent indication of God and His contribution to the course of events as represented in the plays, offered Duym an intermediate link, as to see the different individual events in the Ghedenck-boeck in the wider perspective of the common interest and the public welfare of the United Provinces. How Duym’s Nassausche Perseus interferes between two worlds, telling the story of the myth and highlighting actual historical events of the Revolt in between, is discussed by Jansen (2014b). The article gives an analysis of the special way in which the text creates a dynamic process between past and present, and between fiction and reality. The text of Nassausche Perseus activates underlying audience schema’s like ‘fraud’, ‘freedom’ and – as we have discussed – ‘innocence’, by using certain framing devices (and mainly implicit reasoning devices). Once a schema is activated, it is more likely to be considered when judging values as guilt, compassion, agreement, perseverance and solidarity regarding war and peace, freedom and slavery, honesty and fraud (cf. Scheufele and Scheufele 2010, 114). In my paper framing is used as a concept of communication sciences, by way of the constructionist approach by Gamson and Modigliani (1989), Neuman, Just and Crigler (1992), Entman (1993), and Van Gorp (2007). The latter shows how in a constructionist approach, frames may be considered as a part of culture, belonging to shared collective memory, in order to understand the processes underlying framing and to be able to reconstruct the reasoning devices. This approach refers to the situation in which individuals and groups actively construct social reality, using different sources of information, according to Berger and Luckmann (1966) and Neuman, Just and A.A. Crigler (1992). That a frame may be seen as a persuasive device, used to ‘fix meanings, organize

169

Innocence Framed

experience, alert others that their interests and possibly their identities are at stake, and propose solutions to ongoing problems’ is argued by Barnett (1999; cf. Payne 2001, 39).

Appendix 1

In the following scheme50 the frame package of the ‘Innocent Victim’ is analyzed:

Frame

Reasoning devices Problem

Innocent a girl is victim chained to a hard rock (symbol of tyranny) (Andromeda is the Netherlands), innocent as she is, not to blame for the cause

Cause

Responsibility / Solution moral evaluation

violence, pursuit, unreasonableness, intruders (Spanish tyranny, Alba)

the hands of her entourage, people who are favourably disposed towards her (her parents who stand around watching powerlessly; Perseus = William of Orange, the inhabitants and leaders who come to her rescue)a

pursue the struggle; liberation of the Netherlands, what meant for Duym also the (definitive) defeat of the enemy (Perseus / Orange as liberator; Sea Beggars liberate Den Briel); driving off hostile evil (keep fighting to realize religious freedom and freedom of conscience in the Netherlands)

a In the allegorical reading of the text the parents of Andromeda, Cassiope and Cepheus, stand for the Dutch States General (‘Staten des Lands’), as the poet explains. Their powerlessness illustrates the situation of the years 1567–1573.

50  Cf. Van Gorp (2006) 131.

170

Jansen Basis

Framing devices

Moral basis Emotional basis

Cultural motive

Metaphor / Lexical stereotype choices

Visual image

moral duty compasto help a sion, powfellow man erlessness in distress

archetype of the victim

the helpless victim calls for helpa

woman, initially free and enjoying the landscape, is chained to a rock by soldiers, in death agony, attacked by the dragon (sea monster)

frightened, desperate, innocent, sadb

a Andromeda calls out for help to all ‘virgins of the country’ (‘Maechden des Lants’ (Duym 1606a, fol. B4v)), to Juno, Pallas, Perseus, the inhabitants of the country, and to her mother and father (fol. D4v, and passim), but also to Jupiter and a ‘faithful God’ (‘getrouwen God’) (fol. B4r; E4v). b Duym 1606a, e.g. fol. B4r–v. Other examples are already mentioned.

Bibliography Baragwanath, E. and Bakker, M. de, “Introduction: Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus’ Histories,” in Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus, ed. Baragwanath, E. and Bakker, M. de (Oxford, 2012), 1–56. Barnett, M.N., “Culture, Strategy and Foreign Policy Change. Israel’s Road to Oslo,” European Journal of International Relations 5.1 (1999), 5–36. Barthes, R., Mythologies (Paris, 1957). Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T., The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1966). Brewer, P.R. and Gross, K., “Studying the Effects of Framing on Public Opinion about Policy Issues. Does What We See Depend on How We Look?” in Doing News Framing Analysis, Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, ed. D’Angelo, Paul and Kuypers, J.A. (New York, 2010), 159–186. Brom, G., Schilderkunst en litteratuur in de 16e en 17e eeuw (Utrecht, 1957). Coleman, R., “Framing the Pictures in Our Heads. Exploring the Framing and Agenda-Setting Effects of Visual Images,” in Doing News Framing Analysis. Empirical

Innocence Framed

171

and Theoretical Perspectives, ed. D’Angelo, Paul and Kuypers, J.A. (New York, 2010), 233–261. Duits, H., “‘De Vryheid, wiens waardy geen mensch te recht bevat’. ‘Vrijheid’ op het Nederlands toneel tussen 1570 en 1700,” in Vrijheid. Een geschiedenis van de vijftiende tot de twintigste eeuw, ed. Mulier, E.O.G., Haitsma en Velema, W.R.E. (Amsterdam, 1999), 99–131. Duits, H., “Om de eenheid en vrijheid van de gehele Nederlanden: Jacob Duyms Ghedenck-boeck (1606) als politiek manifest,” Voortgang, 20 (2001), 7–45. Duym, J., Een Ghedenck-boeck, het welck ons leert aen al het quaet en den grooten moetwil van de Spaingnaerden en haren aenhanck ons aen-ghedaen te ghedencken. ende de groote liefde ende trou vande Princen uyt den huyse van Nassau, aen ons betoont, eeuwelick te onthouden (Leiden, 1606). Duym, J., Een Nassausche Perseus, verlosser van Andromeda, ofte de Nederlantsche Maeght. (Leiden, 1606a). Entman, R.M., “Framing Towards Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43.4 (1993), 51–58. Entman, R.M., “Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House’s Frame After 9/11,” Political Communication 20 (2003), 415–432. Gamson, W.A. and Modigliani, A., “The changing culture of affirmative action,” in, Research in Political Sociology, ed. Braungart, R. (Greenwich, CT, 1987), 137–177. Gamson, W.A. and Modigliani, A., “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach,” American Journal of Sociology 95 (1989), 1–37. Gitlin, T., The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley, CA, 1980). Grootes, E.K., “Toekomstbeelden in Nederlandse historiespelen uit de zeventiende eeuw,” De zeventiende eeuw 17.1, (2001), 18–28. Gumperz, J.J., Discourse strategies (Cambridge, 1982). Houwaert, J.B., Sommare beschrijvinghe vande triumphelijcke incomst vanden […] aertshertoge Matthias…. (Antwerp, 1579). Jansen, J., “That is where God comes in. Jacob Duym’s Ghedenck-boeck (1606) as argumentative discourse,” Arte Nuevo. Revista de Estudios áureos 1 (2014a), 40–63. Jansen, J., “Heldendom in herinnering. Mythologie en geschiedenis in Jacob Duyms Nassausche Perseus,” Spiegel der Letteren 56.2 (2014b), 155–181. Koppenol, J., “Jacob Duym en de Leidse rederijkers,” Neerlandistiek (2001): www. Neerlandistiek.nl. Kuypers, J.A., “Framing Analysis from a Rhetorical Perspective,” in Doing News Framing Analysis. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, ed. D’Angelo, Paul and Kuypers, Jim A. (New York, 2010), 286–311. Labov, W., Language in the Inner City (Philadelphia, 1972).

172

Jansen

Meeus, H., “‘Ick die liefde ben’. Venus in het Nederlandse renaissancetoneel tot 1650,” in De steen van Alciato. Literatuur en visuele cultuur in de Nederlanden. Opstellen voor prof. dr. Karel Porteman bij zijn emeritaat, ed. Brems, Hugo, Vaeck, Marc van and Claassens, Geert H.M. (Leuven, 2003), 439–457. Meeus, H., “Two Founts of Ivory: Nudity on Stage in the Seventeenth Century Low countries,” in The Nude and the Norm in the Early Modern Low Countries, ed. De Clippel, K., Van Cauteren, K. and Stighelen, K. Van der (Turnhout, 2011), 83–96. Minsky, M., “A Framework for Representing Knowledge,” in Frame Conceptions and Text Understanding, ed. Metzing, D. (Berlin, 1980), 1–25. Nelson, T.E., Wittmer, D.E. and Shortle, A.F., “Framing and Value Recruitment in the Debate Over Teaching Evolution,” in Winning with Words. The Origins and Impact of Political Framing, eds. Schaffner, Brian F. and Sellers, Patrick J. (New York, 2010), 11–40. Neuman, M.R., Just, M.R. and Crigler, A.A., Common Knowledge. News and the Cons­ truction of Political Meaning (Chicago, 1992). Nisbet, M.C., “Knowledge Into Action. Framing the Debates Over Climate Change and Poverty,” in Doing News Framing Analysis. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, eds. D’Angelo, P. and Kuypers, J.A. (New York, 2010), 43–83. Ogden, D., Perseus (Abingdon, 2008). Payne, R.A., “Persuasion, Frames and Norm Construction,” European Journal of International Relations 7.1 (2001), 37–61. Reese, S.D., “Introduction,” in: Framing public life. Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world, eds. Reese, S.D., Gandy, O.H. and Grant, A.E. (Mahwah, NJ, 2001), 1–31. Scheufele, B.T. and Scheufele, D.A., “Of Spreading Activation, Applicability, and Schemas. Conceptual Distinctions and Their Operational Implications for Measuring Frames and Framing Effects,” in Doing News Framing Analysis. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, eds. D’Angelo, Paul and Kuypers, J.A. (New York, 2010), 110–134. Silverblatt, A., Ferry, J. and Finan, B., Approaches to media literacy: A handbook (Armonk, NY, 1999). Spies, M., “‘Vrijheid, vrijheid’: poëzie als propaganda, 1565–1665,” in Vrijheid. Een geschiedenis van de vijftiende tot de twintigste eeuw, eds. Haitsma Mulier, E.O.G. en Velema, W.R.E. (Amsterdam, 1999), 71–98. Tannen, D., “Well what did you expect?” in Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1977), 506–515. Tournoy, G., “De Blijde Inkomst van Albrecht en Isabella te Leuven opgeluisterd door de Andromede Belgica dicta van Jan-Baptist Gramaye,” in Limae labor et mora:

Innocence Framed

173

opstellen voor Fokke Akkerman ter gelegenheid van zijn zeventigste verjaardag, ed. Martels, Z. von, Steenbakkers, P., Vanderjagt, A. (Leende, 2000), 109–118. Van der Stighelen, K. e.a., “Introduction,” in The Nude and the Norm in the Early Modern Low Countries, eds. De Clippel, K., Van Cauteren, K., Van der Stighelen, K. (Turnhout, 2011). Van Gorp, B., Framing asiel. Indringers en slachtoffers in de pers (Leuven, 2006). Van Gorp, B., “The Constructionist Approach to Framing: Bringing Culture Back In,” Journal of Communication 57 (2007), 60–78. Van Gorp, B., “Strategies to take subjectivity out of framing analysis,” Doing News Framing Analysis. Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, eds. D’Angelo, P. and Kuypers, J.A. (New York, 2010), 84–109. Van Gorp, B. and van der Goot, M., “Talking about Sustainability: Responses to Frames in Persuasive Messages about Sustainable Agriculture and Food,” in Bending Opinion. Essays on Persuasion in the Public Domain, eds. Haaften, T. van e.a. (Leiden, 2011), 373–393. Van Herk, A., Fabels van liefde. Het mythologisch-amoureuze toneel van de rederijkers (1475–1621), diss. (Amsterdam, 2009).

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period: Some Observations on Transformations of Ancient Biographical Literature in Humanist Editions and Commentaries Ronny Kaiser 1

Prefatory Remarks

Humanistic historians of the fifteenth and sixteenth century – in comparison to medieval historians – aimed to increase the value of historiography through the express use of ancient authors and texts, addressing linguistic and rhetorical issues as well as historical relevance in order to fulfill the cultural, political and social needs of the time.1 In this way, history increasingly became a field of literary competition.2 Even if Sallust and Livy were read and imitated in the Middle Ages,3 humanists recreated ancient syntax and style much more extensively, by adopting (ancient) rhetorical figures, speeches and elaborate words and phrases.4 In the process they also appropriated both content and topoi from ancient works in order to construct national and regional identities that they retrospectively anchored to the past.5 Apart from geography, especially individuals are important in such historical constructions of regional or national social groups. Therefore, biographical elements are not only essential components of both national and regional histories, but also separate biographies function as a historiographical pars pro toto for certain social or cultural groups. In addition to the humanist uses of ancient literature for writing national or regional history, in the Early Modern Period ancient biographies serve as 1  For the relevance of social and cultural contexts for the origin and function of humanistic works see esp. Schirrmeister (2003) and Helmrath (2013). 2  For humanist historiography in general see Fryde (1983), Breisach (1994), and most recently Baker (2015) and Mundt (2017) with the most important research literature on this topic. 3  Cf. Smalley (1974) 19–20. For an overview about Sallust’s works in the Middle Ages see Osmond/Ulery (2003) 192–196; for Livy’s works in the Middle Ages see McDonald (1971) 332–333. 4  Cf. Witt (2000) 1–30; Witt documents such stylistic imitations by using numerous examples which are too numerous to list here. Cf. also Wittchow (2009); and Ianziti (2012), pp. 1–23. 5  Cf. Mertens (1983); Kaiser (2009); Baker (2012); Schirrmeister (2013 and 2014).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_011

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

175

a reflective surface – in the sense of the Ciceronian postulate of the historia magistra vitae6 – particularly for people from the political field in order to provide instructions via biographical exempla. It therefore is worthwhile to take a look at humanistic editions of and commentaries on ancient biographical literature and see how these were contemporarily functionalized, since humanistic editions and commentaries stood in a close discursive relationship to stand-alone historiographical and biographical texts.7 They thus should be seen as an expression of humanistic scholarly practice, playing an essential role in the reception and transformation of ancient texts. Humanist editions and commentaries do not merely convey ancient texts but they adapt them to their own contemporary contexts. These adapted ancient texts in turn have an impact on humanistic historiographical and biographical discourses. Therefore, it seems to be worth investigating different appropriation strategies in and through humanistic editions and commentaries by focusing on Nepos (110/100–28/25 BC)8 and Suetonius (69–122 AD),9 two very prominent biographers of ancient Rome. 6  Cf. Cic. de orat. II, 36: Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia nisi oratoris immortalitati commendatur? On using this topos in the Early Modern Period, Koselleck (1989) 39 notes quite rightly: ‘Nicht selten desavouierte gerade die Historiographie den Topos zur Blindformel, die nur in den Vorworten weitergereicht wurde. So ist es noch schwerer, den Unterschied zu klären, der immer zwischen der bloßen Verwendung des Gemeinplatzes und seiner praktischen Wirksamkeit geherrscht hat. Aber unerachtet dieser Probleme bleibt die Langlebigkeit unseres Topos an sich schon aufschlußreich genug. Sie beruhte zunächst auf seiner Elastizität, die die unterschiedlichsten Schlüsse zuläßt’. 7  The research literature on the meaning and transformative function of humanistic editions and commentaries on ancient literature is still in its infancy. For humanistic editions on ancient literature see Holtz/Schirrmeister/Schlelein (2014); therein Kaiser (2014a). For commentaries as media of transformation see Weichenhan (2011a and 2011b); Kaiser (2013 and 2014b); Enenkel (2014). For research literature on Early Modern and Renaissance commentaries see Parker (1993); Most (1999); Hafner/Völkel (2006); Enenkel (2014). 8  For Nepos’s and his political biographies see: Geiger (1985), Sonnabend (2002) 107–113, Titchener (2003), Hägg (2012) 188–197, and Stem (2012). For the narrative and conceptual techniques in Nepos’s biographies see Anselm (2004). For a general summary see Eigler (2000). For Nepos and some observations on his post-ancient reception see Heidenreich (2010). 9  For Suetonius see esp. Lounsbury (1987), Schmidt (1997), Sonnabend (2002) 168–182, Hägg (2012) 214–232, and Sallmann (2011). Fundamental for the narrative and conceptual techniques of Suetonius’s Caesares are Gugel (1977) and Lounsbury (1987). For Suetonius and some observations on his post-ancient reception see Pausch (2010). After the completion of this article, four important articles on the reception of Suetonius in the Early Modern Period were published, which I unfortunately could not consider for my remarks. See: Crab (2017a, 2017b, 2018 and 2019).

176

Kaiser

The appropriations that we find in these humanistic editions and commentaries can be described as cultural transformations. For the purpose of analysis, a brief definition of terms is necessary. ‘Transformation’ is understood here as a concept that was and is being developed in the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 644 “Transformations of Antiquity” (Humboldt University of Berlin) in order to explore the processes of cultural transformation. It is intended to steer away from the concept of ‘reception’ by focusing especially on the productive reciprocity of a reference area (in this case Roman biography or Roman antiquity in general) and a reception area (in this case the Early Modern Period). Thus, the CRC 644 has coined the term ‘allelopoiesis’ for this productive reciprocity of transformations.10 This means that in processes of cultural transformation not only the reference area is constructed in a specific new way that replies to contemporary needs, but also that the reception area is modified and put into a specific relation to the constructed reference area at the same time. So in transformative processes, both areas are closely interlinked and interact so much that they can be said to create each other. Especially important for studying cultural transformation processes is the distinction between the level of the actor, who himself is involved and taking part in the transformation, and the perspective of the scientific observer, who isn’t even part of the transformation processes that he studies. Thereby he in turn generates new transformations and becomes an actor in new transformation processes that can be examined by yet more scientific observers (maybe in the future). However, the transformation concept does not aim to assess whether processes of transformation have been adequately conducted, that is, whether they were right or wrong from the perspective of the scientific observer, because such assessments may lead researchers to misunderstand possible outcomes as true or to reject them as false. Otherwise, there is the risk that specific characteristics of cultures and transformations could remain undetected. So the primary aim of the transformation concept is to provide a set of analytical instruments that allow researchers to appropriately describe cultural change processes and to record typological characteristics. This paper focuses on Nepos’s Liber de excellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium and his Liber de Latinis historicis as well as on Suetonius’s Caesares. The purpose is to identify certain humanist transformations of their biographical works in the Early Modern Period. Due to the high number of humanist

10  See Bergemann/Dönike/Schirrmeister et al. (2011). For ‘Transformation’ as a research concept of cultural transformations and appropriations see also Böhme (2011).

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

177

editions and commentaries that have not yet been systematically identified,11 the following has to be understood as a first attempt to approach these texts from the perspective of transformation theory. 2

Traditions in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

In order to evaluate how Nepos and Suetonius were transformed in the Early Modern Period, it is necessary to keep in mind that their literary works in antiquity consisted of more than their biographies, of which just a fraction has been handed down to us. From some ancient authors we know that Nepos also wrote poems, a world history in three books called Chronika, a collection of exempla composed of about five books as well as monographic biographies on Cato and Cicero.12 These works not only influenced authors such as Plutarch (45–125), Suetonius and Hieronymus (347–420), but also Pomponius Mela († about 45 AD). A large part of his oeuvre contained the biographical collection De viris illustribus (of about sixteen books). From that collection, the biographies that still exist today are divided into the Liber de excellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium (23 biographies) and the Liber de Latinis historicis (two biographies). In addition to his Caesares, Suetonius also produced13 antiquarian writings about various areas of Roman culture, which represent on average the biggest part of his oeuvre and were probably compiled under the title Pratum. They were read above all during antiquity and had a great impact on literary productions up to the fourth century before they fell, for the most part, into oblivion by the end of antiquity. Furthermore, he also wrote short biographies (De viris illustribus) of important people in intellectual life arranged by their fields of activity. In particular, the biographies of some literary writers as well as a number of grammarians and orators became well-known (De grammaticis et rhetoribus).14 However, Suetonius’ Caesares dealing with the first twelve 11  The German database VD16/17 includes about 70 references to Nepos and over 100 to Suetonius. 12  Cf. Eigler (2000) and Heidenreich (2010) 537 with some references to Pliny the Younger (epist. V, 3, 6), Catullus (1, 5–7) and Aulus Gellius (VI, 18, 11; XV, 28, 1–2). 13  For an overview of his literary works see Sallmann (2011) 1085–1087. 14  Cf. Pausch (2010) 949: ‘Bei den ursprünglich unter dem Titel Vir. ill. zusammengefassten Biographien bedeutender Persönlichkeiten des kulturellen und literarischen Lebens ist zwischen der Wirkung der Sammlung als Ganzer und dem Einfluss einzelner Viten zu unterscheiden. Die Lebensbeschreibungen einiger Schriftsteiler (z. B. Terenz, Horaz, Vergil, Persius, Lucan) wurden im Laufe der nächsten Jahrhunderte den Werken der dargestellten Autoren vorangestellt bzw. für die Kommentierung ihrer Texte verarbeitet.

178

Kaiser

Roman emperors, had the greatest influence. They serve as a decisive model for establishing the text type of the emperor-biographies, of which Marius Maximus (second/third century), Aurelius Victor (fourth century) and the so-called Historia Augusta (probably fourth/fifth century) can be considered as the most prominent representatives.15 The lion’s share of Nepos’s and Suetonius’s works was lost after Late Antiquity. Thus, today we are privy to only a handful of manuscripts of their works, that moreover contain only biographies. An important event that shaped the reception of Nepos up to the Early Modern Period was that extracts of his Liber de excellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium, which still exist today, were composed by Aemilius Probus16 who arranged a collection of historical writings and dedicated them to Theodosius II (401–450)17 in the fifth century. Due to a misunderstanding regarding the dedicatory epistle, Aemilius Probus was considered as the author of these biographies up until the sixteenth century.18 This did not apply to Nepos’s biographies of Cato and Atticus however, which still circulated under the original authorship. Overall though one finds hardly any reliable information indicating that anything of Nepos’s biographies, either the Liber de excellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium or the Liber de Latinis historicis, was known from a direct reading in the Middle Ages.19 The situation with Suetonius is somewhat different. There are two main points indicating an intense study of his work in the Middle Ages, and in the transition to the Early Modern Period, that are worthy of mention. First, in the Carolingian period Einhard’s Vita Caroli Magni exemplifies the reception of the biographical format of Suetonius, whose biographies are arranged not in a strictly chronological, but rather a categorical fashion. Hence, the Suetonian biographies are – regarding the presentation of each emperor – highly selective and do not include all aspects of an emperor’s life. Structurally as well as

Gleichzeitig wurden sie jedoch in ihrem ursprünglichen Kontext nicht mehr überliefert, sodass ihre Zuschreibung an Sueton lange Zeit umstritten war. Bei der Wirkung, die diese Texte gelegentlich entfalteten, kann daher nur in sehr eingeschränkter Form von einer Sueton-Rezeption gesprochen werden’. 15  Cf. Pausch (2010) 949–950. 16  There is hardly any reliable information about Aemilius Probus: Cf. Wissowa (1893). 17  Cf. Wissowa (1893) 581 and Heidenreich (2010) 538. 18  Obertus Giphanius (1534–1604) is probably the first to discuss this point in his edition of Lucretius 1566. Cf. Heidenreich (2010) 538. For Giphanius see Schirmer (1879) and Liermann (1964). Although the biographies are attributed to Aemilius Probus up to 1566, I will refer to them as Nepos’s biographies in the following. 19  Cf. Heidenreich (2010), 542–543.

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

179

according to the functional alignment, Einhard specifically adapts Suetonius’s biography of Augustus.20 Secondly in the Early Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth Century, Petrarch (De viris illustribus, 1338/39) and Boccaccio (De mulieribus claris, 1361–1375; De casibus virorum illustrium, 1356/60, enlarged in 1373) further developed Suetonius’s biographical concepts in their own works.21 This is reflected primarily in the way these biographical collections are designed; they are distinguished by the fact that they are, in comparison with the Suetonian, significantly shorter. In addition, they also contain a broader selection of subjects including intellectuals, poets and politicians. Petrarch, like Hieronymus before him, named his biography collection De viris illustribus (1338/39), but decided to forego the strict Christian content limitations that Hieronymus had imposed on the collective biography genre. With his collection he intended to give an overview of Roman history.22 Dealing with the genre of collective biography, Boccaccio goes a step further. With his collection of 104 biographies of illustrious women (De mulieribus claris), beginning with Eve and going up to Queen Joanna I of Naples, he develops a new narrative structure to describe world history. In his De casibus virorum illustrium – based mainly on selected examples from ancient history (e.g. Tiberius, Caligula and Nero) – he outlines the fall of famous people and illustrates the medieval idea that all are subjected to the work of Fortuna.23 3

Humanistic Editing Strategies

The manuscript tradition of both biographical collections reflects the medieval reception of Nepos and Suetonius. As a result Suetonius’s Caesares was handed down in more than 200 manuscripts,24 while Nepos’s biographies were only present in a marginal number of manuscripts. Only in the fifteenth century can numerous manuscripts containing Nepos’s biographies be observed 20  Cf. Tischler (2001), 187–228. See also Innes (1997) and Pausch (2010), 951: ‘Damit war neben dem literarischen Anspruch auch eine politische Aussage verbunden, die mit dem Bemühen Karls des Großen, in seiner Selbstdarstellung als Herrscher den Anschluss an das antike Kaisertum zu suchen, weitgehend identisch gewesen sein dürfte’. For the narrative and conceptual commonalities and differences between Suetonius and Einhard see Simons (2011) and Becht-Jördens (2011). 21  An overview on Petrarch’s biographical approach is provided by Winkler (2015) 54–59; for Boccaccio’s de casibus see ibd., 59–63. 22  Cf. Pausch (2010) 951. 23  Cf. Pausch (2010) 951. 24  Cf. Pausch (2007b) 568.

180

Kaiser

in Renaissance Italy.25 After their first printed editions published in 1470 (Suetonius)26 and 1471 (Nepos),27 awareness of their biographies increased, but they still had to share their role as substantive and formal models in the field of biography of important political and military figures with Plutarch, whose parallel lives of great Greeks and Romans had become increasingly well-known in Western Europe since the late fourteenth century and enjoyed great popularity due to their moral philosophical content.28 In contrast to Nepos, whose editio princeps – published under the authorship of Aemilius Probus – appears without any paratexts to contextualize the text either historically or substantively,29 Suetonius’s biographies are provided with paratextual observations on the historical background of the author and his literary works.30 Nepos’s/Aemilius Probus’s editio princeps is simply entitled Aemilii Probi viri clarissimi de vita excellentium liber incipit feliciter and at the end of the edition we just find the short notice: ‘Probi Aemilii de Virorum excellentium vita per M. Nicolaum Ienson Venetiis opus foeliciter impressum est anno a Christi incarnatione MCCCCLXXI VIII Idus Martias’. In a later edition from Venice, which is dated 1498, Aemilius Probus, the presumed biographer, is already designated as a historicus on the title page. On the same page more information about the content of the work is given by emphasizing the imperatores as the main subject of the biographies to follow.31 That already clearly indicates that Nepos’s and Suetonius’s biographies in the Early Modern Period are read in a decidedly historiographical way, i.e. in the exemplary and didactic sense of the Ciceronian idea of the historia magistra vitae. Probably as a result of the very fact that their biographies include historical contents and are of an

25  Cf. Pausch (2007a) 410. 26  Cf. Pausch (2007b) 568. 27  Cf. Pausch (2007a) 410. See also Albrecht (1997) 487, who documents that in 1471 only Nepos’s De vita excellentium liber had been published, excluding the biographies of Atticus and Cato. Nepos’s Atticus biography was first published in 1470 together with an edition of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, Brutus and his brother Quintus (Cf. Nepos [1470], Liber quartus decimus. The whole edition has no page numbers, but the edition of Nepos’s Atticus biography comes at the end of the whole edition and contains about nine printed pages). 28  Cf. Pausch (2010) 952. 29  Cf. Nepos (1471). 30  Cf. Io. An. Episcopi Aleriensis, in recognitionem Suetonii, ad Paulum II. Venetum, Pontificem maximum Epistola, in: Sueton (1470). 31  Cf. Aemilii Probi Historici Excellentium imperatorum vitae, Venice 1498/1500, Fol. a iv: Proemium. Aemilii Probi viri Clarissimi de vita excellentium imperatorum liber.

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

181

exemplary, didactic character,32 they are embedded by humanists in a historiographical discourse and read as historiography. This kind of amalgamation is not as obvious as it would seem: even though, in fact, there are intersections and hybridizations between biography and historiography in classical and late antiquity and also in mediaeval Latin literature – this is probably because of the exemplary character and therefore the didactic function of both text types –,33 ancient authors, however, clearly see the need to differentiate between biography and historiography.34 For sure, coherent and precisely defined concepts of historiography and biography are hard to pin down in classical antiquity. But the most important and especially programmatic difference pointed out by ancient authors refers to the question of the narrative presentation of illustrious persons: first and foremost biographies have to draw character sketches of individuals primarily by illustrating their education, career, and deeds, and are allowed to neglect historical events, developments or connections which are not immediately related to the depicted persons – whereas historiography is especially tasked with delivering exactly that kind of information.35 But these programmatic priorities which 32  Cf. Sonnabend (2002) 5. Esp. for Nepos see Geiger (1985) 112, Hägg (2012) 189, Stem (2012) 128–161. Esp. for Suetonius see Albrecht (1993) 317, Hägg (2012) 225. 33  Significant and diverse entanglements of biography and historiography can already be seen in antiquity (e.g. Tacitus’ Agricola) and more gradually also in mediaeval Latin literature (cf. Scheuer [1994], 32). Otto of Freising’s and Rahewin’s Gesta Friderici (1157–1160) are a new type of rulers biography consisting of biographical elements, reports of deeds (gesta) and a Reichschronik by adapting ancient models (cf. Goetz 2008). And already Einhard’s Vita Caroli Magni (about 830) blended two biographical prototypes, i.e. the Suetonian framework of an emperor biography and hagiographic elements from the Vita S. Martini, cf. Berschin (1991) 199–220. 34  Cf. Sonnabend (2002), 4–8 with numerous references to: Polyb. VIII, 13 and X, 21; to Nepos, Praef. I and his biography on Pelopida I; and to Plut. Alex. 1, Aem. Paull. 1; Per. 1; Kim. 2, 2; Fab. Max. 16; Pomp. 8,6; Nik. 1,5 and Galba 2. 35  A few examples may suffice to demonstrate the programmatic differentiation between biography and historiography in ancient literature: See also Nep. Praef. I, 1–2 and 8: Non dubito fore plerosque, Attice, qui hoc genus scripturae leve et non satis dignum summorum virorum personis iudicent, cum relatum legent, quis musicam docuerit Epaminondam, aut in eius virtutibus commemorari saltasse eum commode scienterque tibiis cantasse. Sed hi erunt fere, qui expertes litterarum Graecarum nihil rectum, nisi quod ipsorum moribus conveniat, putabunt. […] Sed hic plura persequi cum magnitudo voluminis prohibet tum festinatio, ut ea explicem, quae exorsus sum. Quare ad propositum veniemus et in hoc exponemus libro de vita excellentium imperatorum. And Nep. on Pelopida I: Pelopidas Thebanus, magis historicis quam vulgo notus. Cuius de virtutibus dubito, quemadmodum exponam, quod vereor; si res explicare incipiam, ne non vitam eius enarrare, sed historiam videar scribere; si tantummodo summas attigero, ne rudibus Graecarum litterarum minus dilucide appareat, quantus fuerit ille vir. Itaque utrique rei occurram, quantum potuero, et medebor cum satietati tum

182

Kaiser

also have effects on the respective narrative structure are, as already mentioned, occasionally ignored in antiquity. Biography needs historiographical elements such as important facts or events concerning the portrayed person, and historiography is obviously not in a position to dispense completely with biographical elements in order to create tension or to explain certain historical developments. In any case, already in antiquity both text types are closely intertwined and therefore able to absorb or to be adopted. But the very fact that these genres are programmatically differentiated by ancient authors can also be seen as an indication that already in Greco-Roman antiquity there was an awareness of the close proximity and intersections of both historiography and biography. Based on the humanistic text editions and their titles, however, one may observe both an increasing elimination of these programmatic genre boundaries and an increasing hybridization of historical texts – i.e. all texts treating past materials, subjects, and persons irrespective of a certain text type. It is striking that the distinction between biography and historiography, such as made by Nepos and Plutarch, contemporaries of Suetonius, is ignored by humanists, although they immediately turn to the ancient texts. This trend is also present in both the editions and commentaries on biographical texts of antiquity, as well as in numerous other humanistic texts that oscillate between biographical and historiographical genres.36 With regard to Nepos’s and Suetonius’s editions, two overlapping main strategies can be perceived: their biographies are published either as a single work along with sometimes more, sometimes less, extensive paratexts and indices.37 Alternatively, they are published with other authors or texts, also often with ignorantiae lectorum. Phoebidas Lacedaemonius cum exercitum Olynthum duceret iterque per Thebas faceret, arcem oppidi, quae Cadmea nominatur, occupavit impulsu paucorum Thebanorum, qui, adversariae factioni quo facilius resisterent, Laconum rebus studebant, idque suo privato, non publico fecit consilio. Quo facto eum Lacedaemonii ab exercitu removerunt pecuniaque multarunt, neque eo magis arcem Thebanis reddiderunt, quod susceptis inimicitiis satius ducebant eos obsideri quam liberari. Nam post Peloponnesium bellum Athenasque devictas cum Thebanis sibi rem esse existimabant et eos esse solos, qui adversus resistere auderent. Hac mente amicis suis summas potestates dederant alteriusque factionis principes partim interfecerant, alios in exsilium eiecerant; in quibus Pelopidas hic, de quo scribere exorsi sumus, pulsus patria carebat. Polybius takes up this differentiation, too, but calls it into question. Cf. Poly. X, 21, 2–5. But, however, the programmatic approach includes occasionally character sketches, too. Cf. Cic. de orat. II, 63. 36  E.g. Lorenzo Vallas Gesta Ferdinandi regis (1449); Thomas Morus’s Historia Richardi regis Angliae eius nominis tertii (1513); Polydor Vergil’s Anglica historia (1514); Paolo Emilio’s De Rebus Gestis Francorum (1539). 37  Cf. Nepos: 1471, 1498/1500, 1543 with commentary; Suetonius: 1470, 1493 with commentary, 1496 with commentary, 1521, 1539 with commentary. It turns out that the humanistic

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

183

paratexts (Nepos: 1505, 1506; Suetonius: 1533, 1537). The editions in the second group of editing strategies do not necessarily focus on the biographies of Nepos and Suetonius; rather, their texts are intended to be a part of a larger text corpus. Biographical material is inserted in various ways. For example, an edition from 1505 published in Strasbourg, contains side by side with the biography on Cato taken from Nepos’s Liber de Latinis historicis, which focuses mainly on Cato as a moral example of a Roman politician, the Epitome of Ps.-Aurelius Victor38 as well as Jacob Wimpfeling’s (1450–1528) Epithoma Rerum Germanicarum, which both have a strong historical and national scope. Thus it becomes clear that the hybridization of biographical and historiographical text types affects the design and concepts of humanistic editions. Biographical literature, then, is not a mere a subgenre of historiography in humanistic editions as it was in antiquity: it now creates new narratives. In this case, we find a mélange of historical texts that emerge under a decidedly national point of view that actually has nothing to do with the individual texts published in this edition. Another example of such convergence of different texts in humanistic editorial practice is Suetonius’s edition from 1537 published in Basel. Therein Suetonius’s biographies, which contain the biographies from Julius Caesar up to Domitianus, precede a long collection of short imperial biographies closing the chronological gap between Nerva (30–98), the first emperor, who is not mentioned by Suetonius, up to Charles V (1500–1558).39 The Suetonian biographies here serve as a narrative text-module that is contained within a large-scale construction of continuity of the political ruling-system. This textual configuration sets Charles V in the tradition of ancient Imperial Rome. In this way, by using Suetonius’s Caesares, a political continuity from Roman antiquity up to the present emerges. Of course, the idea of g​​ enerating political continuities with reference to the Suetonian Caesares is not a genuinely Early Modern or even humanistic invention. We find similar impulses already in Einhard’s biography of Charlemagne, which is decidedly oriented toward Suetonius´s biography of Augustus in commentaries are always published together with the editions of the texts they comment on: only rarely does this happens without these texts. 38  Cf. Schlumberger (1974) 4: ‘Lange Zeit galt sie sogar als Werk des Aurelius Victor selbst. Noch die Editio Princeps, die Laurentius Abstemius aus Fano im Jahre 1504 dem Herzog Guidobald von Urbino gewidmet hat, behandelt die Epitome als völlig selbstständiges Buch. Schon 1505 ist die Erstausgabe auch im deutschsprachigen Raum zugänglich: in Straßburg erscheint eine Sammlung von historischen Schriften, die außer ihr die Cato-Vita des Nepos und zwei kleine humanistische Geschichtswerke der römischen und mittelalterlichen Geschichte ebenfalls in der Form der Kaiser-Epitome anbietet’. 39  Cf. Suetonius (1537).

184

Kaiser

order to connect Charlemagne with the imperial rule of Roman antiquity.40 Suetonius’s model of emperor biographies which had already spawned several followers in the Late Antiquity such as Marius Maximus (c. 160–c. 230), Aurelius Victor (c. 320–c. 390) and the so-called Historia Augusta (about fourth/fifth century.), also had certain influence on the development of biographical depictions of rulers in the Middle Ages as well as in Early Modern Period, which use these biographies primarily as a historiographical text module for the detection of political continuity.41 But the humanistic novelty, possible only through the cultural practice of text editing, is that Suetonius’s biographies are now also directly used for this purpose and do not have to be incorporated or transformed into other texts. So his biographies, which are composed in a chronological order and without any gaps, are also used in humanistic editions as a starting point for generating the complete chronology from Roman antiquity up to the Early Modern Period by attaching different short biographical texts about the later emperors, namely from Nerva up to Maximilian (1459– 1519; in the edition from 1533) or Charles V (in the edition from 1537). By arranging the biographical text modules, which – because of their connectivity – can be understood as historiographical units, the ancient biographies are appropriated under national and political signs. In this way, (ancient) biography radically merges into early modern historiography. Also, Suetonius’s biographies represent the beginning of these political narratives, which the end of the narratives basically refer back to, since both the beginning and the end of a (historiographical) narrative only makes sense if these are related to one another. Thereby, the allelopoetic effect of this transformation becomes clear not only because the editing strategies of the reference object (Suetonius’s biographies) becomes part of a new historiographical context, but also because the reception area is modified at the same time, since the two emperors Maximilian and Charles V become decidedly part of a tradition of imperial power that lasts since Roman antiquity. Of course, the allelopoetic effects that emerge, are not a genuinely humanistic phenomenon, but an essential feature of every transformation process, which can be described as an act of cultural change. As already noted above, a similar form of appropriation can be observed in Einhard’s Vita Caroli Magni. This medieval transformation narrative is to a certain extent updated through the humanistic text editions, in which the ancient text – such at least is the humanists’ claim – is brought to life and also acts as a kind of historiography. It becomes clear that the reception 40  Cf. Pausch (2010) 951. 41  Cf. Pausch (2010) 951; Lounsbury, 32–33 provides a very short overview of the Suetonian editions from 1470 up to 1700.

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

185

area is also modified by the act of transformation and is set in a very specific, i.e. in a contemporarily shaped relation to the reference area. Already, allelopoetic effects can be observed not only on the level of content, but also with regard to the question of biography and historiography. Through the humanistic strategies of editing, Suetonius’s biographies are retrospectively understood and presented as a kind of historiography to the new reception area. At the same time by setting biography in a tradition of the historiographical genre and by leveling possible differences between biographical and historiographical text types, this transformative act also influences the contemporary historiography of the reception area, or better yet its contemporary view of how historiography works. In this way, biography becomes a narrative mode in its own right and therefore a kind of text module and subgenre of historiography. The ancient biography may have associatively held this position of subgenre, too, but in antiquity we find, as said before, numerous attempts to distinguish biography from historiography. Thus from the perspective of a modern observer, biography increasingly becomes a subgenre of historiography, while from the perspective of the actor, which is significantly involved in the transformation process, it is simply a mode of historiographical description. It appears that especially those biographies that permit a historiographical and political understanding are predestined or considered to be predestined for integration into a larger text corpus, which is composed of texts with a similar thematic and discursive connectivity. But also the editions and commentaries, which are clearly dominated by a single ancient biographer, are discursively embedded by paratexts as well as by title information42 whereby the ancient authors are presented as historical authorities. So ancient biography as a text type, which ancient authors actually distinguish from historiography, is read by humanist scholars increasingly and specifically under a historiographicalpolitical point of view and becomes a historiographical text module. 4

Humanistic Commenting Strategies

Humanistic editions of Nepos’s and Suetonius’s biographies develop historiographical and political strategies of appropriation. Closely linked to the text type of editions, humanistic commentaries also generate similar 42  Cf. esp. the edition and commentary on Aemilius Probus’s/Nepos’s biographies from 1543. Here one can recognize a historiographical focus. This impression is confirmed by considering the following paratext, in which Simon Grynaeus makes considerations about the benefits of reading historiographical works: cf. Grynaeus (1543).

186

Kaiser

transformation mechanisms.43 Especially in paratexts, Nepos’s and Suetonius’s biographies (and implicitly also the commentaries on them) are read from the perspective of a historiographical exempla-literature and in this respect recognized as model of historia.44 This access to ancient biographical literature may well correspond to our understanding of what function ancient biographical literature had and to what Nepos’s and Suetonius’s biographies aspired.45 However, transformation research does not ask for the correctness or accuracy of how transformation processes worked, but instead aims to describe them adequately. Therefore, the modern glance at transformation processes should not generally take them for granted or divide them into right or wrong, because otherwise there is a risk of failing to detect specific profiles of cultural dynamics and to underestimate their importance for the reception area. In fact, it should be asked how it could happen that, for example, certain ancient authors or texts have only a certain set of transformations in later periods and, therefore, are less able to attract and fascinate modern researchers. A possibility to describe and explain such cultural continuities and traditions is offered by the approach of a specific resistiveness, which has also found its way into the study of transformations.46 This approach assumes that transformation objects always have their own resistiveness, which restricts and determines the set of specific and typological 43  Because of the available space here, it is not possible to focus on the very complex commentaries, that are inserted into the Suetonian text editions from 1493 and 1496: the edition from 1493 contains a commentary by Marcantonio Sabellico with a total of 249 pages; the edition from 1496 contains two commentaries by combining Filippo Beroaldo’s and Marcantonio Sabellico’s with a total of 688 pages. These would have to be examined in a separate paper. 44  Cf. Laurentius Abstemius (1505), A iijv–A ivv: Quanta ex rerum scriptione non modo iocunditas, verum etiam utilitas perveniat, dux clarissime, testis est felicis ac indelebilis memoriae Fridericus parens tuus, maximum ac singulae aetatis nostrae decus and ornamentum, and virtutum omnium specimen, qui etsi philosophiae vehementer deditus erat, historiarum tamen lectione plurimum delectabatur. Nam and bibliothecam suam […] historicorum libris refersit, numquamque non aliquo astante qui hisoriam legeret, cibum capere solitus erat, ut non solum corpus epulis, verum etiam animum vetustissimarum pulcherrimarumque rerum lectione reficeret. Hinc nimirum multorum excellentium virorum exemplis quod domi militiaeque facieudum [sic] aut vitandum esset percipiebat, quodvis adhuc puer tanta sapientia perditus fuerit, ut cum nutricis lacte sapientia hausisse videretur.    This letter is reprinted in the edition from 1505 and refers in the original edition from 1504 to the Epitome de Caesaribus of Ps.-Aurelius Victor. What Laurentius Abstemius actually formulated in regard to (Ps.-) Aurelius Victor, is here transferred implicitly to the Nepos’s Cato-Vita, since it is part of this edition. 45  For the political function of Roman biography see Hägg (2012) 187–238, esp. for Nepos 188–197, for Suetonius 214–232. 46  See Kaiser (2014b) 355–357.

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

187

interpretations and thus cultural transformations. In the allelopoetic tension between the reference and the reception area, this approach can be differentiated in the sense of the transformation concept. The specific resistiveness of transformation objects depends on several parameters, which belong to both the reception and the reference areas and interact with one another quite differently. Regarding texts as transformations objects, these parameters include for example the text itself, which consists of words, its structure, its internal cohesion and consistency in the development of thought; the respective author and his authority established in the reception area; the specific quality of the reception area as well as (if it is possible to find out) the intention of the actor involved in the transformation process. Given the complex ensemble of these parameters, which can be supplemented and are to be weighed differently, it becomes clear that the resistiveness of transformation objects has not to be understood as rigid or constant, but as dynamic, variable and insofar as specific. Resistiveness in transformation processes is subject to the cultural regularities and the logic of the reception area. In this respect, a transformation object oscillates between the specific resistiveness and the associative and semantic instability and openness whose meanings are negotiated and restricted in processes of transformation. In the dedicatory epistle preceding an edition of and commentary on Suetonius (1517/1533), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466/67/69–1536) outlines the image of the convertible and unsteady Fortuna. Dealing with Imperial Rome and Late Antiquity, he develops a view of history that is first and foremost characterized by the inability of imperial rulers to stabilize and enforce their own power.47 Thus, by using imperial examples not only from Suetonius, he explores the boundaries of human actions and weighs the opportunities for developing political stability. However, with regard to human fortunes, he refers to the unpredictability of fortuna48 and tumultus rerum,49 and emphasizes the numerous exempla of Imperial Antiquity, even if the number of negative examples exceed the positive. A political ruler, according to Erasmus, has to find his bearings in order to avoid or to imitate them: Et tamen in tanta malorum principum turba, reperias licet dignas sancto principe cogitationes, audias uoces absoluto principe dignas, comperias exempla, in quibus nihil desideres. Inter ethnicos inuenies, qui Christiano animo reipublicae gererent imperium, non sibi, qui tam 47  Cf. Erasmus (1517/1533) α 3r–v. 48  Cf. ibd. α 3r: Quid non potest fortunae libido in rebus humanis? 49  Cf. ibd. α 3v.

188

Kaiser

laboriosae administrationis non aliud spectarent praemium, quam ut de rebus humanis bene mererentur, qui publicam utilitatem liberorum affectibus, imo suae, suorumque incolumitati preaferrent. O nos felices, si Christiani principes suae quisque ditioni preastarent animum, quem Traianus, quem Antonini duo, quem Aurelius Alexander orbi terrarum praestiterunt.50 Erasmus focuses not only on the Roman emperors mentioned in the Suetonian biographies, but he refers to the entire imperial period of Late Antiquity. His primary aim is to work out the productive application of Roman Imperial knowledge that should be used as a positive or negative example. Thereby he particularly follows Petrarch’s reading of (ancient) history developed in the preface of his De viris illustribus.51 In light of this, Erasmus attributes a normative significance to Suetonius’s Caesares by responding to the claim to read them – and other ancient biographies, too – completely in line with Cicero’s historia magistra vitae as a kind of ‘mirror for princes’. This is striking since the text type ‘mirror for princes’ actually has other origins than (ancient) biographies, namely the instructional and hortatory writings of antiquity such as Seneca’s De clementia.52 In addition, it is most likely that the Suetonian biographies which were probably aimed at documenting the deeds, achievements and insofar the characters of the first twelve Roman emperors, and which can be read as a kind of a political statement of Suetonius,53 provided a ‘mirror’ – but rather for senators than for princes, in order to illustrate how to deal with these monsters on the throne. Even if we can say little with certainty if it was indeed Suetonius’s intention to produce a mirror for senators, it becomes clear that Erasmus’s reading of the Caesares 50  Ibd. α 3r: ‘And nevertheless it is possible that you find considerations in such a huge amount of bad princes, which are worthy of a holy prince, that you hear voices that are worthy of an absolute prince, that you find examples where you would miss nothing. Among the Gentiles, you will find some who exercised their power of the state with a Christian attitude, not for themselves, who aimed at no other reward for such painstaking management of government, than to perform a service for the human events, who preferred the public benefit to the benevolence towards their own children, yes to the integrity of their own and of their dependents. Oh how fortunate we would be if all the Christian princes would prepend such an attitude to their own rule, as Trajan, the two Antonini and Aurelius Alexander prepended to the world’. 51  Cf. Petr. De vir. Ill., esp. paragr. 27–40. 52  Since the research literature on the text type of the ‘mirror for princes’ in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period is extensive, see Anton (1989); Singer (1981); Anton (2006); Reinle (2011) for an overview. 53  See Hägg (2012) 218–232.

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

189

as a ‘mirror for princes’ is not so far from our understanding. But by focusing on this exemplary and didactic reading, the Suetonian biographies forfeit their historical context and their documentary character which probably also took account of a certain curiosity of the ancient reader. Thus, in this transformation process the proximity between (ancient) biographies and mirrors for princes is generated by focusing on the Suetonian text as a work providing precepts for rulers. The biographical text is encapsulated and functionalized by paratexts, and thereby set in a new framework of understanding that is shaped by contemporary interests. Through such appropriation strategies, the Caesares become part of the contemporary historiographical discourse and a productive surplus value of historiographical literature is activated. This Suetonian edition contains three very different commentaries, one from the otherwise unknown F.M. Gallus inserted into the Suetonian text edition, namely between the respective chapters of each biography; the second from Giovanni Battista Egnazio containing about 34 pages, the third from his contemporary Desiderius Erasmus containing about four pages.54 Gallus’s comments, set very sparingly, focus on certain terms and practices from the political field that Suetonius mentions, and therefore serve to explain these contents.55 Egnazio comments on some selected places of Suetonius’s biographies with a philological interest, especially in order to emend the handeddown text.56 Interestingly, these philological emendations are derived from 54  Cf. F.M. Gallus’s very short annotations inserted into the text edition are not announced anywhere but on the front page: C. Suetonii Transquilli XII Caesares, Obscuriorum locorum breuis et dilucida explanatio, Autore F.M. Gallo, Ausonius poeta de XII Caesaribus per Suetonium Tranquillum scriptis. Eiusdem tetrasticha a Iulio Caesare usque ad tempora sua. Io. Babtistae Egnatij Veneti, de Romanis principibus, libri III. Eisudem Annotationes in Suetonium. Annotata in eundem, et loca aliquot restituta per D. Erasmum Roter., Köln 1539 [= VD 16 S 10105] 17–488; Giovanni Battista Egnazio: Ioannis Baptistae Egnatii Veneti, in Suetonium Tranquillum Annotationes, in: ibd. 636–669; Desiderius Erasmus: Loca Suetonii per Erasmum restituta, in: ibd. 669–672. 55  Cf. his commentary in Chapter 20.1 of the biography of Caesar (Antiquum etiam retulit morem, ut quo mense fasces non haberet, accensus ante eum iret, lictores pone sequerentur): Suetonius (1539), 31: Fasces non haberet.) Alternis mensibus apud Romanos consuli consul tradebat fasces, hoc est, lictores, qui cum fascibus uirgarum ad secures alligatis consulem praecedebant. Erant autem uirgae ex betula arbore. Teste Plinio. 56  Cf. his short preface to the reader, where he explains his intentions to submit as brief a comment as possible to the reader as not to waste his time: Egnazio (1539) 636: Non ab re futurum existimaui, quando hoc tantum industriae dicatum est a me bonis ac literatis uiris, si quos locos, aut in melius emendaui, aut dilucidius explicaui, subnecterem, eosque nullo maiore uerborum apparatu, aut copia publicarem: tum quod nec otij satis erat longe maiorib. districto: tum quod ab ostentatione semper abfui, quae cum in omni re odiosa sit,

190

Kaiser

substantive observations and are also characterized by relations to the present; the philological corrections are based on pre-existing knowledge from ­antiquity and present.57 Erasmus also chooses a particularly philological method for commenting on Suetonius and strives to clean up some passages in order to approximate the – supposedly – original status of the ancient text. However, he argues by referring to the readings used in certain codices and not by taking content-related aspects into consideration as Egnazio does.58 In contrast, humanistic commentaries on Nepos’s biographies do not seem to be so numerous.59 The reason for this may be that – especially for the humanistic field that is very closely linked to the field of (political) power60 – these are less suited for a political narrative than Suetonius’s Caesares, which are arranged chronologically and thus treat a closed period with a political focus. Nepos’s biographies focus less on political and particularly Roman imperial power, even if he treats famous men of antiquity from the political and the military field. If one would base oneself exclusively on Nepos’s biographies, a genealogical and political-ideological linking and identification mainly with Roman emperors as well as with the great leaders of the Greek space is hardly possible. This is also evident, as already shown, in the editing contexts. Here, neither political-institutional chronologies nor genealogical concepts are tum in rebus paruis odiosissima esse iure solet. Accedit ad haec, quod doceri tantum lectores hoc tempore uolui, quos eo mihi aequiores futuros arbitrabar, quo maturius illos dimisissem, properantes uidelicet and in haec, ut ex iusto itinere uiatores, otij causa diuertentes. 57  E.g. his commenting on Chapter 52.1 of the Suetonian biography of Caesar: ibd., 640: sed maxime dilexit Cleopatram, cum qua et conuiuia in primam lucem protraxit and eadem nave thalamoque paene Aethiopia tenus Aegyptum penetrauit. Vbi pro thalamoque thalamego legendum esse nulli dubium esse possit. Est autem thalamegus nauis a Philopatore Aegyptio rege primum fabricata, qua Nilum, and Aegypti fossas nauigaret, eo usu, ut intra thalamum in regia sibi esse uideretur, magnitudine semistadii, latitudine cubitorum triginta and amplius, non longis nauibus. Nec rotundis omnino similis, prora puppique duplici, fundo lato planoque quali forma fluuiatiles sunt fere omnes. Strabonis interpres thalamiferas naues hasce appellauit, quibus Aegytpii frequenter uterentur solatij causa. Visitur and Venetijs in patria nauis, huic Aegyptiae persimilis, cui Bucentauro est nomen, qua princeps and senatus uehi solent occursuri principibus uiris, augustissima specie. […]. 58  E.g. Erasmus’s annotations on Suet. Caes. 17: Erasmus (1539) 670: eodem modo Novium quaestorem, quod compellari apud se maiorem potestatem passus esset. Modo expunximus ex fide uetustißimi codicis. Siquidem eodem hic aduerbium est, ut subaudias coniecit. Sunt hoc genus et alia nonnulla, sed minutiora, quam ut operaeprecium sit sigillitatim recensere. 59  There are no research studies on this topic right now. Unfortunately, it is missing an appropriate item in the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum containing eight volumes. 60  Cf. the case study on the relationship between the humanistic poetae lauteati and the field of power in Schirrmeister (2003) 23–228.

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

191

created. Rather, in Early Modern Period Nepos’s biographies serve as a loose panoply and as primary examples of politico-military virtues. In Nepos’s biographies from 154361 a commentary by Gilbert de Longueuil (1507–1543) follows each biography. The only exceptions are the biographies on Hamilcar, Hannibal, Cato and Atticus (the latter is even attributed to Nepos himself), which are completely without commentary.62 The comments always focus on a few extracts of the respective biography: in the foreground are primarily aspects of content, but there are also philological considerations on the status of the text.63 It is evident that, commenting on the biographies, de Longueuil compares them mainly, though not exclusively, to Greek references, especially with Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and others, in order to explain and amplify the edited text64 or, where appropriate, to falsify its content or language.65 He considers it not only a positive amplification of the status of the text and its contents, but even a synoptic-like historical comparison. Immediately after the biography of the Persian official and commander Datames († 362 BC), de Longueuil states that he cannot contribute to historical information about Datames, because, to his knowledge, there exists none other than Nepos’s.66 The field of his particular interest is proper names

61  Cf. Nepos (1543). 62  Cf. Hamilcaris vita XXI (in: ibd., N 7v–O [1]v), Hannibalis vita XXII (in: ibd., O [1]v–O 8v), Catonis vita (in: ibd., O 8v–P [1]v), Titi Pomponii Attici vita per Cornelium Nepotem (in: ibd., P2r–Q5r). 63  E.g. de Longueil’s commenting on Miltiades’s origin mentioned by Nepos in Milt. I, 1: ibd., A 8v: Antiquitate generis.) nam auus eius paternus Tisagoras genus suum ad Codrum referebat, authore scholiaste Aristidis; as well his commenting on the runner Pheidippus mentioned by Nepos in Milt. IV, 3: ibd., B[1]r: Phillippumque cursorem.) Exemplar manuscriptum Phidippidemque habet, quae sane vera lectio, nam and Herodotus libro nominato huius cursoris meminit […]. 64  Cf. his reference on the very short biographical description Pelopidas: ibd., L 2v: Quae de Pelopida perstringit Probus, haec copiosißime a Plutarcho in illius uita scribuntur. 65  E.g. his comment on Themistocles’s father Neocles (Nep. Themist. I, 2): ibd., B 8v: Pater eius Neocles generosus fuit.) Negat hoc Plutarchus in illius uita […]. Cf. also his comment on Themistocles’s mother (Nep. Themist. I, 2): ibd., C [1]r: Is uxorem Acarnanam.) Ego Carinam lego. Nam Carina uel Cariatide matre Euterpe illum natum plerique prodidere […]. Last but not least cf. his comment on Admetus, the king of the Molossians (Nep. Themist. VIII, 3): ibd., C 4v: Cum quo ei hospitium fuerat.) Id plane contra Thucydidem and reliquorum historicorum fidem dictum est, nam Thucydides inimicum hunc Moloßicum ei fuisse testatur. 66  Cf. ibd. I 8v: Quandoquidem neque Graecorum neque Latinorum aliquis huius, nisi me fallit memoria, mentionem facit, interieruntque historici omnes, qui hoc de duce historiam contexuerunt, nobis nihil conferre, neque ueritate historiae iudicare licuit, itaque apud Probum fides esto […].

192

Kaiser

and biographical details mentioned in the biographies.67 In this way, Nepos’s biographies are related directly to other ancient knowledge, that – because of its historical significance – is apparently considered homogeneous and coherent. Thus, the commented biographies are reviewed in light of how they are congruent with that which is known about antiquity. It therefore appears that commentaries fix and canonize an annotated text by shifting the space for interpretation to the metatext, namely the commentary, and by leaving the original text intact.68 The commenting practices, which are only sketched here, clearly show that in addition to isolated questions about the status of the handed-down text, substantive issues are often in the foreground. However, these comments do not point out the productive surplus value quite often mentioned in the humanistic paratexts, but rather explain respective contents by amplifying and confirming ancient knowledge by comparison. The allelopoetic moment of these transformation processes that humanistic commentaries create is mainly, though not exclusively, expressed in the fact that the genres of biography and historiography are brought together, so that – according to humanistic understanding – there are no longer any differences between these genres. Thus, ancient biography is retroactively attributed to the historiographical text type and can henceforth be read as a normative reference text, even as a ‘mirror for princes’. Simultaneously, the reception area is affected by those transformation processes: the contemporary biographical texts and the understanding of what these are, or can be used for, are closely linked to, as well as derived from, ancient biographies. 5

Conclusion: Transformations of Ancient Biographies in Humanistic Editions and Commentaries

In humanistic editions and commentaries, Nepos’s and Suetonius’s biographies are placed into a historiographical-biographical discourse, which actually may not be surprising since the text types of biography and historiography have some common intersections. The boundaries between biographical and historiographical texts had already been blurred in antiquity, but one has to keep in mind that ancient biographies were at least formally distinguished from 67  E.g. de Longueil’s comment on Timotheus’ eloquence mentioned by Nepos (Timoth. I, 1): ibd., I 2v: Disertus.) Audiuit enim Isocratem rhetorem, authores Cicerone lib. de oratore tertio. Hic and hominem doctissimum illum nominat. and libro primo officiorum laudem ingenii illum cum bellica gloria coniunxisse adserit. 68  Cf. Assmann (1995) esp. 12–13; and Kaiser (2014b).

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

193

historiographical text types, even if both had similar conceptual approaches. The ability of biographical texts to generate and to integrate various discourses seems to be an important reason that the process of appropriation varies. For sure, the differences between biography and historiography in antiquity do not differ much from those in the Renaissance. This is mainly because of the hybridity and the quite similar concepts of both text types. But even the programmatic distinction between historiography and biography that found its way into ancient debate seems to be neglected by humanists. Thereby biography rises to the position of a subgenre or variety of historiography. Similarly, one can observe that biography in the Early Modern Period serves as a narrative text module of historiography. In particular, collections of biographies that had been designed chronologically, such as Suetonius’s Caesares, are incorporated into other historiographical narratives that actually exceed the time frame of the ancient biographies and go up to the present. The Suetonian biographies, serving as historiographical modules, are the starting point of these narratives and are meaningful in terms of where the narratives end up. Both the reference and the reception area are thereby put into an allelopoetic relation. But as shown, the variability of the appropriations seems to have certain boundaries, because a biographical-historiographical interpretation of the edited and annotated texts is basically never exceeded. Against this background, transformation objects even have something like a specific resistiveness. The structural (and/or material) quality, as well as represented contents, allow certain transformation processes and exclude others at the same time. Nevertheless, this resistiveness should not be understood as static or fixed, but rather as dynamic. One can probably assume, at least for texts, that it also depends on the respective semantics and authoritative status attributed to an author within a community of values and knowledge. This also explains the (albeit limited) variability of transformation processes. By these transformations of ancient biography and by the undeniable hybridity of text type of (ancient) biography, in humanistic discourse an exempla-character is attributed especially to those biographies that allow a historical-political reading. From this, a claim can be made that ancient biographies are more useful in a sense of Cicero’s historia magistra vitae and understood as a type of historiography since it can be read as if it provides imitanda and vitanda. Though the genre ‘mirror for princes’ actually has other origins, it appears that, on the basis of editing practice, (ancient) biographical texts are also read from a normative point of view and thus are very closely linked to the ‘mirror for princes’. However, these normative readings that are postulated for ancient biographies in humanistic paratexts are not implemented by commenting on these

194

Kaiser

biographies. Therein, we do not find any references to specific acts or practices that somehow should be imitated or avoided. Instead, this functional reading is reserved and up to the reader himself. In the comments, however, both philological considerations of handed-down texts and explanations of the contents – in Nepos’s case even corrections – are made. Thus, it appears that humanists basically focus on Nepos’s and Suetonius’s biographies from a content point of view. The biographies of Nepos and Suetonius are usually framed by certain paratexts that are always attached to the humanistic editions and commentaries, and by which they are characterized as specific ancient texts. At the same time, these paratexts and the editing strategies act together and transform the ancient texts by putting them into a contemporary discourse and by functionalizing them in a contemporary way. The texts that humanists edit and on which they comment, are encapsulated and (at least temporarily) fixed in their textual form. The transformation processes that are designed and regulated by the humanistic text types of the edition and commentary develop, implicitly or explicitly, certain claims to validity as well as the claim to understand and reactivate an ancient text adequately. Such claims to validity are thereby transferred to Nepos’s and Suetonius’s edited and commented works in order to use these in that manner. Such transformation processes cause canonization effects that fix these texts, on the one hand, and appropriate them on the other hand, in order to provide them with normative validity. In the allelopoetic tension of reference (antiquity) and reception area (Early Modern Period), the ancient biographical text is functionally re-written in retrospect, in order to enable them to respond to contemporary needs. Here, it becomes evident that the reception area is modified insofar as it is put into a specific relation to a reference area. Thus, humanist editions and commentaries develop specific transformation effects by looking on the ancient texts with certain cognitive and cultural interests designed by their own reception area and by adapting ancient knowledge to the reading habits of the new recipients. Therefore, the ancient knowledge is re-organized, negotiated and further developed. Against the background of cultural transformations of antiquity, these humanistic text types take on a very important function because they conform certain reference objects to the respective logic and needs of their own reception area. 6

Further Reading

There is much research literature on Nepos and Suetonius in antiquity: Sonnabend (2002) and Hägg (2012) inspect them with a wider focus on the

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

195

history of the biographical genre. Titchener (2003) and Anselm (2004) focus on Nepos’s lives of commanders from an analytical point of view, while Geiger (1985) and Stem (2012) consider his biographies political. Suetonius in general is reviewed and contextualized historically by Schmidt (1997), Lounsbury (1987), and Albrecht (1993). Since Nepos’s influence on medieval literature was probably very marginal (Heidenreich 2010, 542–543), there is virtually no research literature on this topic aside from the text tradition (Marshall 1977). In contrast, with regard to Suetonius there are already some preliminary studies on Suetonius’s text tradition (Rand 1926), on his influence on early medieval literature (Luck 1965), and on the Carolingian Renaissance (Innes 1997; Tischler 2001). A first, albeit sketchy, overview of Nepos’s influence on the literature of the Early Modern Period is provided by Heidenreich (2010). More comprehensively, Suetonius’s role in the Early Modern Period is treated by Berschin (1983) and by Pausch (2010). With regard to humanist editions and commentaries on Nepos and Suetonius, there is a huge gap in the research literature. Anyway, research currently exploits the wide range of humanistic and early modern editions and commentaries in general, so that the first fruits have just now been published (Hafner/Völkel 2006; Enenkel 2013; Enenkel 2014; Crab 2015). For humanist commentaries and editions as media of transformations, see especially Weichenhan (2011a; 2011b), Kaiser (2013; 2014a; 2014b), and Enenkel 2014. For ‘Transformation’ as an analytic research concept of cultural transformations and appropriations see Böhme (2011) and therein Bergemann et al. (2011). To date a 27-volume series of books has been published by the CRC 644 ‘Transformations of Antiquity’ (Berlin), including numerous case studies on transformations processes. Bibliography

Primary Sources

Abstemius, L., Excellentissimo principi Guidobaldo Urbini duci Sa. and foelicitatem dicit, in: ibd., A iijv–A ivv. Egnazio, G.B., Ioannis Baptistae Egnatii Veneti, in Suetonium Tranquillum Annotationes, in: ibd., 636–669. Erasmus, D., Illustrissimis Saxoniae Ducibus, Federico sacri Imperii electori, andc. eiusque patrueli Georgio, Erasmus Roterdamus S.D. (1517), in: ibd., α 2r–α 4r. Erasmus, D., Loca Suetonii per Erasmum restituta, in: ibd., 669–672. Grynaeus, Simon, De utilitate legendae historiae, Simon Grynaeus Lectori, in: ibd. [without pagination]. Io. An. Episcopi Aleriensis, in recognitionem Suetonii, ad Paulum II. Venetum, Pontificem maximum Epistola, in: ibd. [n.p.].

196

Kaiser

Nepos, C., Marci T. Ciceronis Epistolae ad Atticum, Brutum, et Quintum fratrem cum ipsius Attici uita feliciter expliciunt, s.l. (1470). Nepos, C., Aemilii Probi viri clarissimi de vita excellentium liber incipit feliciter (Venice, 1471). Nepos, C., Aemilii Porbi Historici Excellentium imperatorum vitae (Venice, 1498/1500). Nepos, C., Hic subnotata co[n]tinentur Vita. M. Catonis. Sextus Aurelius de vitis Caesarum. Beuentus de eadem re. Philippi Beroaldi and Thomae Vuolphij Iunioris disceptatio, de nomine imperatorio. Epithoma rerum Germanica[rum] vs[que] ad nostra tempora (Strasbourg, 1505). Nepos, C., Aemilii Probi vitae excellentium imperatorum Tito Pomponio Attico dedicatae. Ti. Pomponii Attici vita per Cornelium Nepotem descripta. Plutarchi libri de illustrium mulierum virtutibus, eiusdem parallelia (Strasbourg, 1506). Nepos, C., Liber Aemylii Probi Historiographi veteris et praeclari, de uitis excellentium Graeciae Principum and Ducum, ad Pomponium Atticum, Ciceronis familiarem. Viciosißimum exemplar ex manuscripto codice quam emendatißimum redditum per D. Gybertum Longolium, cuius etiam scholia sunt quae paßim inseruntur (Cologne, 1543). Petrarca, F., De Viris Illustribus, vol. II (Adam-Hercules), a cura di Caterina Malta (Florence, 2007). Tranquillus, C.S., C. Suetonii Tranquilli de duodecim Caesaribus liber (Rome, 1470). Tranquillus, C.S., De vita Caesarum (Venice, 1493). Tranquillus, C.S., Suetonius Tranquillus cum Philippi Beroaldi et Marci Sabellici Commentariis (Venice, 1496). Tranquillus, C.S., C. Suetonii Tranquilli de vita duodecim Caesarum libri duodecim (Strasbourg, 1521). Tranquillus, C.S., Omnia quam antehac emendatiora. Annotationes Des. Erasmi and Egnatij cognitu dignae. C. Suetonius Tranquillus, Aelius Spartianus, Aelius Lampridius, Trebellius Pollio, Herodianus Politiano interp., Pomponius Laetus, Dion Cassius, Iulus Capitolinus, Vulcatius Gallicus, Flavius Vopiscus, Sex. Aurelius Victor, Io. Baptista Egnatius, Ammianus Marcellinus quatoir libris auctus. Cum indicibus copiosis (Basel, 1533). Tranquillus, C.S., C. Suetonii Tranquilli Caesarum XII libri, à mendis … repurgati: Locis etiam obscurioribus, qui plurimi erant, explicatis … Autore F.M. Gallo. Praterea accesserunt omnes reliqui Imperatores usque ad Carolum hunc V, breuius quidem quàm à Suetonio, sed non minus scholis apta dictione conscripti. Eodem F.M. Gallo. Item ex Ausonio de Cesaribus car mina, and unde Caesaris nomen dictum ex Philp. Beroal. (Basel, Heinrich Petri, 1537). Tranquillus, C.S., C. Suetonii Tranquilli Caesarum XII libri, à mendis … repurgati: Locis etiam obscurioribus, qui plurimi erant, explicatis … Autore F.M. Gallo. Praterea accesserunt omnes reliqui Imperatores usque ad Carolum hunc V, breuius quidem quàm à

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

197

Suetonio, sed non minus scholis apta dictione conscripti. Eodem F.M. Gallo. Item ex Ausonio de Cesaribus car mina, and unde Caesaris nomen dictum ex Philp. Beroal. (Basel, Heinrich Petri, 1539).



Secondary Sources

Albrecht, M. von, “Nochmals antike Grundlagen: Sueton,” in Biographie zwischen Renaissance und Barock, ed. Berschin, W. (Heidelberg, 1993), 311–332. Albrecht, M. von, A History of Roman Literature. From Livius Andronicus to Boethius (Leiden, 1997). Anselm, S., Struktur und Transparenz. Eine literaturwissenschaftliche Analyse der Feldherrnviten des Cornelius Nepos (Stuttgart, 2004). Anton, H.H., “Fürstenspiegel. A. Lateinisches Mittelalter,” Lexikon des Mittelalters 4 (1989), 1040–1049. Anton, H.H., “Einleitung,” in Fürstenspiegel des frühen und hohen Mittelalters, ausgewählt, übersetzt und kommentiert v. dems. (Darmstadt, 2006), 3–36. Assmann, J., “Text und Kommentar. Einführung,” in Text und Kommentar. Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation IV, eds. Assmann, Jan und Gladigow, Burkhard (Munich, 1995), 9–33. Baker, P., “La trasformazione dell’identità nazionale d’Ungheria nelle Rerum Ungaricarum decades di Antonio Bonfini,” Studi Umanistici Piceni 32 (2012), 215–223. Baker, P., “Historiography,” in The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin, eds. Knight, S. and Tilg, S. (Oxford, 2015), 151–166. Becht-Jördens, G., “Einharts‚ Vita Karoli und die antike Tradition von Biographie und Historiographie. Von der Gattungsgeschichte zur Interpretation,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 46.3 (2011), 335–369. Bergemann, L., Dönike, M., Schirrmeister, A., Toepfer, G., Walter, M. und Weitbrecht, J., “Transformation. Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels,” in Transformation. Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels, ed. Böhme, H. (Munich, 2011), 39–56. Berschin, W., “Sueton und Plutarch im 14. Jahrhundert,” in Biographie und Autobiographie in der Renaissance (Arbeitsgespräch in der Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel vom 1. bis 3. November 1982), ed. Buck, A. (Wiesbaden, 1983), 35–43. Berschin, W., Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, Band 3 (Stuttgart, 1991). Böhme, H., “Einladung zur Transformation,” in Transformation. Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels, ed. Böhme, H. (Munich, 2011), 7–37. Breisach, E., Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (Chicago, 1994). Crab, M., Exemplary Reading. Printed Renaissance Commentaries on Valerius Maximus (1470–1600) (Zürich, 2015) [= Scientia Universalis, 2]. Eigler, U., “Cornelius Nepos,” Der Neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike 8 (2000), 839–840.

198

Kaiser

Enenkel, K.A.E. and Nellen, H., eds., Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400–1700) (Leuven, 2013). Enenkel, K.A.E., ed., Transformations of the Classics via Early Modern Commentaries (Leiden, 2014). Fryde, E.B., Humanism and Renaissance Historiography (London, 1983). Geiger, J., Cornelius Nepos and Ancient Political Biography (Stuttgart, 1985). Goetz, H.-W., Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im hohen Mittelalter, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 2008). Gugel, H., Studien zur biographischen Technik Suetons (Vienna, 1977). Hafner, R. und Völkel, M., eds., Der Kommentar in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 2006). Hägg, T., The Art of Biography in Antiquity (New York, 2012). Heidenreich, H., “Nepos (Cornelius Nepos),” Der Neue Pauly. Supplemente Band 7: Die Rezeption der antiken Literatur. Kulturhistorisches Werklexikon (2010), 537–548. Helmrath, J., “Diffusion des Humanismus,” in Wege des Humanismus. Studien zu Praxis und Diffusion der Antikeleidenschaft im 15. Jahrhundert. Ausgewählte Aufsätze, ed. Helmrath, J. (Tübingen, 2012), 53–71. Holtz, S., Schirrmeister, A., Schlelein, S., eds., Humanisten edieren. Gelehrte Praxis im Südwesten in Renaissance und Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 2014). Ianziti, G., Writing History in Renaissance Italy. Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past (Cambridge, MA, 2012). Innes, M., “The Classical Tradition and Carolingian Historiography. Encounters with Suetonius,” in International Journal of the Classical Tradition 3 (1997), 265–282. Kaiser, R., Caesar in Pommern – Transformation der Antike in Bugenhagens Pomerania, in Retrospektivität und Retroaktivität. Erzählen – Geschichte – Wahrheit, ed. Born, M.A. (Würzburg, 2009), 47–68. Kaiser, R., “Sola historia negligitur. Historiographisches Erzählen in A. Althamers Scholia zur Germania des Tacitus (1529),” in Antikes erzählen. Narrative Transformationen der Antike in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit [= Transformationen der Antike, 27], eds. Heinze, A., Schirrmeister, A. und Weitbrecht, J. (Berlin, 2013), 91–116. Kaiser, R., “Zwischen Selbstinszenierung und Instrumentalisierung. Beobachtungen zu den Tertullian-Ausgaben des Beatus Rhenanus (1521, 1528, 1539),” in Humanisten edieren. Gelehrte Praxis im Südwesten in Renaissance und Gegenwart, eds. Holtz, S., Schirrmeister, A. und Schlelein, S. (Stuttgart, 2014a). Kaiser, R., “Kanonisierung und neue Deutungsräume. Die Grenzen der Antike in Andreas Althamers Commentaria zur Germania des Tacitus (1536),” in Grenzen der Antike. Die Produktivität von Grenzen in Transformationsprozessen, eds. Heinze, A., Möckel, S., Röcke, W. (Berlin, 2014b), 353–372. Kohl, B.G., “Petrarch’s Prefaces to de Viris Illustribus,” History and Theory 13.2 (1974), 132–144.

Nepos and Suetonius Meet the Early Modern Period

199

Koselleck, R., Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main, 1989). Liermann, H., “Giphanius, Hubertus,” Neue Deutsche Biographie 6 (1964), 407. Lounsbury, R.-C., The Arts of Suetonius. An Introduction (New York, 1987). Luck, G., “Die Form der suetonischen Biographie und die frühen Heiligenviten,” in Mullus. Festschrift für Th. Klausen, eds. Klauser, T., Stuiber, A., Hermann, A. (Munich, 1964), 230–241. Marshall, P.K., The Manuscript Tradition of Cornelius Nepos (London, 1977). McDonald, A.H., “Livius,” in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, vol. II, eds. Kristeller, P.O., Cranz, F.E. (1971), 331–348. Mertens, D., “‘Bebelius … patriam Sueviam … restituit’. Der poeta laureatus zwischen Reich und Territorium,” Zeitschrift für württembergische Landesgeschichte 42 (1983), 145–173. Mertens, D., “Deutsche Nationalgeschichte um 1500. Soziale, formale und materiale Konstituenten,” in Historiographie – Traditionsbildung, Identitätsstiftung und Raum. Südwestdeutschland als europäische Region, eds. Lorenz, S., Holtz, S., Schmidt, J.M. (Ostfildern, 2011), 1–19. Most, G.W., ed., Commentaries – Kommentare (Göttingen, 1999). Mundt, F., “Historiography,” in A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature, ed. Moul, V. (Cambridge, 2017), 358–376. Osmond, P., Ulery, R.W. Jr., “Sallustius,” in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, Vol. VIII, eds. Brown, V., Hankins, J., Kaster, R.A. (Washington, 2003), 183–326. Parker, D., Commentary and Ideology. Dante in the Renaissance (Durham, 1993). Pausch, D., “Nepos, Cornelius,” Der Neue Pauly. Supplemente Band 2: Geschichte der antiken Texte. Autoren- und Werklexikon (2007a), 410–412. Pausch, D., “Suetonius Tranquillus, Gaius (Sueton),” Der Neue Pauly. Supplemente Band 2: Geschichte der antiken Texte. Autoren- und Werklexikon (2007b), 568–570. Pausch, D., “Sueton (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus),” Der Neue Pauly. Supplemente Band 7: Die Rezeption der antiken Literaur. Kulturhistorisches Werklexikon (2010), 947–956. Rand, E.K., “On the History of the De Vita Caesarum of Suetonius in the Early Middle Ages,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 37 (1926), 1–48. Reinle, C., ed., “Historische Exempla in Fürstenspiegeln und Fürstenlehren,” Workshop im Rahmen des SFB 434 Erinnerungskulturen (Frankfurt am Main, 2011). Sallmann, K., “Suetonius Tranquillus, C.,” Der Neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike 11 (2011), 1084–1088. Scheuer, H., “Biographie,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, Bd. 2, eds. Ueding, G., Kalivoda, G., Robling, F.-H., Jens, W., Barner, W. (Tübingen, 1994), 30–43. Schirmer, T., “Giphanius, Hubert,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 9 (1879), 182–185. Schirrmeister, A., Triumph des Dichters. Gekrönte Intellektuelle im 16. Jahrhundert (Köln, 2003).

200

Kaiser

Schirrmeister, A., “Authority through Antiquity. Humanist Historiography and Regional Descriptions. The Cases of Erasmus Stella, Johannes Cuspinian and Robert Gaguin,” in Authority in European Book Culture: 1400–1600, ed. Bromilow, P. (Farnham, 2013), 67–83. Schlumberger, J., Die Epitome de Caesaribus. Untersuchungen zur heidnischen Geschichtsschreibung des 4. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Munich, 1974). Schmidt, P.L., “Suetonius Tranquillus,” in Die Literatur des Umbruchs von der römischen zur christlichen Literatur 117–284 n.Chr. [= Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur, hg. von Herzog, R. und Schmidt, P.L., 4. Band], hg. v. Sallmann, K. (Munich, 1997), 14–53. Simons, B., “Einhard und Sueton. Zu Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden in der Präsentation der Persönlichkeiten Karls des Großen und des Augustus,” in Altsprachlicher Unterricht 54.6 (2011), 53–63. Singer, B., Die Fürstenspiegel in Deutschland im Zeitalter des Humanismus und der Reformation. Bibliographische Grundlagen und ausgewählte Interpretationen: Jakob Wimpfeling, Wolfgang Seidel, Johann Sturm, Urban Rieger (Munich, 1981). Smalley, B., Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974). Sonnabend, H., Geschichte der antiken Biographie. Von Isokrates bis zur Historia Augusta (Stuttgart, 2002). Stem, S.R., The Political Biographies of Cornelius Nepos (Ann Arbor, 2012). Tischler, M.M., Einharts Vita Karoli. Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und Rezeption (Hannover, 2001). Titchener, F., “Cornelius Nepos and the Biographical Tradition,” Greece and Rome 50.1 (2003), 85–99. Weichenhan, M., “Der Kommentar als Transformationsmedium des Textes,” in Kommentare. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf eine wissenschaftliche Praxis, eds. Wabe, T., Weichenhan, M. (Frankfurt am Main, 2011a), 9–25. Weichenhan, M., “Gassendis Kommentierung von Diogenes’ Laertius Vitae philosophorum X – ein Beispiel für die Verwissenschaftlichung der Antike?” in ibd. (= 2011b), 91–125. Winkler, A., “Petrarcas De viris illustribus und Boccaccios De casibus als Versuche einer biographischen Universalgeschichte,” in Iohannes de Certaldo. Beiträge zu Boccaccios lateinischen Werken und ihrer Wirkung, eds. Enenkel, K.A.E., Leuker, T., Pieper, C. (Hildesheim, 2015), 51–69. Wissowa, G., “Aemilius Probus (121),” in RE I, 1 (1893), 581–582. Witt, R.G., In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden, 2000). Wittchow, F., “Von Fabius Pictor zu Polydor Vergil. Zur Transformation narrativer Modelle der antiken römischen Geschichtsschreibung in der Humanistenhistorie,” in Medien und Sprachen humanistischer Geschichtsschreibung, eds. Helmrath, J., Schirrmeister, A., Schlelein, S. (Berlin, 2009), 47–75.

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome: Heritage Construction in Latin Literature Susanna de Beer 1

Introduction1

For Cristoforo Landino (1425–1498), a fifteenth-century Florentine poet, the ruins of Rome were proof that the glory of the eternal city had definitely faded, in favor of his native Florence. By modelling his elegies on Propertius’ celebration of the Roman imperial monuments, Landino praised his patron Piero de’ Medici as the new Augustus, while presenting himself as a classical Roman poet.2 Janus Vitalis (1485–1559) however, humanist poet and papal servant of Leo X, saw the ancient ruins as the embodiment of Rome’s eternal greatness. In a Latin epigram, modelled on Martial, he presented papal Rome as the phoenix that was reborn from the ashes even greater than before.3 These are only two of the manifold images of the city of Rome that we find in humanist Latin poetry, and that range from Rome as the capital of a powerful empire to a ruined city; but also from Rome as the iconic center of Christian faith to the target of the Protestant Reformation. These can be understood both as a continuation of the ancient and medieval tradition of (literary) images of Rome, and as an expression of the unique combination of the humanists’ admiration of ancient Rome with their attitude towards Renaissance Rome.4 1  This work was supported by grants from The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and forms part of a book project entitled ‘The Renaissance Battle for Rome. Competing Claims to the Ancient Roman Legacy in Humanist Latin Poetry’. I am very grateful for the feedback received from the audience at the conference and from the editors of this volume. 2  The poem from the elegiac collection Xandra 2.30 (De Roma fere diruta) is included in Cristoforo Landino (1939) 81–82. On this poem see C.H. Pieper (2008) 252–261. For humanist authors presenting their patrons as the new Augustus see S. de Beer, ‘The Memory of Augustus and Augustan Rome in Humanist Latin Poetry’, in P. Assenmaker and M. Cavalieri, eds., Augustus through the Ages. Receptions, Readings and Appropriations of the Historical Figure of the First Roman Emperor (Brussels: Latomus, forthcoming). 3  The poem Roma instaurata is included in Janus Vitalis (1553) 9. It is quoted and discussed with respect to Joachim Du Bellay’s Antiquitez de Rome in G.H. Tucker (1990) pp. 105–173 (esp. 108–9). 4  For a general overview of Rome as a symbol from Antiquity onwards, see B. Kytzler (1993) and A. Giardina and A. Vauchez (2000). Various essays on Renaissance (literary) images of Rome

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_012

202

de Beer

What makes these poems so interesting is precisely this combination of scholarship and political engagement with regard to Rome in a crucial period of her history, expressed in the literary language of Rome. Renaissance humanism, seen as a scholarly, educational and literary reform movement, found her most important source of inspiration in Antiquity.5 It formed the basis for a renewal of the educational system, but also offered examples for political, religious and moral reform. Originating in Italy in the fourteenth century, it spread all over Europe in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, creating an elite with a common educational background with Latin as a common (literary) language.6 Within the humanist movement Rome held a special place of pride as a symbol for Antiquity at large. This may explain that apart from the literary remains, most humanists were also especially attracted to the material remains of ancient Rome, both as an object of study and as a source of inspiration.7 In this same period Rome itself went through turbulent times: exchanged by the Papacy for Avignon and affected by the Western Schism in the fourteenth century, witnessing a rapid growth and artistic restoration after the return of the papal Curia in the course of the fifteenth, and facing various political and religious upheavals during the sixteenth century with the Sack of Rome (1527) and the Protestant Reformation.8 Rome’s role on Europe’s political stage was are collected in P.A. Ramsey (1982) and M. Disselkamp (2006). See further S. de Beer (2014), pp. 856–864 for a brief typology of humanist images of Rome. 5  For a discussion of different interpretations of Renaissance humanism, ranging from a primarily philosophical movement in the wake of Eugenio Garin to an educational movement in the wake of Paul Oskar Kristeller, see A. Mazzocco (2006). For a general introduction into Renaissance Humanism see J. Kraye (1996) and for its specific relationship with Antiquity, see R.G. Witt (2000). 6  Although Francesco Petrarca (1304–1378) is often seen as the father of Humanism, the origins of the humanist movement are usually traced back to the mid-thirteenth century, as e.g. Witt (2003) and R. Black (2006) 37–71. For the spread of humanism over Europe, see A. Goodman (1990). It formed the basis of a European network of intellectuals, the so-called ‘Republic of Letters’ (res publica litteraria), see H. Bots and F. Waquet (1997). For the importance of (Neo-) Latin in this period see the following, recent, publications: Jan Bloemendal, Philip Ford and Charles Fantazzi (2014); Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg (2015) and Victoria Moul (2017). 7  For humanism and antiquarianism in Rome see K.W. Christian (2010) and R. Weiss (1969). For the double nature of the humanists’ interest in ancient Rome, that is as a subject of study and as a model for artistic or literary creation, see T.M. Greene (1982) 41–54. Of the many humanists that travelled to Rome to see the eternal city for themselves, not few found employment in the papal bureaucracy of Rome, which enabled them to pursue their scholarly goals, while also making a living, see J. D’Amico (1983). 8  For the history of Rome in the Renaissance see especially C.L. Stinger (1985) and A. Pinelli (2001). For the history of Rome seen in a wider Italian and European context, see A. Gamberini and I. Lazzarini (2012), especially chapters 4 (The Papal State) and 23 (The Papacy and the Italian States). These turbulent times have also determined the demarcation of my research,

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

203

a complicated one, not just because she changed alliances regularly just like most other political powers in this period, but also because of her religious primacy. The resulting events did not leave the humanists untouched, as they both determined their perceptions of ancient and contemporary Rome, and called for their intervention and participation as experts in Roman history and literature. In analyzing the various images of Rome that we find in Latin poems written during this period my goal is twofold: first, I am interested in the construction of these images from elements of the ancient Roman legacy. Secondly, I aim to understand their (rhetorical) function in the literary, political or religious context in which they participate. With regard to both aspects, my focus is not only on the individual poems, but also on the comparative perspective. This means that I aim to create a typology of recurring images of Rome and wish to understand their function in relation to one another, for they clearly do not stand in isolation. This research can be classified as a study into classical reception on many grounds, as it deals with the creative reception of classical literary language and themes related to Rome in particular, and with the symbolism and authority of ancient Rome in general. In this chapter I will argue that heritage studies offer analytical tools and concepts appropriate for my research goals, and that precisely the element of classical reception in it can be framed as heritage construction. To understand how this works, I will first introduce the basic methods and insights of heritage studies. Subsequently I will discuss the main advantages and results of applying this framework to the research at hand, both by means of theoretical reflections and practical examples. Finally, as an epilogue, I will add some thoughts on the use of Digital Humanities for Classical Reception Studies. 2

Heritage Studies and Humanist Visions of Rome

Heritage studies take heritage, which is defined by Brian Graham as ‘referring to the ways in which very selective past material artifacts, natural landscapes, mythologies, memories and traditions become cultural, political or economic resources for the present’ as its main subject of enquiry.9 It describes and which covers the period from ca. 1350–1550 (including on the far ends Francesco Petrarca being crowned poet laureate on the Capitol in 1341 and the end of the Council of Trent in 1563). 9  See B. Graham and P. Howards (2008) 2. Groundbreaking work in the field of heritage studies has been done by David Lowenthal (1985 and 1998). A good introduction into this field is G. Fairclough (2008).

204

de Beer

analyzes the construction of heritage (who construct it? from what elements? by what process?), the function of heritage (for what purpose is it used? to whose advantage?), and the practicalities of heritage (how is heritage preserved and presented?). The process of heritage construction can be seen to consist of three phases: selection, interpretation and appropriation.10 By means of this process the past is adapted or ‘fashioned’ to fit present purposes.11 The function of heritage lies mainly in the fields of identity formation and political legitimization.12 A shared past offers shared values, with which a group or society can identify, and which can be a source of common pride.13 Moreover, heritage can be employed to support political claims, by creating continuity between a favorable 10  This threefold scheme of the process of heritage construction is developed on the basis of the introduction in Graham (2008) 1–15. See e.g. 2: ‘The contents, interpretations and representations of the heritage resource are selected according to the demands of the present and, in turn, bequeathed to an imagined future. It follows therefore, that heritage is less about tangible material artifacts or other intangible forms of the past than about the meanings placed upon them and the representations which are created from them’. 11  Depending on the extent to which the past is adapted or ‘violated’, such heritage constructions tend towards the propagandistic, which is the reason behind David Lowenthal’s attempts to draw a clear distinction between history and heritage (e.g. history is dead, heritage is vital; history is for all, heritage for ourselves alone; history is precise, heritage is vague; heritage conflates past with present). See D. Lowenthal (1998), especially chapters 5 and 6. However, I believe this is practically impossible, even though we should be sensitive to the different nuances behind these concepts. What we see as history today, later generations may consider being our heritage construction. Note that also in popular use heritage, inheritance and legacy are often used indiscriminately for what we have inherited from the past. 12  See Graham (2008) 5–6, where he provides a summary of these issues as discussed passim in D. Lowenthal (1985 and 1998): ‘The combined outcome of these traits (i.e. of heritage) is to see a past that, once translated into heritage, in terms of identity, provides familiarity and guidance, enrichment and escape. Also, and perhaps more potently, it provides a point of validation or legitimation for the present in which actions and policies are justified by continuing references to representations and narratives of the past that are, at least in part, encapsulated through manifestations of tangible and intangible heritage’. 13  The other way around can also be true, as a shared past can be a source of common shame or trauma. In such cases heritage can function as an admonition to never act or be treated in a similar way again. See e.g. the description of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, in New York: ‘At its core, the Museum of Jewish Heritage provides not only a remembrance of the past, but also the promise of a better future. By providing the story of the Holocaust through the experiences of those who lived and died, the museum serves as a memorial and tribute to their heritage, and a lesson to be learned from the tragedy. It is a reminder of history, but it also provides a message about the far-reaching consequences of discrimination and social injustice, both of which are still important today’. http://www.nycgo.com/venues/museum-of-jewish -heritage-a-living-memorial-to-the-holocaust, visited 8 September 2014.

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

205

past and a desired future.14 As a result, heritage is both dynamic, in that it is adapted to an ever changing present, and competitive, in that more groups or societies often lay claims to the same past. Heritage is fundamentally linked to collective memory, as heritage concerns those elements of the past that a group or society has chosen (either consciously or unconsciously) to remember.15 The physical or symbolical embodiment of such memories, among which we can reckon monuments or works of art, can be designated as lieux de mémoire or heritage sites.16 When it comes to practicalities, heritage studies also operate on a more prescriptive level, largely in collaboration with cultural heritage foundations (e.g. the UNESCO), in defining what should be considered heritage and discussing how heritage should be preserved, presented and managed.17 However, this branch of heritage studies, that paradoxically takes part in the same process it studies, is not of specific relevance for us here. Applying heritage studies to humanist poems about Rome means considering the process by which the humanists created their images of Rome as heritage construction, that is a process of selection, interpretation and appropriation. As a consequence, I consider their poems to be expressions of claims to the legacy of Rome. This also means that I understand the humanists to be some kind of ‘heritage managers’ or ‘heritage experts’.18 As such they do not 14  Similarly, but without talking in terms of heritage, T. Hampton (1990) 9–11 states that in the Renaissance the relationship between (ancient) past and present was constituted by similitude, and that the classical world had both an ontological and historical priority over other periods. They were seen as ‘sources of value that one can make a leap through time to achieve’. This past was reactivated through a process of appropriation of ancient models. 15  Graham (2008), 2 (citing M. Halbwachs, La mémoire collective (Paris, PUF, 1950)) states that ‘heritage is often used as a form of collective memory, a social construct shaped by the political, economic and social concerns of the present’. 16  For the relationship between heritage, memory and place see Ashworth, Graham and Tunbridge (2007). The concept of Lieu de Mémoire was developed by Pierre Nora with respect to France: P. Nora, et al., Les lieux de mémoire. 7 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1992). The term collective memory (‘La mémoire collective’) was coined by Maurice Halbwachs (1950); for cultural memory (‘Das kulturelle Gedächtnis’) the works by Jan Assmann (1992) and Aleida Assmann (1999 and 2006) are of vital importance. 17  As such we could consider the construction in 2006 of the Dutch historical canon by a special committee consisting primarily of professional historians, on commission of the ministry of education and culture (De canon van Nederland, to be consulted at http:// www.entoen.nu), that aimed at supporting our national identity. 18  As such they can be regarded as the experts or the intellectual elite that Jan Assmann (1992) 93–97, sees as the bearers of cultural memory, among others by determining, explaining and making variations to ‘canonized’ or ‘classical’ texts. Their pivotal role in the appropriation of Antiquity is also discussed in K.A.E. Enenkel and K.A. Ottenheym,

206

de Beer

operate in a vacuum, but give a literary voice to existing heritage claims as much as they shape them. Moreover, in most cases they have to strike a balance between their own individual claims and those of the patrons with whom they are associated.19 In the remainder of this chapter I will discuss in more detail the advantages of bringing to bear the heritage framework on the humanist poems on Rome. First, as an umbrella for various multidisciplinary approaches, it combines into one framework the analytical tools for understanding the construction of these images both from selected intertextual references to the literature of Rome and references to the history and physical fabric of Rome. This is especially relevant since in the poems themselves these references are hardly distinguishable from one another, and often operate in the same manner and in close cooperation. Secondly, by so doing it can guide our understanding of the function of these images as tools for identity formation and political legitimization, and contribute to a typology of literary images of Rome. As a result it will generate interpretations with a wide scope, uniting the literary, historical and geographical realm, and understanding the poems to express a variety of claims to the legacy of Rome, be it literary, physical or otherwise. At the same time it will also widen the usual scope of heritage studies, by generating a fuller understanding of the role of literature in voicing and shaping heritage claims. 3

Heritage Studies and Intertextuality

A first and most conspicuous role of heritage in humanist Latin poetry about Rome is given by the numerous references to Roman ‘heritage sites’ or lieux de mémoire. In almost all of the poems we find references to such locations, such as the Capitoline, the Forum or the Coliseum.20 By means of such references, sometimes elaborated on ecphrastically, the poem mimics the function of the physical sites themselves, offers a poetic replacement of a real visit. Such usage is most elaborate in ‘poetic walks’ through Rome, in which literary characters

Ambitious Antiquities. Famous Forebears Constructions of a Glorious Past in the Early Modern Netherlands and in Europe (Brill, 2019) and K.A.E. Enenkel and K.A. Ottenheym, eds., The Quest for an Appropriate Past in Literature, Art and Architecture (Brill, 2019). 19  For this aspect of negotiating various goals in patronage literature, see S. de Beer (2013), especially the introduction. 20  Not just specific places are mentioned, but also more general sites, like the walls, the seven hills or the ruins of Rome.

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

207

marvel at the Roman monuments in the manner of modern tourists.21 They are often also accompanied by guides who narrate the history of the sites they visit, by which the poet makes explicit what these locations are supposed to trigger the memory of.22 Which heritage sites are mentioned in a specific poem is not a random choice either, but also the result of the poetic inventio of the author. He has carefully selected specific heritage sites, – and omitted others –, because of their symbolic value. As with all heritage, these values are not inherent of the location, but are the result of interpretation and appropriation.23 A comparison of a number of such poetic walks through Rome in humanist Latin poetry clearly shows how different the outcome of this process can be: no walk is the same; no image of Rome is the same. Some, to give just one example, include the Campus Martius in their walks; others do not, even if their walk goes in that direction.24 And between the authors that do include it, Petrarca uses it to stage stories that express republican values, whereas Ugolino Verino takes it as an example for Rome’s military power. In the way poets choose and employ references to Roman heritage sites, we clearly recognize the same process by which heritage construction is described: selection, interpretation and appropriation. In my view, other elements of classical reception in the poem, be it references to Roman history or myth, or intertextual references to other texts, function in the same way. Here as well, the poet carefully selects his elements from the Roman legacy, which he interprets and appropriates to fit the new context. It may seem, though, that by including intertextuality in the heritage framework, we are combining two totally different, maybe even incompatible approaches: the one purely literary approach, originating from scholarship that 21  Which I have coined ‘Virgilian Walks’, as they are all to a certain extent modeled after Virgil’s Aeneid 8, 306–369, in which Aeneas is guided over the future site of Rome by King Evander, see S. de Beer, ‘In the Footsteps of Aeneas. Humanist Appropriations of the Virgilian Walk through Rome in Aeneid 8’. Humanistica Lovaniensia 66 (2017), 23–55. 22  For example in Petrarca, Africa 8, 871–875 (Petrarca, 2007) where the guide tells the story of Hercules and Cacus once they have arrived at the Aventine. 23  Cf. Graham (2008) 2: ‘It is now largely agreed that most heritage has little intrinsic worth. Rather, values are placed upon artefacts or activities by people who, when they view heritage, do so through a whole series of lenses […]’. 24  See De Beer (2017). It is included for example in Petrarca’s Africa 8, 915–23. See Francesco Petrarca (2007), also in Ugolino Verino’s Carlias 15, 310–15. See Ugolino Verino (1995) appendix 79–92. Also in Battista Spagnoli (Latin: Mantuanus), De Dionysii Areopagitae vita et agone, 85–86. See Baptista Mantuanus (1576), consulted on www.perseus.tufts.edu. It is not explicitly mentioned a.o. in Zaccaria Ferreri, even though the papal procession this poem describes (especially vss. 576–612) must have passed over it on its way from the Castel Sant’Angelo to the Capitoline hill. See Zaccaria Vicenzo Ferreri (1893).

208

de Beer

has preached the ‘autonomy of art’, the other grounded in sociology and history. However, there are actually many points of contact between these approaches, that make integration possible and, I will argue, also very fruitful.25 This can be made clear on the basis of two concepts that are of vital importance both in the literary theory of intertextuality and in heritage studies, that is ‘memory’ and ‘appropriation’. In the beginning of this chapter we have already seen how memory and heritage are related, but clearly memory also plays a prominent role in intertextuality. Already in the 1970s the classical scholar Gian Biagio Conte used the term ‘poetic memory’ to understand the functions of literary allusions and intertextuality.26 More recently, Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning have discerned three levels on which memory and literary studies interact.27 The first level is the memory ‘of’ literature, which means that literature can become part of the collective memory, as the result of which literary works can be considered symbolic lieux de mémoire. Intertextual references then function as triggers of the readers’ memory of such works. The second is the memory ‘in’ literature, in that memory can be a topic within a literary work (i.e. literary

25  In reality the two approaches have never been completely opposite, at least not in Classics. Gian Biagio Conte and Stephen Hinds, among others, already opened up the poststructuralist theory of intertextuality that departed from Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’, to sociology and historicism, by at least considering the possibility that there is a real author behind conscious or unconscious literary allusions. An important statement in this regard, that seeks reconciliation with the author, while trying to avoid the pitfalls of too positivistic an interpretation is Hinds (1998) 50: ‘Therefore, while conceding the fact that, for us as critics, the alluding poet is ultimately and necessarily a figure whom we ourselves read out from the text, let us continue to employ our enlarged vision of “allusion” along with its intention-bearing author, as a discourse which is good to think with – which enables us to conceptualize and to handle certain kinds of intertextual transaction more economically and effectively than does any alternative’. Cf. Conte (1986) 98: ‘This line of argument (i.e. trying to synthesize inquiries into literary techniques with studies of ideology) opens up an approach to a sociology of the forms of literary discourse’. Moreover, heritage studies have never excluded literature either, treating it as ‘symbolic, intangible heritage’. However, in practice they have preferred the more tangible heritage as an object of study, and have often worked in close cooperation with archaeologists. 26  Conte (1986) 29, n. 11: ‘I consider it (i.e. intertextuality) equivalent to the less technical “poetic memory” – a strategic working equivalence suited to our needs’. And 25: ‘[…] allusions do not produce the desired effect if the reader does not clearly remember the text to which they refer’. The relationship between memory and intertextuality is also clear in the work of Jan Assmann on cultural memory (1992) esp. 101–102. 27  Erll and Nünning (2005) 1–11. Conte (1986, 69) offers a similar threefold distinction of how intertextual references and memory are related: 1. they are acts of commemoration 2. They trigger the reader’s memory 3. They create something memorable of their own.

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

209

characters remember).28 Thirdly, literature can express or shape the collective cultural memory of a group of people, create a monument or lieux de mémoire of its own. If we bring this threefold distinction to bear on the intertextual references in humanist poetry on Rome, we can see that all three levels also apply. First, these references activate the memory of the literary works they allude to, often works belonging to the canon of classical literature.29 As such they function both as homage and a means of generating meaning in the new context by employing something the reader is familiar with. Second, memory is employed as a subject in poetry to create awareness of the past’s importance for the present. This function is for example hidden in the word monumenta, but also in references to a character’s memory being triggered by something he sees.30 Thirdly, the result of the author’s poetic inventio, his blending of old and new elements to create a certain image of Rome, becomes a literary monument in itself: a version of the Roman past that shapes the memory of its readers. It is precisely this last level of interaction between literature and memory that enables us to consider intertextuality as a contribution to the construction of heritage. The humanists, and before them numerous classical writers, were actually very much aware of the analogy between writing and erecting monuments, and even considered literature a more durable means of preserving the memory of the past than any material object could.31 Another concept that plays a pivotal role both in intertextuality and heritage studies is ‘appropriation’: the understanding that the selection itself does not generate meaning, but the way this selection is employed in the new 28  This use of memory in literature can moreover, as Stephen Hinds (1998, 4) has convincingly shown, function as a trope for intertextuality. He discusses two instances of poetry (Ovid, Fasti 3, 471–6 and Catullus 64, 130–5, 143–4, both taken from Conte (1986) 57–69) that explicitly draw attention to their literary allusions by using the verb meminisse, which may explain how memory as a trope of intertextuality is also very important in metapoetics. 29  Such intertextual references are not necessarily to a specific source passage, but could also recall a topos, which ‘invokes its intertextual tradition as a collectivity, to which the individual contexts and connotations of individual prior instances are firmly subordinate’ (Hinds, 1998, 34) or refer to a general ‘code model’ (Conte, 1986, 31). 30  E.g. Verino, Carlias 15, 341–42 (Verino, 1995, appendix pp. 79–92) or Du Bellay, Descriptio Romae, 120–21, where the sight of the rostra trigger his memory of Cicero. This text in Kytzler (1972) 492–505. 31  Most famously by Horace’s (Odes 3.30, 1) adagium exegi monumentum aere perennius (I have completed a monument more permanent than bronze). The interaction between text and monuments in Antiquity is discussed in Elsner (1996), especially in part 1. Many humanists also reflected on this function of literature in relation to other forms of art, as we will see later in the case of Landino.

210

de Beer

context.32 This applies both to the elements of the past that are considered ‘heritage’, and for elements selected from earlier texts (words, thoughts, and literary conventions) employed in literary works.33 Appropriation furthermore implies agency (who appropriates?) and an agenda (to what purpose?), which indeed applies to heritage as we have seen.34 With regard to intertextuality this can be connected to the awareness that literary allusions are often employed for rhetorical purposes, even though various levels of sophistication can be distinguished in that respect, as Thomas Greene has shown in his seminal work on literary imitation in the Renaissance.35 The very fact that, again as put by Thomas Greene, the Renaissance was an ‘era of imitation’ enables us to apply the heritage framework so fruitfully on humanist Latin poetry in the first place.36 For this implies that a considerable part of their poetry consists of references to the (literary) past, which is indeed the case, I would argue. Needless to say that this does not mean there is nothing ‘original’ in their works, but this originality mostly consists of appropriating existing elements in creative and innovative ways, and interpreting new events in the light of the past – the kind of literary creation the humanists themselves considered highly recommendable.37 To come back to the points of contact between the heritage framework and the intertextual approach, we have seen analogies on at least two levels: first between a physical lieu de mémoire as trigger of cultural memory and an intertextual reference as trigger of poetic memory. Secondly, between a physical heritage site as shaping and preserving the memory of the past and a literary work as a monument. These analogies are however not accidental but follows

32  Cf. Conte (1986) 49 where he refers to ‘the dialectical role of memory, which absorbs the past and is coopted into the present’. 33  As such it is a pivotal concept in Hinds (1998), passim. Especially in chapter 2 (22–23) he discusses it as a central virtue of literary allusions that strike a balance between openness and plagiarism. 34  Agency may not be such an issue in current heritage studies, but it has been problematic for a long time in literary studies to give the author’s intention a prominent role in the interpretation. For Hinds’ reconciliatory statement, see note 25. 35  For the rhetoric of literary allusions in classical literature see Conte (1986), who understands them to generate meaning by creating analogies between the source text and the new (con)text. For the different levels of sophistication of imitation, see Thomas Greene (1982) 38–48, who distinguishes four types of imitation (from simplest to more complicated): 1. Reproductive/sacramental; 2. Eclectic; 3. Heuristic; and 4. Dialectical. 36  Greene (1982) 1. 37  For humanist theories on imitation see, apart from Greene (1982), MacLaughlin (1995). Cf. also Assmann (1992) 119, where he states that in the Western cultural tradition the worship of ‘the Ancient’ (or ‘the Classical’) has taken on the form of an intertextual conversation between ancient and modern authors.

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

211

from the fact that literary works are part of our cultural legacy, and poetic memory is therefore not just ‘like’ cultural memory, but a specific form of it.38 Being able to interpret all instances of classical reception in the poems within the same heritage framework is all the more important, because it does justice to the complex interrelations between the various kinds of references, both to the literary and physical legacy of Rome, in shaping the image of Rome. Although references to physical Rome might appear to belong to a different category than references to classical literature, the difference is often hard to tell. Numerous poets writing about Rome had never visited the eternal city, in which case they relied for the selection of locations either on classical literature or early modern topographical guides of Rome.39 The same naturally goes for references to ancient monuments that did not exist anymore. But even when a poet took departure from autopsy, his references are often couched in intertextual references to texts about these same Roman locations. In either case, by inclusion in poetry physical Rome was transformed into literary Rome, both by the ancient writers and by the humanists.40 Moreover, intertextual references often play a crucial role in guiding the interpretation of a specific selection of sites or events, by bringing into the picture connotations from the original context, as we will see later on. 4

Understanding Images of Rome

Considering the poems as instances of heritage construction and distinguishing the different stages of the process can help us formulate our research questions more precisely: 1) which elements of the Roman legacy are selected? 2) how are they interpreted? and 3) in whose interest and to what purpose are they appropriated? Especially with regard to this last question, heritage studies can both suggest possible functions of heritage claims and open our eyes for their dynamic and often competitive nature. To see in more detail how this works I will return to my earlier examples: the poems by Cristoforo Landino and Janus Vitalis. Landino’s poem, to start with, offers an image of Rome that seems to convey two messages, one that relates to Landino’s identity as a poet, the other with political purposes.41 The poem 38  For intertextuality as cultural memory, see also Scheiding (2005) 64–66. 39  See R.E. Kritzer, Rom: bewunderte Vergangenheit - inszenierte Gegenwart. Die Stadt in literarischen Topographien der Renaissance (Vienna: Horn, 2012) and S. de Beer, ‘Travel Guides for Imaginary Journeys. The Presence of Rome in Early Modern Antiquarian Literature’, Neulateinisches Jahrbuch 20 (2018), 57–81. 40  See Edwards (1996) and Disselkamp (2006). 41  For a full interpretation of this poem on which mine is based, see Pieper (2008) 252–61.

212

de Beer

contrasts the past magnificence of ancient Rome with her present ruined state. It does so by selecting a number of Roman sites, symbols of ancient magnificence, that now have each fallen into ruin.42 By means of this contrast Rome teaches an important lesson about the whims of Fortune and the impact of time on all things created by men.43 However, by referring to the names (nomina) as all that has been left over of these famous monuments, and contrasting the fate of the Palatine Temple of Apollo with that of the Propertian poem dedicated to that same temple, Landino implies that there is one exceptional type of human creation that can stand the test of time: literature.44 The topic of the durability of literature was already exploited by ancient writers, among others in the famous Horatian adagium ‘exegi monumentum aere perennius’ (I have completed a monument more durable than bronze).45 Especially the fact that physical Rome was now in ruins whereas literary Rome still stood, had proven them to be right in the eyes of the humanists. By alluding to this topic, Landino both testifies to his knowledge of classical literature – just as he testifies to his knowledge of Roman architecture – and as a claimant to that heritage presents his own work in the same light. The political message of Landino’s poem is created by the intertextual interplay with Lucan’s Bellum Civile, by which Landino compares the present state of Rome with the ruins of Troy.46 By employing this analogy he interprets Rome’s fate in light of the translatio imperii: just as Troy once made way for 42  He mentions among others the Circus Maximus, the Esquiline, the Tarpeian rock and the Capitoline, the Temple of Jupiter, the Coliseum, the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and some famous statues by Scopas, Praxiteles and Phidias. 43  Cf. Landino, Xandra 2.30 (De Roma fere diruta), 1–4: ‘Et cunctis rebus instant sua fata creatis / et, quod Roma doces, omnia tempus edit / Roma doces, olim tectis miranda superbis / at nunc sub tanta diruta mole iaces’. (What you teach, Rome, is this: that its own ruin looms over every created thing, and Time devours all. You teach, Rome, once admired for your proud buildings; now you lie demolished under ruins vast.) All translations of Landino taken from Cristoforo Landino (2008). The same thought was famously expressed by Poggio Bracciolini in the first book of his De varietate Fortunae. 44  Landino, Xandra 2.30 (De Roma fere diruta), 5–6: Heu, quid tam Magno praeter sua nomina, Circo / restat […] (Alas, what is left of the Great Circus but its name); 13–14: Nauta Palatini Phoebi cantaverat aedes / dic tua, dic Phoebe, nunc ubi templa manent? (Nauta once hymned the fane of Apollo Palatinus; tell us, Phoebus, where does your temple stand now?); 17–18: Nec te, Praxiteles, potuit defendere nomen / quominus ah, putris herma, tegaris humo (Nor was your name, Praxiteles, able to defend you from a covering of earth, a decaying herm, alas). 45  For the topos of the durability of literature, see note 31. 46  References to Lucan can be distinguished in the focus on the names (nomina) of the monuments (Lucan, Bellum civile 9, 973: ‘nullum est sine nomen saxum’; no stone is without a name), the strong contrast between the original magnitude and the present decay and ruin (Lucan, Bellum civile 9, 965–69), and the focus on the power of poetry (Lucan, Bellum civile 9, 980–1).

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

213

the rise of Rome, now the ruins of Rome will leave room for the rise of a new empire, in Florence, we must understand. This interpretation is supported by the previous poem, in which Landino had already contrasted the new buildings commissioned by the Medici with the ‘veterum relliquia’ (the remains of the ancients) of Rome.47 Together these two poems function as a prelude to the third book of his Xandra, which Landino dedicated to Florence just like Propertius had dedicated his fourth book of elegies to Rome.48 The ruins thus embody the definitive downfall of the Roman Empire, and to emphasize the irreversibility of that fate, Landino selects another key symbol of ancient Rome: Augustus, the emperor who boasted to have found Rome in brick and left it in marble.49 Quin etiam Augusto Stygias remeare paludes Si licet et vita rursus in orbe frui inquirens totam quamvis percurserit urbem, nulla videre sui iam monumenta queat.

Cristoforo Landino, Xandra 2.30 (De Roma fere diruta), 21–24

[On the Near Ruin that is Rome; And even if Augustus were allowed to cross once more the Stygian swamp and have life in this world again, although he might pass through the entire city in his search, he could not see any of his monuments now.] If Augustus were to rise from his grave and wander through contemporary Rome, Landino claims, he would not recognize anything that would remind him of himself. What image could be stronger in suggesting the annihilation of ancient Rome? Although the political consequence of Rome’s present state is not elaborated on in this specific poem, it is implied by the intertextuality with Lucan, and further taken up in other poems. It can moreover be understood in the patronage context Landino worked. Taken together, the image of Rome in Landino’s poem is constructed in such a way that it can both shape his individual identity as a humanist poet and offer political legitimization for his patrons. 47  Xandra 2.29, 25–26: ‘At te quid Romae faciam si forte rogarit / dicito me veterum discere relliquias’ (But if he happens to ask you what I’m doing in Rome, say that I am studying the ancient ruins). Note the reference to Juvenal, Satires 3, 41. See Pieper (2008) 253 about the relationship between 2,29 and 2,30: ‘Auf äuβerst prägnante Weise wird somit der Gedanke der translatio augenfällig gemacht. Rom ist Vergangenheit, Florenz Gegenwart und Zukunft’. See also Edwards (1996) 64–6. 48  Pieper (2008) 265–72. 49  In the words of Suetonius, Divus Augustus 28.

214

de Beer

Vitalis’ poem, written some 70 years later, also selects the ruins as most prominent image of Rome.50 In this case, however, they form the background for a renewed grandeur of the physical city space by the effort of the Popes, as the title immediately suggests: Quicunque immensi septem miracula mundi Fortunae arbitrio praecipitata stupes, En quae Roma suo mundum comprehendit in orbe Quantum sit spoliis facta decora novis, Quam vere est mundi Roma una unius imago, Quam ve unam Romam non nisi Roma refert, En velut expurgata repullulat ardua Quercus, Grandior e cinere est Roma renata suo. Janus Vitalis, Roma Instaurata, 1–8

[Rome restored; You who look amazed at the seven wonders of the world Cast headlong down by Fortune’s whim, Behold how Rome, containing the whole world within her circumference, Is made so splendid through new spoils. How true that Rome alone is the image of this one world, Or that nothing but Rome represents the one Rome. Behold, just as a tall oak burgeons anew once lopped, So is Rome reborn greater from her ashes.]51 By means of the analogy with an oak that once lopped burgeons anew, the ruins are interpreted as an image of renewal and restoration on the spot itself, which is furthermore supported by the oak simile in Virgil’s Aeneid, in which it symbolizes steadfastness.52 At the same time the oak might refer to the 50  Landino’s poem can be dated in 1446 or 1447, whereas Vitalis’ poem cannot be dated more precisely than the pontificate of Leo X from 1513–1520. Vitalis’ image of the Roman ruins still showing the uniqueness of Rome can be traced back to the famous twelfth-century poem about Rome by Hildebert de Lavardin: ‘Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina’ (Nothing can be compared to you, Rome, even though you are almost completely in ruin). The poem (De Roma) is quoted in Kytzler (1972) 344–9. 51  Translated by Hugo Tucker (1990) 256–7. 52  A  eneid 4, 441. Aeneas is compared to an oak, because a firmly planted oak cannot be removed. In the Aeneid it is used to understand why Aeneas cannot be moved by Dido: he has to stick to his plan and continue his journey to Italy. Note the irony in the simile: Aeneas is steadfast only metaphorically, not literally, as Dido would have wished.

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

215

family weapon of the Della Rovere, the family of Leo’s predecessor Julius II. This last reference is an especially interesting one, as it both alludes to the death of Julius II as the oak being lopped, but also very clearly presents Leo as building on Julius’ legacy, as he burgeons anew from the same tree. Rome reborn from her ashes moreover offers an implicit allusion to the phoenix, which already in Antiquity symbolized Rome’s potential for renewal and return after periods of decline.53 At the same time the image of the phoenix also relates to the resurrection of Christ, which is especially appropriate in the context of the rebirth of Rome as a ‘papal’ city.54 Finally, in the ashes we can again see a reference to the ruins of Troy, from which Rome has arisen anew, but clearly with different connotations than in Landino.55 The epigrammatic genre then, in which Vitalis presents his poem, creates a link with Martial’s epigrams about the city of Rome and its ancient rulers, besides being a very popular genre among humanists in its own right.56 As to the purpose of the appropriation we can understand how the epigram functions within the imperial ideology of the Renaissance papacy to bring back the glory and power of ancient Rome, both physically and politically. Being secretary of Pope Leo X, Vitalis was part of this entourage by means of patronage. In these two examples we can clearly see that the selected elements of Rome’s legacy, – be it monuments, ruins, references to Lucan, or literary topoi – do not have a fixed meaning of their own. Instead, the poet interprets and fashions them to fit his individual or political agenda. On this basis we can also understand the fundamental dynamicity of heritage claims that respond to needs in an ever changing present. Landino’s declaration of Rome’s death reflects the growing enmity between Florence and Rome in the second half of the fifteenth century, culminating in the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy.57 However, he would not have been able to draw the contrast so sharply had he written in 53  E.g. in Martial, Epigrams 5.7. 54  The symbolic value of the phoenix in Early Christendom is testified a.o. by the first letter of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians (1 Clement, 25) cf. Van den Broek (1972) 230. 55  Cf. Lucan, Bellum civile 9, 990, where Caesar addresses the Di cinerum (literally the Gods of the ashes), i.e. the dead belonging to this place. Another interesting parallel for the ashes in Vitalis’ poem can be found in Propertius 4.1, 54, where Jupiter will give arms to the Trojan ashes, by which Troy will revive in Rome. 56  Cf. de Beer, et al. (2009) and Rimell (2008). 57  For this conspiracy against the Medici, backed in secret by Pope Sixtus IV, see Martines (2003). In the previous decades the wealthy city of Florence had been seeking more political influence both in church matters and in territory. From the papacy of Sixtus IV (1471–1484) onwards the Papal States regained political power, and the physical restoration of the city of Rome was taken on with more fervor than before. At the same time Landino’s poems can be regarded as the Florentine counterpart of Flavio Biondo’s Roma

216

de Beer

the same time of Vitalis, when the first member of the Medici family had just become Pope Leo X. 5

Competing Images of Rome

If we move on to a comparative analysis of Rome images, heritage studies can also open our eyes for the competitive nature of many heritage claims.58 Since heritage shapes the identity of a group or society, it also sets the boundaries with ‘the other’.59 As a result heritage claims often go hand in hand with negative evaluations of those who do not belong to that same group or society, especially when they are competitors in claiming the same heritage. In such cases the claimants do not only argue for their own right to that specific heritage, but also against the others’ right. A further result of such competition is the employment of the same legacy to create opposite images. It is here that we briefly have to turn to the field of imagology, to understand how such images function in relation to each other. Imagology studies the (usually stereotypical) characterizations of groups or nations, and how they are shaped and activated in literature.60 One of the paradoxical observations about these characterizations is that they often come in pairs of image and the complete opposite of that image, the so-called counter-image.61 In the case of Rome you could think for example of characinstaurata, which can be seen both as a literary revival of Rome and an homage to the papacy’s effort to restore the ancient glory, cf. Pieper (2008) 259. 58  For the competitive nature of heritage see Tunbridge and Ashworth (1996). 59  See Graham (2008) 5: ‘Identity is about sameness and group membership and quite central to its conceptualization is the Saidian discourse of the “other”, groups – both internal and external to a state – with competing, often conflicting, beliefs, values and aspirations’. And Lowenthal (1998, 128) who considers this process of inclusion and exclusion as one of the negative aspects of heritage as opposed to history: ‘Heritage keeps outsiders at bay through claims of superiority that are unfathomable or offensive to others’. 60  For an introduction into this field and the concepts used see Beller and Leerssen (2007). Although imagology traditionally focuses on national characteristics in eighteenth and nineteenth century Nationalism, its methods and insights can also be very fruitfully be applied to the images of Rome and their development from Antiquity onwards. 61  Beller and Leerssen (2007) 342–344: ‘Since images tend to invoke generally current commonplaces and reduce the complexity of historical contingency to the invariance of ingrained topoi and clichés, they are often considered a form of stereotype. In practice, images are mobile and changeable as all discursive constructs are. […] Over time, images may spawn their very opposite counter-images. […] In practice, these successive counterimages do not abolish each other but accumulate. As a result in most cases the image of a given nation will include a compound layering of different, contradictory counter-images

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

217

terizations both as the City of Virtue and the City of Decadence.62 Image and counter-image can be employed in the same context for example when a contrast is made between the past and the present: from a City of Virtue in the past it has become the City of Decadence. Image and counter-image can also exist at the same time, in which case they often represent two competing perspectives. They may for example represent both the auto-image (the way a group characterizes itself) and the heteroimage (the way a group is characterized by others).63 Especially in cases of rivalry these images are often shaped by means of the same heritage.64 As such we can identify in the poem by Vitalis the auto-image of Rome as eternal City or City of Magnificence, in which the ruins function as signs of eternal greatness, and in the poem by Landino the hetero-image of Rome as a city of the past, or City of Ruins, in which the ruins symbolize definitive decline. The competitive nature of heritage is especially relevant and at the same time highly complicated in the case of Rome and the Roman legacy. For one thing, there is not just a single Rome to consider, but more ‘Romes’ that elicit heritage claims: among others ancient Rome, Christian Rome, and ‘literary’ Rome. As a direct consequence, the legacy of Rome is not really owned by anyone in particular, but claimed by a wide variety of people, ranging from the Romans, the Italians, the Europeans or the Americans, to all Christians or all those versed in Latin literature. These two elements taken together can explain why in the case of Rome the heritage claims are both so numerous and so contested. According to David Lowenthal, heritage claims are supported by establishing a privileged relationship with the past that is claimed. This privileged relationship can take on various forms, but the strongest links are either those created by the continuity of place or by lineage.65 Moreover, the further back in history such relationship can be traced, or in other words: the further back the origins of such relationship lie, the stronger a heritage claim is considwith some aspects activated and dominant, but the remaining counterparts all latently, tacitly subliminally remain present. […] The ultimate cliché about any nation is that it is “a nation of contrasts”. An imageme is the term used to describe an image in all its implicit, compounded polarities’. 62  The imageme being ‘City of Morality’. 63  Leerssen (2000) 342. 64  In such cases the counter-images are created by employing the opposite interpretation or value judgment of the same heritage, thereby calling the competitors’ interpretation into question. In the case of Rome the repertoire of interpretations to which the humanists could take recourse in imitation of the ancients was particularly flexible, see P. Hardie (1992). 65  Lowenthal (1998) 172 and chapters 8 (“Being first”) and 9 (“Being innate”) respectively.

218

de Beer

ered to be. As we will see, Rome clearly has a lot to offer with regard to all these aspects.66 Heritage claims based on the continuity place are numerous in the case of Rome, and means that whoever has control over physical Rome, can also control the legacy of Rome and has the right to follow in her footsteps.67 Central in all such claims is the close symbolical relationship between the physical place where Rome was founded and her role as caput mundi. This relationship was already firmly established in Antiquity, among others in Virgil’s Aeneid and Livy’s Ab urbe condita.68 Later it was taken over by the early Christians to argue for Rome as the capital of the Imperium Christianum. They replaced the pagan Gods with the Christian martyrs, and interpreted the ancient image of Rome as caput mundi as caput ecclesiae. During the Renaissance these images were re-activated by the Papacy after its return from Avignon, as we have seen in Vitalis’ poem: ‘How true that Rome alone is the image of this one world, or that nothing but Rome represents the one Rome’.69 By so doing Vitalis competes with those ‘outsiders’ who want to claim the Roman legacy for themselves. They base their claims mainly on lineage, thus by tracing back their origins to the ancient Romans, or, still further back, the Trojans. In case of Rome this argument of lineage often takes on a very specific form, as it is understood in combination with the scheme of the translatio imperii, that already from Late Antiquity onwards separated the image of Rome as City of Empire from physical Rome.70 The result of this separation was the possibility for imperial power, which Rome symbolized, to be transferred to other people and other places.71 66  Lowenthal (1998) 176: ‘Being ancient makes things precious by their proximity to the dawn of time, to the earliest beginnings’. The specific authority of antiquity and ‘the classical’ is explored in numerous publications, among others in Settis (1984). Especially relevant for the present chapter is Massimo Miglio’s ‘Roma dopo Avignone. La rinascita politica dell’antico’; and Silk (2014). 67  Importance of place (often referred to as sense of place, or genius loci) for heritage claims is also discussed in Ashworth and Graham (2005), Ashworth, Graham and Tunbridge (2007), and J. Schofield and R. Szymanski (2011). With regard to Rome see D. Kennedy (1999). 68  In the Aeneid it is especially Aeneas’ visit of the future site of Rome under guidance of Evander (8.306–369) that emphasizes the importance of the physical place. In Livy’s Ab urbe condita the importance of the site of Rome is a.o. emphasized in Camillus’ speech to the Romans (5.54) in which he exhorts them not to leave Rome. See also Edwards (1996) 45–47. 69  Vitalis, Roma instaurata, 5–6. 70  For the scheme of the Translatio imperii, see W. Goez (1958). 71   As it was first transferred to Constantinople as ‘secunda Roma’ or ‘nova Roma’. Th.J. Dandelet (2014) argues that the Renaissance revival of Rome, and especially Julius Caesar as a model resulted in a ‘renaissance’ of imperialism in Early Modern Europe.

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

219

The scheme itself could be legitimized in a number of ways, often by way of creating analogies that emphasized the fact that the power of Rome also originated elsewhere: first, by means of the analogy with Aeneas’ transfer of the Penates after the fall of Troy, that was so central to Rome’s foundation; second by taking the succession of Kingdoms in the book of Daniel as example, on the basis of which the church was transferred from Jerusalem to Rome, and the Imperium Christianum could be interpreted as the continuation of the Imperium Romanum;72 thirdly, with a slight change of focus, by considering the transfer of learning (translatio studii) from Greece to Rome.73 In addition, to argue for such a transfer to a specific place, classical genealogies were often put in place to link the claimants, – be it the French, the Britons or the Holy Roman Emperor – to the offspring of Aeneas.74 As the outsiders’ claims on Rome’s legacy competed with those made by the ‘insiders’, they often went hand in hand with negative images of contemporary Rome.75 To this purpose unfavorable elements in Rome’s past and present were highlighted. We have already seen the image of Rome as a City of Ruins symbolizing both Rome’s loss of power and, more generally, the whims of Fortune and the consequences of ‘devouring time’.76 However, many competitors of Rome also connected the physical state of ruin to Rome’s decadent and reckless behavior in the past.77 Moreover, by taking decadence as a stereotypical characterization of Rome, they emphasized how it continued to corrupt the city in the present.78 This image of Rome as City of Decadence became

72  Daniel 2.39–41. For the interpretation of this book with regard to Rome, see Th. Mommsen (1951) esp. 348–353 and D. O’Malley (1968) 104. 73  About this relationship between Greece and Rome, and how it functioned as a model in later times see G. Vogt-Spira and B. Rommel (1999). 74  A famous example is the ‘Francus myth’, narrated by Jean Lemaire des Belges in Les Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troye (1510). It recounts the voyage by Hector’s son Francus from Troy to Paris, bypassing Aeneas and Rome completely. See MacPhail (1990) 20. 75  Cf. Beller and Leerssen (2007) 6: ‘The logic is one of positive self-valorization highlighted by representing other peoples negatively’. For the combination of these approaches in the oeuvre of a single poet see S. de Beer, ‘Conrad Celtis’ Visions of Rome. Relocation, Contestation and Imitation of the Italian Renaissance in German Humanism’, Cultural Encounter and Identity in the Neo-Latin World, ed. By M. Pade and C. Horster (Rome: Analecta Romana Instituti Danici), forthcoming. 76  For the typical western fascination with ruins and its employment for ‘marking historical breaks, but also ensuring a sense of continuity’, see S. Settis (2011). 77  For different interpretations of the Fall of Rome, both ancient and modern, see Demandt (1984). See especially chapter II.3 for humanist interpretations of Rome’s fall. 78  Cf. C. Edwards (1993). For the strong interrelation between stereotypes and intertextuality see J. Leerssen (2000).

220

de Beer

particularly widespread during the Reformation, when it symbolized the evils within the Papal Curia.79 By considering the humanist images of Rome as heritage constructions we can both see how they have been created from elements of Rome’s past, and understand how they function in the present. So far we have mostly focused on political and religious conflicts to explain the highly dynamic and competitive nature of these images. However, a common element in all these images is their claim to ‘literary’ Rome. This Rome consists of the legacy of Latin literature, especially that literature that is concerned with Rome.80 Considered as common heritage, literary Rome was separated from physical Rome, both because it had proven to be more durable, and because by means of education it had spread all over Europe. Writing in Latin, employing the same genres and topoi, can thus be considered a heritage claim to shape the humanist identity, by means of identification with the ancient authors.81 For whatever future they saw or advocated for ‘real’ Rome, at the least, by writing these poems they aimed at reviving Rome in literature. As such Landino and Vitalis can be regarded both competitors and colleagues at the same time. 6

Epilogue: Mapping Visions of Rome and Digital Humanities

By way of concluding this contribution I would like to add some thoughts about the use of digital humanities (or e-humanities, or computational humanities) for the field of Classical Reception Studies. Though not a frame in the sense meant in this volume, – rather a reservoir of research tools or methods –, it does have the potential to guide research questions and (the presentation of) results within this field. As one means of disseminating the results of my research, I have developed an interactive web research collaboratory, in which the literary sources can be stored, annotated, filtered and visualized on a map of Rome.82 Although such a database alone could never replace a mono79  In Late Antiquity the tradition of Rome as a city of decadence merged with biblical images of Babylon, to which Rome was likened in the early Christian tradition, e.g. in Tertullian, Ad Scapulam, cf. M. Fuhrmann (1968). For the reactivation of this image during the Reformation see L.P. Buck (2014). 80  See Edwards (1996). 81  Ancient literature on Rome not only offered a repertoire of images that could be employed by the humanists to create their own images, it also offered strategies for employing these mutable and conflicting images as a tool for identity formation and political legitimization, cf. Hardie (1992). 82  This project is entitled ‘Mapping Humanist Visions of Rome’. For more information see S. de Beer, ‘Mapping Visions of Rome and Digital Roman Heritage Connectivity between

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

221

graph in generating interpretations of the literary sources, places and events involved, it can make available large amounts of sources and enable finding and visualizing relationships that were hitherto obscured by the traditional means of presentation. One way to organize my literary sources is according to the different images of Rome they concern. However, as these images are constructed by various elements selected and appropriated from the Roman past, they could also be sensibly organized according to, for example, literary template, physical site, or ancient model. A database that includes all these texts, tagged in this fashion, enables the user both to formulate different kinds of questions and find different (unexpected) links. As such you could for example trace the importance of Virgil’s Aeneid for the Renaissance image of Rome, find all poems that refer to the Capitoline hill as lieu de mémoire, or visualize a poetic walk through the City.83 Especially with regard to the element of Classical Reception the relevance of such a tool is that it brings together both the ‘receiver’ and the ‘received’, or rather the ‘appropriated’ and the ‘the appropriator’, into one context. This means that, depending on your interests, you can question and visualize the appropriation process from different angles: either starting out from Antiquity or from the Renaissance. Much more than in a monograph, in which you have to choose either perspective, this kind of tool visualizes what we all are aware of: the reciprocity between Classics and Classical Reception Studies. Digital tools can even establish this reciprocity on a more practical level by connecting databases on the basis of these tags, for example by plotting literary references to Roman sites on a map of the city, or linking references to ancient works of art to a database that includes the history of these works of art.84

Literary and Artistic Heritage in a Digital Age’, in Umanistica Digitale 2 (2018) DOI: 10.6092/ Issn.2532-8816/7814 and www.digitalromanheritage.com/mapping-visions-of-rome. 83  For a visualization of some of the ‘Virgilian walks’ mentioned in n. 21, see http://rome. nodegoat.net/viewer. For a visualization of the poetic walk by Aeneas in Aeneid 8, see fig. 1. This image represents a screenshot from the mobile website www.devereeuwigdestad.nl (Dutch for ‘The Eternalized City’), which I have developed on the basis of the same technology. When in Rome you can follow the route on your mobile phone, using GPS. 84  For example www.census.de or www.hadrianus.it, but one could also think of linking with digital resources about Rome from other periods or in other languages. For the purpose of furthering collaboration and interoperability of Digital Humanities Initiatives with a focus on Rome, I have established the network and web portal www.digitalromanheritage.com.

222

de Beer

figure 1

7

This image represents a screenshot from the mobile website http://www. devereeuwigdestad.nl (Dutch for ‘The Eternalized City’). When in Rome you can follow the route on your mobile phone, using GPS.

Further Reading

This chapter bridges the gap between the appropriation of the Classics on the level of culture(s) and on the level of texts, assuming that these processes are largely the same and often interact. K. Fleming, ‘The Use and Abuse of Antiquity. The Politics and Morality of Appropriation’, in C. Martindale and R. Thomas, Classics and the Uses of Reception (Oxford and Malden MA, 2006) makes a similar point to argue against the use of the vocabulary of “misappropriation” and “abuse”, which is sometimes deemed politically or morally necessary when discussing the appropriation on the ‘cultural’ level, but never on the level of texts (p. 137). The following literature suggestions each zoom in on a specific level or aspect of this process, moving from the macro- to the micro-level. For the understanding of heritage as being strategically constructed to the benefit of certain groups, I would recommend D. Lowenthal, D. The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985) and B. Graham & P. Howards. eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), especially the introduction. D. Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1998) presents heritage as potentially damaging to our vision of history, whereas J.E. Tunbridge & G.J. Ashworth, eds., Dissonant Heritage. The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (London: Wiley, 1996) emphasizes that heritage is inherently competitive. Both M. Beller and J. Leerssen. eds., Imagology. The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters. A Critical Survey (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2007), as well as A. Erll and

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

223

A. Nünning. eds., Gedächtniskonzepte der Literaturwissenschaft. Theoretische Grundlegung und Anwendungsperspektiven (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005) move between the macro- and micro-level, each in their own way, illustrating how culturally relevant images and memories are shaped and transmitted via literature. Zooming in even further brings us to G.B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation. Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and other Latin Poets. With a foreword by C. Segal (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986) and S. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext. Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), both of which prompt us to consider the rhetorical scope of textual allusions. It is exactly this rhetorical scope that can direct us back to the macro-level again. Bibliography

Primary Sources



Secondary Sources

Ferreri, Z.V., Lugdunense somnium de Leonis X ad summum pontificatum divina promotione, in: Balzo, C. Del, Poesie di mille autori (Rome, 1893), consulted on www .perseus.tufts.edu. Kytzler, B., ed., Roma Aeterna. Lateinische und griechische Romdichtung von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart (Zürich, 1972). Landino, C., Carmina omnia. Ed. Perosa, A. (Florence, 1939). Landino, C., Poems. Transl. by M.P. Chatfield (Cambridge, MA, 2008). Mantuanus, B., Opera omnia. Ed. Cupaerus, L. 4 vols. (Antwerp, 1576), consulted on www.perseus.tufts.edu. Petrarca, F., Africa. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und mit einem Nachwort von B. Huss und G. Regn (Mainz, 2007). Verino, U., Carlias. Ein Epos Des 15. Jahrhunderts Erstmals Herausgegeben. Ed. Thurn, N. (Munich, 1995). Vitalis, J., Sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Elogia (Rome, 1553).

Ashworth, G.J., Graham, B. and Tunbridge, J.E., Pluralising Pasts. Heritages, Societies and Place Identities (Aldershot, 2007). Ashworth, G.J. and Graham, B., eds., Senses of Place: Senses of Time (Aldershot, 2005). Assmann, A., Erinnerungsräume, Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich, 1999). Assmann, A., Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinneringskultur und Geschichts­ politik (Munich, 2006). Assmann, J., Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich, 1992).

224

de Beer

Beer, S. de, Enenkel, K.A.E. and Rijser, D., eds., The Neo-Latin Epigram. A Learned and Witty Genre (Leuven, 2009). Beer, S. de, The Poetics of Patronage. Poetry as Self-Advancement in Giannantonio Campano (Turnhout, 2013). Beer, S. de, “Rom als symbolisher Ort – Rom als Idee”, in Der Neue Pauly. 2. Staffel, Band 9: Renaissance-Humanismus. Lexikon zur Antikerezeption, ed. Landfester, M. (Stuttgart, 2014), 856–864. Beer, S. de, ‘In the Footsteps of Aeneas. Humanist Appropriations of the Virgilian Walk through Rome in Aeneid 8’. Humanistica Lovaniensia 66 (2017), 23–55. Beer, S. de, ‘Mapping Visions of Rome and Digital Roman Heritage Connectivity between Literary and Artistic Heritage in a Digital Age’, in Umanistica Digitale 2 (2018) DOI: 10.6092/Issn.2532-8816/7814. Beer, S. de, ‘Travel Guides for Imaginary Journeys. The Presence of Rome in Early Modern Antiquarian Literature’, Neulateinisches Jahrbuch 20 (2018), 57–81. Beer, S. de, ‘Conrad Celtis’ Visions of Rome. Relocation, Contestation and Imitation of the Italian Renaissance in German Humanism’, Cultural Encounter and Identity in the Neo-Latin World, ed. By M. Pade and C. Horster (Rome: Analecta Romana Instituti Danici), forthcoming. Beer, S. de, “The Memory of Augustus and Augustan Rome in Humanist Latin Poetry,” in Augustus through the Ages: receptions, readings and appropriations of the historical figure of the first Roman emperor, eds. Assenmaker, P. and Cavalieri, M. (Brussels, forthcoming). Beller, M. and Leerssen, J., eds., Imagology. The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters. A Critical Survey (Amsterdam, 2007). Black, R., “The Origins of Humanism,” in Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism, ed. Mazzocco, A. (Leiden, 2006), 37–71. Bloemendal, J., Ford, P. and Fantazzi, C., eds., Brill’s Companion to the Neo-Latin world. 2 vols. (Leiden, 2014). Bots, H. and Waquet, F., La République des Lettres (Paris, 1997). Buck, L.P., The Roman Monster. An Icon of the Papal Antichrist in Reformation Polemics (Kirksville, 2014). Christian, K.W., Empire without End. Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350–1527 (New Haven, 2010). Conte, G.B., The Rhetoric of Imitation. Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and other Latin Poets. With a foreword by C. Segal (Ithaca, 1986). d’Amico, J., Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome. Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation (Baltimore, 1983). Dandelet, Th.J., The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2014). Demandt, A., Der Fall Roms. Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt (Munich, 1984). Disselkamp, M., e.a., eds., Das alte Rom und die neue Zeit. Varianten des Rom-Mythos zwischen Petrarca und dem Barock (Tübingen, 2006).

Framing Humanist Visions of Rome

225

Edwards, C., The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 1993). Edwards, C., Writing Rome. Textual Approaches to the City (Cambridge, 1996). Elsner, J., ed., Art and Text in Roman Culture (Cambridge, 1996). Enenkel, K.A.E., and K.A. Ottenheym, Ambitious Antiquities. Famous Forebears Constructions of a Glorious Past in the Early Modern Netherlands and in Europe (Brill, 2019). Enenkel, K.A.E., and K.A. Ottenheym, eds., The Quest for an Appropriate Past in Literature, Art and Architecture (Brill, 2019). Erll, A., and Nünning, A., eds., Gedächtniskonzepte der Literaturwissenschaft. Theo­ retische Grundlegung und Anwendungsperspektiven (Berlin, 2005). Fairclough, G., The Heritage Reader (London, 2008). Fuhrmann, M., “Die Romidee der Spätantike,” Historische Zeitschrift 207 (1968), 529–561. Gamberini, A. and Lazzarini, I., eds., The Italian Renaissance State (Cambridge, 2012). Giardina, A. and Vauchez, A., Il mito di Roma. Da Carlo Magno a Mussolini (Rome, 2000). Goez, W., Translatio Imperii. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Geschichtsdenkens und der politischen Theorien im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 1958). Goodman, A., The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe (London, 1990). Graham, B. and Howards, P., eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity (Aldershot, 2008). Greene, T.M., The Light in Troy. Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, 1982). Greene, T.M., “Resurrecting Rome. The Double Task of the Humanist Imagination,” in Rome in the Renaissance. The City and the Myth, ed. Ramsey, P.A. (New York, 1982), 41–54. Halbwachs, M., La mémoire collective (Paris, 1950). Hampton, T., Writing from History. The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, 1990). Hardie, P., “Augustan Poets and the Mutability of Rome,” in Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, ed. Powell, C.A. (London, 1992), 59–82. Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext. Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998). Kennedy, D., “Sense of Place. Rome, history, and empire revisited,” in Roman Presences. Receptions of Rome in European Culture 1789–1945, ed. Edwards, C. (Cambridge, 1999), 19–34. Knight, S. and Tilg, S., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (Oxford, 2015). Kraye, J., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge, 1996). Kritzer, R.E., Rom: bewunderte Vergangenheit – inszenierte Gegenwart. Die Stadt in literarischen Topographien der Renaissance (Vienna, 2012). Kytzler, B., ed., Rom als Idee (Darmstadt, 1993). Leerssen, J., “The Rhetoric of National Character. A Programmatic Survey,” Poetics Today 21 (2000), 267–292.

226

de Beer

Lowenthal, D., The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985). Lowenthal, D., The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Chicago, 1998). MacLaughlin, M.L., Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford, 1995). MacPhail, E., The Voyage to Rome in French Renaissance Literature (Saratoga, 1990). Martines, L., April Blood. Florence and the Plot against the Medici (London, 2003). Mazzocco, A., ed., Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism (Leiden, 2006). Mommsen, Th., “St. Augustine and the Christian Idea of Progress. The Background of the City of God,” Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (1951), 346–374. Moul, V., ed., A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature (Cambridge, 2017). Nora, P., et al., Les lieux de mémoire. 7 vols. (Paris, 1984–1992). O’Malley, D., Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform. A Study in Renaissance Thought (Leiden, 1968). Pieper, C.H., Elegos redolere Vergiliosque sapere. Cristoforo Landinos ‘Xandra’ zwischen Liebe und Gesellschaft (Hildesheim, 2008). Pinelli, A., ed., Roma del Rinascimento (Rome, 2001). Ramsey, P.A., ed., Rome in the Renaissance. The City and the Myth (New York, 1982). Rimell, V., Martial’s Rome. Empire and the Ideology of Epigram (Cambridge, 2008). Scheiding, O., “Intertextualität,” in Gedächtniskonzepte der Literaturwissenschaft. Theo­ retische Grundlegung und Anwendungsperspektiven, eds. Erll, A. and Nünning, A. (Berlin, 2005), 53–72. Schofield, J. and Szymanski, R., eds., Local Heritage, Global Context. Cultural Perspectives on Sense of Place (Farnham, 2011). Settis, S., ed., Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana. Vol. 1: L’uso dei classici (Turin, 1984). Settis, S., “Nécessité des ruines. Les enjeux du classique,” in European Review of History – Revue européenne d’histoire 18 (2011), 717–740. Silk, M., et al., eds., The Classical Tradition. Art, Literature, Thought (Malden, 2014). Stinger, C.L., Rome in the Renaissance (Bloomington, 1985). Tucker, G.H., The Poet’s Odyssey. Joachim Du Bellay and the Antiquitez de Rome (Oxford, 1990). Tunbridge, J.E. and Ashworth, G.J., eds., Dissonant Heritage. The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (London, 1996). Van den Broek, R., The Myth of the Phoenix. According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions (Leiden, 1972). Vogt-Spira, G. and Rommel, B., eds., Rezeption und Identität. Die kulturelle Aus­ einandersetzung Roms mit Griechenland als europäisches Paradigma (Stuttgart, 1999). Weiss, R., The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1969). Witt, R.G., In the Footsteps of the Ancients. The Origins of Humanism from Lovati to Bruni (Leiden, 2000).

Translation as Classical Reception: ‘Transcreative’ Rhythmic Translations in Brazil Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves and Guilherme Gontijo Flores This chapter proposes a critical approach to innovative poetic translations of classical texts as a major form of reception, and it chooses the case of Brazil as an example, given its peripheral condition regarding the major European and North American contexts – which encourages different and new methodologies of Classical Studies in general –, and given a seriously incomplete nature of a corpus of translations of classical texts in Brazil (e.g., the complete works of many important ancient authors, such as Plautus, Terence, Quintilian, Plutarch, Lucian, just to mention some more widely known examples, are either incomplete or almost inexistent in Brazil – although some Portuguese editions do exist, but without actually filling this important gap). This focuses on the nature and function of translation as an on-going process of making the ancient culture available again in a country where Latin and Greek are no longer taught in schools since 1961, but where attention to the Classics has been growing since Classical Scholarship and a wide-range reading public are growing very fast since the 1990s and 2000s. Thus, one of the most important duties of current scholarship has been to ally traditional Classical Studies with new approaches in Reception and Translation Studies, enhancing the availability of good literary translations which could serve both as scholarly texts and as literature. Considering the above-mentioned renaissance of classical scholarship, one sees new approaches both in scholarship and in translation methods with the substitution of a generation of teachers inherited from the discontinuation of classical education in elementary and high schools in the 1960s for a new generation of young researchers in new job positions, departments and programs. In the first decades of the new Millennium, an interested student can take a Major in Classics in many Brazilian Public Universities and proceed to a Master’s and a PhD in classics in some of these universities (especially in some specific Classical Studies Graduate Programs in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, for example, or in Literary Studies Graduate Programs throughout the country). The traditional classical-philological approach has been allied successfully with new trends in literary and translation studies (such as in some recent PhD dissertations that we will analyse in this chapter), and from this we see important results in the growing amount of publications, both specialized

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_013

228

Gonçalves and Flores

and directed to the general public, and, in the latter case, a growing number of translations coming out in important publishing houses, literary or not. If this bridge between approaches is not built up, the country will almost certainly face serious problems in the coming years, since the probability of the reinstatement of Classical Studies in elementary and high schools is low, and there will be not enough positions in universities for all the PhD holders to work as professors. In this light, the field of Classical Reception Studies also grows in Brazil, rethinking the position of translations, adaptations, rewritings, and other derivatives of the classics in the Brazilian literature and arts, giving strong impulse to Classical Studies, helping it as a field from obsolescence, because the recent movement that we analyse here can be seen as a bridge over the huge gap between traditional scholarship and ordinary readers of literature in general. The Brazilian literary canon has been strongly influenced by the classical education of our first intellectuals, who, especially during the 19th century, were educated in Europe (only the 20th century saw the establishment of our universities). Also, our disciplines of Humanities have been shaped according to European standards (mostly French). It was almost ‘natural’ that a Brazilian writer should also be a translator of French: Odorico Mendes (1799–1864, translator of Homer and Vergil) translated Voltaire; Machado de Assis (1839–1908) translated Victor Hugo, Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) translated Proust and a few French poets etc.; even our Modernism was created by a generation who made their studies in Paris, like Oswald de Andrade (1890– 1954) and Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), amongst many others: it is not by chance that Auguste Comte’s statement is part of our national flag: “Ordem e Progresso” (Order and Progress).1 Consequently, Brazilian literature is an important source for reception scholarship, which has not yet been conducted systematically. With that in mind, this paper will analyse how some Brazilian translations of Classical authors defy traditional philological standards of simple prose renderings of the texts which serve uniquely to ‘inform’ the reader on the ‘meaning’ of the source-text, with little or no attention to its literary dimension besides the usual list of notes and commentary (a tradition inherited from French collections such as Garnier and Les Belles Lettres) and national literary expectations (pertaining to a literary tradition that sees the canon and the classic in a narrow way disconnected from the present concerns of literary and cultural activities) in order to enlarge generic boundaries, poetic standards, 1  Comte’s original formulation found in his Testament was ‘L’amour pour principe e l’ordre pour base; le progrès pour but’.

Translation as Classical Reception

229

and linguistic possibilities. For the sake of brevity, we will focus our analysis on the metric patterns of translations, since this is one of the most salient ways of reinforcing or defying long-standing poetic patterns and implementing an innovative turn in poetic diction inside a rigid tradition such as is the case in a conservative and colonized literary milieu within the possibilities of their invention through traditional or imported forms. Through the analysis of different translators from the 19th to the 21st centuries, who worked in distinct genres, we intend to demonstrate that by surpassing the established tradition in translating the Classics, these translators achieved unexpected and interesting results in creating new literary works and standards. Thus, translators can be seen as agents of reception, rewriting the canon in a broad way, sometimes using translation to manipulate tradition, or even to create new poetic possibilities as tools of new perceptions. So far, most translations of Classical texts in Brazil fit into two basic categories: prose translations with no literary claims, with the sole purpose of reproducing the European ‘edition and commentary’ philological tradition (mostly in academic circles), usually with the tacit assumption that a translation of a classical text should solely aim at making the ‘meaning’ of the text available to the general public; or verse translations strictly following the poetic possibilities already established by the Portuguese tradition (a fixed number of syllables in traditional meter2). Since Brazil never had a tradition of formal experimentation – such as those perpetrated by some writers of Germany (Johann Heinrich Voss), Britain (George Chapman), Italy (Leonardo Dati and Leon Battista Alberti) and even France (Jan-Antoine de Baïf) –; we will try to present the second trend, in order to add what can be seen as a recent trend: rhythmic translations that seek to destabilize the poetic canon by creating new forms based on the assumption of the possibility of inventing new rhythmic patterns as an imitation of the classical metrical forms. It is important to point out that, while the tension described between the traditional philological conception and practice of translation and the apparently European new trends in translation criticism and practice exemplified by Haroldo de Campos may sound imported as well, modernism in Brazil was shaped by a model of reception of the European standards developed by Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago (“Cannibalist Manifesto”), published in 1928, one of the most important Brazilian modernist touchstones: the idea is to cannibalize what is foreign and make them into something new, in order to ascertain Brazil’s position against the colonizers in a radical way. 2  Cf. Oliva Neto 1996 and 2006; Carvalho 2005; Flores 2008; Gonçalves et al. 2011; Thamos 2011; Gouvêa Júnior 2010; and Hasegawa 2012.

230

Gonçalves and Flores

We will first discuss four translators of Homer: Manuel Odorico Mendes (1799–1864), Carlos Alberto Nunes (1897–1983), Haroldo de Campos (1929– 2003), and Marcelo Tápia (1954–), in order to show how their projects could be interpreted as four different kinds of reception through poetic translation and metrical solutions: we argue that a metrical choice is more than mere variation; it is, in fact, a way of critically reading at the same time both the ancient work and the rhythmic tradition within our own language. As a second case study, we will briefly examine the work of two recent translators whose aim has been to propose polymetric, rhythmic translations of Greek and Roman meters in Portuguese: Leandro Dorval Cardoso (1984–) and Leonardo Antunes (1983–). It is important to observe that although their translation projects are formally very different, they all occupy a unique place in the panorama of Brazilian Classical Reception, since they are not necessarily scholarly translations, of the kind that often tacitly assume the undisputed status of the invisibility of the translator (cf. the ideas of Lawrence Venuti) and the corollary sometimes derived by the authority of the translator-scholar, the one about the obvious fidelity and complete equivalence of a philological/scholarly translation against what is considered ‘literature’ in a lower sense, i.e., a literary translation of a canonized Classic. Instead, these rewritings contribute to the growing body of Brazilian literature and stand on their own as translations and new originals: Mendes’ translations, for instance, have been re-edited because of the growing interest in his work, and not specifically because his readers need to know Homer and Vergil; and Haroldo de Campos was always credited as author in the cover of his volumes of translations. As a result of such poetic originality, their works function as a dynamic force in contemporary Brazilian literature. Odorico Mendes is discussed in the more important and influential histories of Brazilian Literature (cf. Campos 2013c and Vasconcellos 2002) as an important author because of his translations; Haroldo de Campos, one of the most important and widely known Brazilian poets of all times, is also very famous by his translations and his translation criticism and theory, a work which mingles all fronts (cf. Da Motta 2005). Both translators figure as authors in the many different editions of their translations of the Iliad, for example (Odorico Mendes published his complete Vergil in Portuguese with the title Virgílio Brazileiro, cf. e.g. Vasconcellos’ Projeto Odorico Mendes online). Curiously, the other four translators presented here are not that famous or prestigious, but that may be precisely because of two different reasons: either their work is very recent or yet unpublished (all of them except Carlos Alberto Nunes) or their poetic choices were seen as a serious attack on Brazilian poetic tradition (the case of all four). This is what we wish to demonstrate.

Translation as Classical Reception

1

231

Translations as New Originals: The Case of Homer

Let us start by presenting very briefly the proem of the Iliad in the three most important Brazilian translations.3 Manuel Odorico Mendes, a nineteenth-century poet and translator, produced the first complete poetic translation of the Iliad in Brazil, published posthumously in 1874. His intentions for this project are very clear from his notes and introduction, as he claimed that Portuguese, despite not sharing the case system of Ancient Greek and Latin, could be even more synthetic than the Classical languages, and to prove his point, he translated the Iliad, Odyssey, and Vergil’s works into Portuguese blank decasyllables (the epic verse, similar to the English iambic pentameter, made traditional by Camões’ Os Lusíadas4), the final results of which reduced the total number of verses by 25% on average. His poetic diction was considered to be too abstruse and ‘macaronic’ by contemporary critics, such as Silvio Romero (1949: 35): his convoluted syntax and Hellenizing and Latinizing neologisms, such as ‘velocípede’ (swift-footed), ‘dedirrósea’ (rosy-fingered), and ‘bracicândida’ (white-armed), were deemed strange from the perspective of Portuguese morphology. As a result, his very particular language, sometimes compared to the language of Brazilian modernists, such as Guimarães Rosa, or even to James Joyce’s experimental language in Finnegan’s Wake or John Milton’s syntax, caused his translations to be forgotten for more than half a century. In the mid-1960s they were re-evaluated by Haroldo de Campos, who rescued them and named Mendes the ‘patriarch of literary translation in Brazil’, now seen as a modernist avant-la-lettre and also a classic on his own.5 Antonio Medina Rodrigues (Tápia 2012: 141) stated that he ‘thought he could be original by imitating the ancient authors’. His opening to the Iliad already illustrates the poetic project: Canta-me, ó deusa, do Peleio Aquiles A ira tenaz, que, lutuosa aos Gregos, Verdes no Orco lançou mil fortes almas, Corpos de heróis a cães e abutres pasto: 3  Cf. Flores 2008; Tápia 2012; Crespo and Piqué 2012. Tápia’s translation, which we will analyse below, is still incomplete. 4  Camões’ masterpiece established a metrical pattern to new works and other epics, such as Santa Rita Durão’s Caramuru, and Basílio da Gama’s O Uraguai (both written in the eighteenth century), amongst others. Recent translators, as Márcio Thamos (2011) argue that the epic genre should be translated into decasyllables because of such tradition. 5  1991–1992: 144. Before Haroldo de Campos’ praise of Mendes, another experimental poet of the nineteenth century, Sousândrade, called him “pai rococó” (Rococo father).

232

Gonçalves and Flores

Lei foi de Jove, em rixa ao discordarem O de homens chefe e o Mírmidon divino. Hom., Il. 1.1–7

The first verse contains an enjambment with a small hyperbaton in the phrase ‘do Peleio Aquiles / a ira tenaz’ (‘of Achilles son-of-Peleus / the long-lasting wrath’), because, in Portuguese, adjectives are normally placed after the noun. The next verse, ‘verdes no Orco lançou mil fortes almas’ (‘it hurled a thousand unripe strong souls into Orcus’), presents another hyperbaton, more severe than that of the preceding verse: ‘verdes’ (green) is the adjective that qualifies ‘almas’ (souls), but the terms remain far from each other in order to create a symmetric structure to the verse. In the last verse, there is another uncommon construction in the phrase ‘o de homens chefe’ (‘the chief of men’), with a preposed genitive. By such constructions, even though the choice of verse is traditional, Mendes accomplished a departure from the notion of classical text (based on ideas such as ‘harmony’, ‘naturality’, etc.), recreating Homer and Vergil in Brazilian verse with a poetic form that altered what could then be expected of such works; his contemporaries considered his attempt as a macaronic Portuguese that corrupted Homer’s style. His act of surpassing the Classical languages in synthetic power opened the door to new possibilities for poetic translation in Brazil after almost a century, and, as Paulo Sérgio Vasconcellos points out, [he] was one of those translators who left behind the idea of the strict and supposed fidelity to the literal meaning through his claim that poetry, in its formal aspect, is actually untranslatable […] [I]n the title of his Aeneid we read ‘poetic translation’, which makes the whole translation even more concise. Vasconcellos, 2007: 976

Already in the twentieth century, the poet Carlos Alberto Nunes translated the same three epic poems with a notably different agenda: instead of using the traditional meters of Portuguese and Brazilian literatures, he wanted to create an equivalent of the dactylic hexameter. The result is a sequence of five feet made up of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (which could be understood as dactyls in a stress system), ending with a trochee; although it lacks the substitutions allowed by the quantitative nature of vowels in Greek and Latin, his recreation redesigns poetic possibilities in Portuguese, 6  All translations into English are our own.

Translation as Classical Reception

233

opposing the rigid poetic tradition which prescribed the use of verses with a fixed number of syllables and accents in fixed positions. His verse, sometimes interpreted as a 16-syllable verse with accents in syllables 1, 4, 7, 10, 13 and 16,7 can also be understood as a sequence of rhythmic ternary feet emulating the dactyl. Here presented are the same verses of the Iliad as those translated by Mendes above: Canta-me a cólera – ó deusa – funesta de Aquiles Pelida causa que foi de os Aquivos sofrerem trabalhos sem conta e de baixarem para o Hades as almas de heróis numerosos e esclarecidos, ficando eles próprios aos cães atirados e como pasto das aves. Cumpriu-se de Zeus o desígnio, desde o princípio em que os dois, em discórdia, ficaram cindidos: o de Atreu filho, senhor de guerreiros, e Aquiles divino. Hom., Il. 1.1–7

A scansion of three verses can give an impression of how the verse works in Portuguese: Can.ta-.me^a | có.le.ra –^ó | deu.sa – || fu|nes.ta de^A|qui.les Pe|li.da (I.1) e^es.cla.re|cidos, || fi|can.do^e.les | pró.prios aos |cães a.ti|ra.dos (I.3) o de^Atreu | fi.lho, || se|nhor de guer|rei.ros, || e^A|qui.les di|vi.no. (I.7) By contrast with Mendes, Nunes’ metrical solution does not seek concision, but rhythmic equivalence. With that in mind, Nunes also tried to recreate Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid with a more colloquial phraseology that could stand in close relation to the orality of common speech. Of course, it is not natural, for we can see some programmatic strangeness along with the metrical innovation.8 Haroldo de Campos was one of the most important Brazilian poets and translators of the second half of the twentieth century, besides being also a very important and original critic and scholar on the theory and philosophy of translation. He received and reworked the tradition of Classical translation in a very peculiar way. An avant-garde poet strongly influenced by Ezra Pound’s ‘make it new’, Campos advanced a theory of translation influenced 7  Cf. Flores 2008. 8  One important reception of Nunes’ translations is Jair Gramacho’s versions of the Homeric Hymns in an anapaestic pattern very similar to Nunes’ dactyls.

234

Gonçalves and Flores

by Walter Benjamin (Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers) and Roman Jakobson’s linguistic approach to literary translation, which resulted in the idea of creating a ‘paramorphic’ structure which can ultimately be regarded as a second original. For him, the act of poetic translation can actually be an act of ‘trans-creation’ (‘transcriação’): Instead of surrendering to the interdiction of silence, the translatorusurper goes on to threaten the original with the ruin of origin. That is, as I call it, last hybris of the luciferine translator: to transform, for a very brief moment, the original into the translation of its translation. To reenact the origin and the originality as a plagiotropism: as an ‘infinite movement of difference’ (Derrida); and the mimesis as a production of that very same difference. 2013b: 56, emphasis ours

Campos’ theory of translation comes closest to the idea of translation as conscious reception, as we can see in another of his theoretical texts: In the case of what I call ‘transcreation’, the appropriation of the historicity of the source text conceived as the construction of a living tradition is to a certain extent an usurpatory act, ruled by the necessities of the present of creation. […] Whence, as I see it, after all, the intratextual criteria which conform the modus operandi of poetic translation can dictate the rules of transformation which preside the transposition of the extratextual elements of the ‘erasured’ original in the new text which usurps it and which, thus, through deconstruction and reconstruction of history, translates tradition, reinventing it. Campos, 2013a: 39, emphasis his

His praise of Odorico Mendes’ assault on the tradition of literal-faithful translation and his brief appreciation of Carlos Alberto Nunes’ attempt to recreate the rhythmic melopoeia of Homer and Vergil9 did not stop him from offering his own ‘transcreation’ of Homer’s Iliad in a rather modern 12-syllable translation published in 2002: A ira, Deusa, celebra do Peleio Aquiles, o irado desvario, que aos Aqueus tantas penas 9  Although, for him, the language of Nunes does not show the stamp of modernity, being somehow too flat and conservative for his liking; Campos 1991–1992: 144.

Translation as Classical Reception

235

trouxe, e incontáveis almas arrojou no Hades de valentes, de heróis, espólio para os cães, pasto de aves rapaces: fez-se a lei de Zeus; desde que por primeiro a discórdia apartou o Atreide, chefe de homens, e o divino Aquiles. Hom., Il. 1.1–7

In the first two verses, Campos recreates the Greek paronomasia between μῆνιν (wrath) and οὐλομένην (destructive) with another phonic similarity in the set of Portuguese terms ‘ira/irado/desvario’ (wrath/wrathful/raving): from this example, we can perceive the design of Campos’ project. The poetic form is more important than the semantic ‘inessential content’ (1981: 181). Thus the translation seeks to re-enact the poetics of the original, rather than to slavishly transpose its meaning.10 But Campos’ re-enactment is mostly concerned with the poetics of the present, so, in order to re-enact the poet must not imitate the original, but create a new form capable of transforming the ancient text in literature again. A particular recent trend of reception via transcreation of the Classics could be seen as a compromise between Nunes’ rhythmic attempt at a Portuguese hexameter and Campos’ defence of a modern and poetic translation. The following examples of rhythmic translations illustrate a search for new forms of reception. Such is the case in Marcelo Tápia’s recent translations of the Odyssey (cf. Tápia 2012). Instead of using traditional meters of Portuguese literature or the rather syllabic structure of Nunes’ hexameter, Tápia proposes another form of a Brazilian dactylic hexameter, a verse comprised of 3 or 4 beats followed by a hexametric clausula (— u u — x). Cited here is an example from the beginning of Book XI of the Odyssey with Tápia’s notation of stressed syllables (bold) and number of poetic syllables (in parentheses): Quando, depois, descemos ao mar e ao navio, (12) primeiro ao mar divino o navio empurramos, (12) e, da negra nau, o mastro e as velas erguemos; (12) levadas a bordo as ovelhas pegas, seguimos (13) tristes, aflitos, vertendo lágrimas fartas. (12) Hom., Od. 11.1–5

10  Following Campos’ example, Trajano Vieira recently published his translation of the Odyssey (2011) with a very similar aim.

236

Gonçalves and Flores

This project is a work in progress originally presented in his doctoral dissertation. But another important aspect of his work is the programmatic movement towards reinterpretation and analysis of the previous translations, in order to critically recreate the tradition of translations.11 2

Recent Translations

The recent reappraisal of Nunes12 and Campos’ strong modern claims of reinventing tradition have made it possible for contemporary translators to try something new, namely the transposition of ancient meters into new poetic forms in Portuguese. Their works, although originally established outside the academy, present a new approach in academic theses in Brazil: the defence of poetic translation as a critical effort to elucidate a poetic text. It is difficult to evaluate their impact, since this trend began less than twenty years ago and has not yet reached its peak: many translations are still outside the great publishing houses, as almost all poetic works in Brazil. Due to limitations of space, we will present the work of only two of these translators:13 Leonardo Antunes and Leandro Cardoso. Our conclusions will only speculate about the literary possibilities that this new trend may offer to the future. Leonardo Antunes published a book based on his Master’s thesis in 2011, which contained translations of 23 ancient Greek poems of Sappho, Theognis, and Anacreon, among others, in rhythmic verses in an attempt to emulate the Greek meters in Portuguese. As an example, his Sapphic stanza is here presented: E / le / me / pa / re / ce / ser/ par / dos/ deu / ses, O ho / mem / que / se / sen / ta / pe / ran / te / ti E / se in / cli / na / per / to / pra ou / vir/ tua/ do/ ce Voz / e / teu / ri/ so. Sappho, fr. 31.1–4 Voigt

11  Another recent translation of the Iliad by André Malta Campos, not discussed here, is currently in progress. Cf. Tápia 2012 for further discussion of this translation. 12  Cf. Antunes 2011 and Gonçalves et al. 2011. 13  Other examples have been presented in Flores and Gonçalves, 2014. The authors of this paper have also presented polymetric translations of Horace’s Odes (by Flores) and Terence’s Adelphoe (by Gonçalves).

Translation as Classical Reception

237

His strategy is the creation of a native pattern of stressed syllables in the same positions as Greek long syllables so as to create a performable text in Portuguese.14 His hexameter is the same as that of Nunes, but the dactylic pentameter of the elegiac couplet he also recreates in Portuguese, as we can see in the following example: Par / te / das / nu /vens / o / vi / ço / da / ne / ve e / da / chu /va / de / pe / dras. Bra / me o / tro / vão / ao / nas / cer, || vin / do / de um / rai / o / bril / lhan / te.

Vai-se à ruína a cidade de homens grandiosos e o povo Cai como escravo de um rei, só por sua própria tolice. Quando se o ergue às alturas mais tarde é difícil pará Lo. É agora que se há tudo de considerar. Solon, fr. 9 Gerber

A different trend of reception through the trans-creation of ancient rhythms is exemplified by Leandro Cardoso’s rendering of the polymetry of Plautus’ Amphitruo in Portuguese. In his Master’s thesis, completed in 2012 (to be published in a series of new classical translations by Editora Autêntica, a major publishing house), Cardoso presents a full translation of the play with a conscious attempt to transpose every different rhythmic possibility into a metrically equivalent imitation. A few examples will suffice to illustrate this. First, the iambic senarius is transposed with a line which begins with an iambic foot and ends with two iambic feet, with some liberty in between, in an attempt to preserve the multiple possibilities of substitutions of the Latin verse. The longer trochaic and iambic lines are constructed along similar criteria. Here cited is an example of a passage in iambic senarii (bold syllables are the obligatory stresses and syllables in italics are the secondary stresses): Por isso venho em paz e trago a vós a paz: eu vou pedir a vós que façam algo justo e simples, porque eu sou um orador bem justo e peço aos justos

14  Some amateur recordings of his translations sung and accompanied by a guitar are available at http://www.youtube.com/user/Anaxandron. The authors also have recently started a performance group called Pecora Loca, together with students, to perform translations sung and accompanied by different kinds of musical arrangements. Some results are available at www.pecoraloca.com. See also Gonçalves et al. (2015).

238

Gonçalves and Flores

justiça, já que não convém ao justo ser injusto e dos injustos é loucura desejar o justo
 porque o injusto desconhece e renuncia ao justo. Pl., Amph. 32–7

The play’s four polymetric cantica are rendered using different systems, such as the following extract from Alcmene’s lament composed in Portuguese anapaests (whose stressed positions are marked in the first few lines): ALCMENA: O prazer não é algo pequeno na vida e nos dias vividos comparado aos pesares? Assim prepararam os dias dos homens, decidiram os deuses assim, que a tristeza acompanhe o prazer: acontece algo bom e depois aparecem tristezas e dor.
 Pois agora que eu passo por isso em casa, eu sei por mim mesma. O prazer foi pequeno pra mim, pois durante somente uma noite recebi meu marido, que parte daqui com o dia surgindo. E eu pareço ficar tão sozinha na ausência do homem que eu amo. A tristeza ao sair foi maior que o prazer ao entrar.
 Mas eu fico feliz
 porque ele venceu e voltou para casa coberto de glórias. Eis aí um consolo: que se ausente, mas volte com glórias
 e que as traga pra casa. Eu supero e tolero com coragem e espírito firme que ele se ausente se isso me for dado: meu homem voltar vencedor da batalha – já será o bastante.
 A virtude é o melhor dos presentes. A virtude vem antes de todas as coisas:
 liberdade, país, segurança, riquezas e vida, os filhos e os pais, protegidos, guardados por ela. A virtude tem tudo, e quem tem a virtude
 só vai ter o que é bom. Pl., Amph. 633–654

The absolute novelty of this procedure in the context of Brazilian literature (of the very few translations of Roman comedy available in Brazil, only very few are poetic)15 is also a stance on the possibility of recreating rhythmic lines 15  Cf. Gonçalves 2011; Gonçalves and Cardoso 2013; Gonçalves 2013. In the last two texts, Gonçalves presents his polymetric translation of Terence’s Adelphoe as well, and see

Translation as Classical Reception

239

in plays in a literary tradition which did not and still does not usually favor poetic translations of ancient plays, and in which most translations are prose renderings with the simple aim of making the ‘meaning’ of the text available to the general public. Although polymetric translations of ancient plays can be found in other languages,16 they are still very rare in Portuguese and demand a political agenda in order to be recognized as poetic achievements. Cardoso’s project tries to reconstruct the functional differences of the three systems of musical and poetical diction in the Roman Palliata: iambic senarii, or deverbia, are recited without musical accompaniment and cantica, monometric verse (in trochaic septenarii and other longer meters) for passages accompanied by the tibia, and polymetric verse (in lyric meters), also accompanied by the tibia and possibly sung (cf. Moore 2012: 15ff. and passim for the relationship between the choice and sequence of the three modes and their functional effects in the plays). Thus, Cardoso consciously seeks to recreate this system for the first time in Portuguese, trying to open the way for possible performances of the text for a Brazilian audience with a musical dimension in which the lines could be accompanied by a simple melody, or even by possible reconstructions of ancient music and dance. Such attempts of recreating rhythms could be a fascinating path to link ancient literature and contemporary popular music, since in Brazil the song is a very important cultural factor, and many songwriters are also considered poets because of the literary qualities of their lyrics (like Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, etc.). In conclusion, we have attempted to demonstrate through only a few examples and very brief analyses that times are prosperous for poetic translations of the Classics in Brazil, with a growing audience outside scholarship attested by recent series of poetic translations in major publishing houses, such as Autêntica (an incipient classical series), Editora 34 (Trajano Vieira’s translations of tragedies and of The Odissey and a recent edition of Carlos Alberto Nunes’ Aeneid), and that some of these translations work as a special kind of critical reception of a tradition of translation, since most academic and poetic translators criticize the ‘tradition’ in a dialectical way, positing themselves inside the tradition being reformulated. In a way, contemporary poetic translators in Brazil tend to recreate not only the source text (as in philological translations which repeat the exact requisites and aims of translations as also Flores and Gonçalves (2014), which discusses another polymetric translator of Plautus’ Aulularia, Barão de Paranapiacaba, who in 1888 published his translation using three of the most popular kinds of Portuguese verse: heptasyllables, decasyllables and dodecasyllables. 16  Cf. for instance Philippe Brunet’s Antigone (2009), among other works translated by him and other members of his theater company, Démodocos.

240

Gonçalves and Flores

a simple means of conveying and explaining the ‘meaning’ of the canonized ‘original’), but also the recent poetic tradition of translations not only aimed at a specialized audience, but for the general public,17 rethinking literary forms and expanding poetic and linguistic possibilities in ways that can be conceived of as revolutionary and iconoclastic for a conservative tradition such as the Brazilian history of poetic translations of the classics: similar principles have been applied to the translation of Arabic poetry (Ibn Quzman, Adonis, etc.) by Michel Sleiman, Russian poetry (Maiakovsky, Guenádi Aigui, etc.) by Boris Schnaiderman, Polish poetry (Adam Mickiewicz, Cyprian Norwid, Czesław Miłosz, etc.) by Marcelo Paiva, English poetry (Percy Bysshe Shelley) by Adriano Scandolara, Chinese poetry (the Tang Dynasty) by Ricardo Portugal and Tan Xiao, and Indian shamanic performances (the Marubo tribes) by Pedro Cesarino Niemeyer, Medieval Greek and Old Norse poetry by Theo Moorsburger, etc. Paradoxical as it may seem, literal or imitative translations regarding rhythm (which we have chosen as the primary cases here considered) are also political acts aiming at expanding the poetic language and forms in reaction to traditional and normative verse manuals which for a long time dictated the extent of the possibilities of versification in Portuguese and determined the aesthetic expectations of the readers. This reaction is also achieved through the typical Brazilian modernist anthropophagic consumption of the tradition18 in order to make it new: in England and Germany, for instance, such experiments had their beginning centuries ago, while in Brazil similar attempts acquire a very different aesthetic and political effect; for the first time in the history of Brazilian translation we have attempts to renew our vision of the Classics without the lens of an internal tradition of the Portuguese language and its indebtedness to European culture. This kind of critical translation receives multiple layers of philological traditions of poetic translation in order to surpass them and reinvent that same tradition. In Jauss’s terms, the rescuing of a certain ‘tradition’, in this case represented by the wish to bring ancient forms back to life in Brazilian translations of the classics, is a clear act of reception, and the translators become agents of reception inasmuch as they perform the transposition of something ‘new’ in another context:

17  Cf. Marcelo Tápia’s fusion of Haroldo de Campos’ and Carlos Alberto Nunes’ translation projects in his own translations (Tápia 2012). 18  This subject was more fully developed in a talk given by Flores entitled ‘Roman Poetry and Brazilian Poets – 1960s to 80s’ in the panel ‘Classical Tradition in Brazil: Translation, Rewriting, and Reception’ organized by Gonçalves at the 144th APA Meeting in Seattle.

Translation as Classical Reception

241

(…) a literary past can return only when a new reception draws it back into the present, whether an altered aesthetic attitude wilfully reaches back to reappropriate the past, or an unexpected light falls back on forgotten literature from the new moment of literary evolution, allowing something to be found that one previously could not have sought in it. Jauss, 1982: 35

Although this brief analysis may be seen as having a limited scope of translations and translators in a marginal tradition, the central idea is that translation can be a powerful source of innovation and establishment of new aesthetics. Finally, a few remarks on the connection between the two parts of the chapter: the relationship between the discussion in the first part and the analyses and examples proposed in the second part can be posited as a matter of translation itself. Since the traditional idea of fidelity permeates not only a philology of German and English kind (but also very common in Brazil), but also the basic common sense about translation, the analyses can shed a new light on the issues presented in the first part in order to reveal an important trend in classical receptions outside academia, but, since it sometimes comes as a result of recent academic projects, such as Master’s theses and PhD dissertations, can also be seen as an important influence for this same new academic panorama, in a somewhat dialectical and political circle. Rhythmic translations are not conservative archaeological attempts to be ‘the same’ as the ancient texts, but, on the contrary, rebellious acts of reception which try to make them new. 3

Further Reading

Since there are almost no publications about this subject in English, we present here a few valuable references in Portuguese. For the history of the dactylic hexameter in Portuguese, see Tápia 2012, Oliva Neto and Nogueira 2013, and Oliva Neto 2014. Tápia 2012 is also a very extensive case study on poetic translations of Homer in Portuguese, presenting a deep critical analysis and his own translation of Homer’s Odyssey. Crespo and Piqué 2012 present the most thorough compilation of translations of Homer in Spanish and Portuguese. Both texts are also very rich in further references. Most texts on translation by Haroldo de Campos have recently been collected by Tápia and Nóbrega 2013. Charles Bernstein published a very interesting article on Haroldo de Campos in English in The Poetry Society of America’s journal Crossroads (Bernstein 2004). The Brazilian academic journal Scientia Traductionis is also an excellent resource of recent translations of the Classics in Brazil (https://periodicos.ufsc

242

Gonçalves and Flores

.br/index.php/scientia/index). Finally, Gonçalves and Vieira 2014 compiles an entire dossier on Brazilian poetic translations of the Classics. In French, two publications are important contributions on the theme: for a cross-linguistic approach on rhythmic translations, see also volume 20 of the French journal Anabases, published in 2014. The proceedings of the conference edited by Philippe Büttgen, Michèle Gendreau-Massaloux and Xavier North (2012) features, in the section entitled ‘Entre les langues: la traduction à l’oeuvre’, three chapters by Brazilian scholars on Haroldo de Campos’ ideas on translation (Qu’appèlle-t-on traduire? by Ana Lúcia M. de Oliveira), Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago (Tupi or not Tupi by Maria Cristina Franco Ferraz) and on Augusto de Campos’ (Haroldo’s brother) poetics of translation (La poétique des intraduisibles by Fernando Santoro). These are important readings about themes developed in this chapter outside the lusophone community. Bibliography Andrade, O. de, Manifesto Antropófago, trans. Barry, L., Latin American Literary Review, 19.38 (1991). Antunes, C. and Leonardo, B., Ritmo e Sonoridade na Poesia Grega Antiga: Uma tradução comentada de 23 poemas (São Paulo, 2011). Bernstein, C., “De Campos Thou Art Translated (Knot),” Crossroads (2004). Büttgen, P., Gendreau-Massaloux, M. and North, X., eds., Les Pluriels de Barbara Cassin, ou le partage des équivoques (Lormont, 2012). Campos, H. de, Deus e o diabo no Fausto de Goethe (São Paulo, 1981). Campos, H. de, “Para transcriar a Ilíada,” Revista USP 12 (1991–1992). Campos, H. de, “Odorico Mendes: Patriarca da Transcriação,” in Homero, Odisséia. (São Paulo, 1992a), 1–18. Campos, H. de, Metalinguagem e Outras Metas (São Paulo, 1992b). Campos, H. de, “Tradução, ideologia e história,” in Thelma Médici. Haroldo de Campos – Transcriação, eds. Tápia, M. and Nóbrega (São Paulo, 2013a). Campos, H. de, “Para além do princípio da saudade: a teoria benjaminiana da tradução,” in Haroldo de Campos – Transcriação, eds., Tápia, Marcelo and Nóbrega, T. Médici (São Paulo, 2013b). Campos, H. de, “Da tradução como criação e como crítica,” in: Haroldo de Campos – Transcriação, eds., Tápia, Marcelo and Nóbrega, Thelma Médici (São Paulo, 2013c). Cardoso, L.D., A vez do verso: estudo e tradução do Amphitruo de Plauto. Dissertação de Mestrado (Curitiba, 2012). Conto, L. de, “Carlos Alberto Nunes, tradutor dos clássicos”. Anais XXIII SEC (Araraquara, 2008), 60–67.

Translation as Classical Reception

243

Crespo, E. and Piqué, J., “Las traducciones de Homero en América Latina” in: Tradición y traducción clásicas en América Latina. eds. Maquieira, H. and Fernández, C.N. (La Plata, 2012), 349–431. Da Motta, L.T. (org.), Céu acima – para um ‘tombeau’ de Haroldo de Campos (São Paulo, 2005). Flores, G.G., A diversão tradutória: uma tradução das Elegias de Sexto Propércio. Master’s thesis (Belo Horizonte, 2008). Flores, G.G. and Gonçalves, R.T., “Polimetria latina em português,” Revista Letras 89 (2014). Gonçalves, R.T., “Traduções Polimétricas de Plauto: em Busca da Polimetria Plautina em Português,” Scientia Traductionis 10 (2011). Gonçalves, R.T. (coord.), Fujihara, Á.K., Rachwal, G.D., Cardoso, L.D., Coelho, L.M.R., Conto, L. de, Legroski, M.C., “Uma tradução coletiva das Metamorfoses 10.1–297 com versos hexamétricos de Carlos Alberto Nunes,” Scientia Traductionis 10 (2011). Gonçalves, R.T., Flores, G.G., Stocco, A.L., Cozer, A., Grochocki, M., Lautenschlager, R.P., “Galiambos brasileiros: tradução e performance de Catulo 63,” Translatio 10 (2015). Gonçalves, R.T., “L’hexamètre au Brésil: la tradition de Carlos Alberto Nunes,” Revue Anabases 20 (2014). Gonçalves, R.T. and Cardoso, Leandro, “Traduzindo comédia latina como poesia,” in: Escamandro (São Paulo, 2014). Gonçalves, R.T., Vieira, B. and Gonçalves, V., Dossiê Tradução dos Clássicos em Português. Revista Letras 89 (2014). Gramacho, J., Hinos Homéricos (Brasília, 2003). Hasegawa, A., Dispositio e distinção de gêneros no livro de Epodos de Horácio: estudo acompanhado de tradução em verso. PhD dissertation (São Paulo, 2010). Homero, Odisséia. Trans. Nunes, Carlos Alberto (São Paulo, 1962). Homero, Odisséia. Trans. Mendes, Manuel Odorico. Rodrigues, Edição de Antonio Medina (São Paulo, 1992). Homero, Ilíada. Trans. Campos, Haroldo de; intro. e org. Vieira, Trajano; 2 v. (bilíngüe) (São Paulo, 2003). Homero, Ilíada. Trans. Nunes, Carlos Alberto. 4a ed. (Rio de Janeiro, 2004). Homero, Ilíada. Trans. Mendes, Manuel Odorico. Prefácio e notas de Nienkötter, Sálvio (São Paulo, 2008). Homero, Odisseia. Trans. Vieira, Trajano (São Paulo, 2011). Jauss, H.R., Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Trans. Bathi, T. (Minneapolis, 1982). Júnior, G. and Meirelles, M., Gaio Valério Flaco: Cantos Argonáuticos – Argonautica (Coimbra, 2010). Moore, T.J., Music in Roman Comedy (Cambridge, 2012). Neto, O., Angelo, J., O livro de Catulo, Trans., introdução e notas de J.A.O. Neto (São Paulo, 1996).

244

Gonçalves and Flores

Neto, O. and Angelo, J., Falo no Jardim. Priapéia Grega, Priapéia Latina (Cotia e Campinas, 2006). Neto, O. and Angelo, J., “Tradição Literária e Estudos Clássicos Brasileiros,” in Antunes, L., Ritmo e sonoridade na poesia grega antiga (São Paulo, 2012). Neto, O., Angelo, J. and Nogueira, É., “O hexâmetro dactílico vernáculo antes de Carlos Alberto Nunes,” Scientia Traductionis 13 (2013), 295–311. Neto, O. and Angelo, J., “O hexâmetro dactílico de Carlos Alberto Nunes: teoria e repercussões”, in Dossiê Tradução dos Clássicos em Português. Revista Letras 89 (2014). Romero, S., História da literatura brasileira, 4ª ed. (Rio de Janeiro, 1949). Sophocle, Antigone, trans. Philippe Brunet (Paris, 2009). Tápia, M., Diferentes percursos de tradução da épica homérica como paradigmas metodológicos de recriação poética. Um estudo propositivo sobre linguagem, poesia e tradução. PhD dissertation (São Paulo, 2012). Tápia, M. and Nóbrega, T.M., eds., Haroldo de Campos – Transcriação (São Paulo, 2013). Thamos, M., As armas e o varão. Leitura e tradução do Canto I da Eneida (São Paulo, 2011). Vasconcellos, P.S., “Contribuição à reapreciação crítica da Eneida de Odorico Mendes,” in Phaos – Revista de estudos clássicos (Campinas, 2002). http://revistas.iel.unicamp. br/index.php/phaos/article/view/3787. Vasconcellos, P.S., “Duas traduções poéticas da Eneida: Barreto Feio e Odorico Mendes,” in Anais do II Simpósio de Estudos Clássicos da USP (São Paulo, 2007). Vieira, T., ed., Homero: Odisseia (São Paulo, 2011). Virgílio. Bucólicas (Edição bilíngue), trans. Carvalho, R. (Belo Horizonte, 2005). Virgílio, Eneida Brasileira. Edição do Projeto Odorico Mendes (Campinas, 2008). Virgílio, Eneida. Trans. de Nunes, Carlos Alberto e organização de Neto, João Angelo Oliva (São Paulo, 2014). Zajko, A.L. and V., Translation and the Classic: Identity as Change in the History of Culture (Oxford, 2008).

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea: A Case for Comparative Reception Koen Vacano 1

Redeeming Reception Studies: A Return to Comparison

Breaking Bad, AMC’s Emmy Award-winning television classic (2008–2013), has often been compared to ancient Greek tragedy.1 The typical protagonist of the new TV-genre does seem to justify this assimilation. Like so many other protagonists from the ‘New Golden Age of Television’, Walter White, the protagonist of the show, starts off with good intentions, but ends up annulling the very good he aims to achieve. Both this plot and character development strikingly correspond to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy (and indeed to the plot of many Greek tragedies), wherein the protagonist is said to bring about his own misery through hamartia, a backfiring attempt to achieve something good.2 Yet the similarity runs deeper: in falling-off from intended good to inadvertent misery the hero raises moral issues that have important repercussions for the general ethical outlook of the work as a whole. So what exactly does this character development consist of? Breaking Bad’s ‘Walt’ is an overqualified chemistry teacher who is struggling to make ends meet; when he learns on his fiftieth birthday that he has terminal lung cancer, he decides to join the drug operation of one of his ex-students, Jesse Pinkman, in order to leave his family well-provided after his death. While Walt’s miserable plight and his subsequent resolve at the beginning of the series may beckon our sympathy, this sympathy is problematized as he performs increasingly immoral actions (including murder) while making his way in the drug business. There are cases of similarly ‘problematic’ (i.e. sympathetic yet increasingly amoral) protagonists, or ‘antiheroes’, in Greek tragedy.3 The moral degradation that accounts for the title of Breaking Bad may for instance be recognized in Euripides’ Medea. Medea’s situation as a wife abandoned by her husband and forced into exile is sympathetic at first, but her resolve to be revenged, 1  Bellis (2013), Kraak (2014), Reese (2013), Van de Werff (2013). 2  1453a7–10, Bremer (1969) 63, Halliwell (1987) 128–30, Rijser (2016) 55. 3  The term ‘problematic protagonist’ is derived from Gill (1996: 95). ‘Antihero’ is used throughout this chapter as a synonym, emphasizing the morally problematic aspect of an otherwise sympathetic or relatable character.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_014

246

Vacano

however understandable, eventually drives her to the abhorrent murder of her own children.4 In both cases, the sympathetic nature of the protagonists’ initial aims is challenged by the increasingly problematic results of their actions. This raises the question whether we can learn anything from the similarity between Euripides’ ‘problematic’ protagonist and its far echo in the contemporary television landscape. This question is part of the larger issue of the value of trans-historical comparison in reception studies: is it merely fascinating to discover striking parallels between antiquity and the present, or are there deeper insights to be gained? I think there are. Studying the parallel between Breaking Bad and Euripides’ Medea, I hope to show, tells us something new about both works, and helps us understand their tertium comparationis, the ‘problematic’ protagonist in his or her historical context. Moreover, I believe the comparison may even serve as a creative prism that gives us more decontextualized insights in the social, ethical and phenomenological functioning of tragedy in general. The present case study is intended as a means to explore these suggestions, to assess the validity of inter-cultural comparison in general, and its relevance for ‘Classical Reception Studies’ in particular. The concept of comparison featured prominently in Charles Martindale’s essay “Redeeming the Text: The Validity of Comparisons of Classical and Postclassical Literature (A View From Britain)”.5 Martindale’s aim in this essay, he states, is to defend the heuristic value of what can be termed “cross-cultural” comparisons of classical and postclassical literature, against the arguments of those who criticize such comparisons as “ahistorical”.6 One of his main points in this attack against a historical, positivist approach to classics is that if we attempt to understand Antiquity absolutely on its own terms, i.e. solely in relation to the context, audience and discourses prevalent at that time – which, Martindale argues, is actually impossible – it completely loses its meaning and relevance to the present-day public.7 Similarly, however, as Martindale later explains, the other extreme of “crude presentism” must be avoided.8 That is, if classics are to have meaning, we can neither refuse to see their similarities and relevance to the present, nor must we perceive them 4  Mossman (2011) 44–5. 5  Martindale (1991) “Redeeming the Text: The Validity of Comparisons of Classical and Postclassical Literature (A View From Britain)”. 6  Martindale (1991) 45. 7  Martindale (1991) 62–3. 8  Martindale (2006) 5.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

247

purely as examples or embodiments of present-day phenomena. In the first case, the past becomes a country so different that no truths or values found there can pertain to the present; in the latter, it becomes so similar that we can learn nothing new from it. ‘Reception’, in Martindale’s view, by focussing precisely on this interaction between past and present, strikes a balance between these two extremes, and consequently succeeds uniquely in showing the relevance of classical texts to our and earlier ‘presents’. That is why the word ‘comparison’ figures so prominently in the title of Martindale’s essay: for if reception consists of finding and using meaning in classical texts by considering, analysing and (eventually) balancing out their similarities and differences to the present, this approach is inherently comparative – for what is a comparison but “the mental process which enables us to perceive similarity and difference”?9,10 Thus, if “meaning … is always realized at the point of reception”, as Martindale’s now classic credo goes, this point of reception is constituted by comparison.11 Nevertheless, however central the principle of comparison may be to the workings of reception, it has faded into the background in later accounts of its methodology. This is exemplified (and undoubtedly partly caused) by the fact that Martindale has removed the concept in his 1993 canonical adaptation of his 1991 essay, replacing the subtitle “The Validity of Comparisons …” with “Latin poetry and the hermeneutics of reception”. With this de-emphasis of comparison, the creative and receptive role of the scholar became less prominent. In much reception scholarship it is difficult to distinguish between two interpretations of what ‘Reception Studies’ actually means: on the one hand, taking ‘reception’ as object, it may denote the study of reception – the scholar, in this interpretation, studies the ways in which others have ‘received’ texts throughout history, like Milton’s reception of Vergil; on the other hand, taking ‘reception’ adverbially, it may denote a study through reception – that is, it is the scholar himself who ‘receives’ a text by relating or comparing it to other texts or phenomena of his present.12 While there has been some theoretical 9  As Maarten De Pourcq (2016) shows in an analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?…) the popular idea that comparison runs the risk of effacing the differences between the comparanda (like between apples and oranges) is mistaken. When looking at a thing in comparison to another, it is often the differences which (precisely because of their contrastive function) shed a new light on the comparanda, like Shakespeare’s discovery that ‘thou art more lovely and more temperate’ (than a summer’s day). 10  Brown (2013) 67. 11  Martindale (1993) 3. 12  As Martindale suggested in 2006.

248

Vacano

reflection upon this ambiguity – notably, in 2013 Martindale pointed out that in Reception Studies “there are always at least three [interpretative points] and generally many more (ourselves reading Milton reading Virgil …)” – in practice reception scholars have often focussed exclusively on reception as an object, a relation between historical authors A and B, instead of on the receptive, creative and comparative role they can (and inevitably do) play themselves. Consequently, as Martindale himself observes, even within the field of Reception Studies many classicists remain committed to a ‘historicist’ type of inquiry, merely replacing e.g. an analysis of Vergil in the context of Augustan Rome with an analysis of Dante’s reaction to Vergil in his historical context of Trecento Italy.13 As a result, and despite the growing popularity of Reception Studies, classical scholarship still struggles to demonstrate its relevance for understanding the present. For the overwhelming majority of reception scholars the study of present-day phenomena remains restricted to contemporary texts and other works of art that directly receive or respond to the classics. For example, although there has been an accelerating growth in the study of classical receptions in film, brought about almost single-handedly by Martin Winkler, these studies often remain limited to films that are ‘about’ antiquity – Cleopatra (1963), Gladiator (2000), Hercules (2014), and so on.14 The problem with this restriction is not per se that these films are often of limited cinematographical quality, or even that they are not particularly representative of the cinema and culture of our time. The main problem is that it tends to confine the researcher’s eye to the way these films (‘correctly’ or ‘incorrectly’) adapt their classical sources.15 Thus a disproportionate focus on how films (and similarly other works of art) explicitly refer to antiquity instead of on how their larger themes, effects and position within culture compare to antiquity, has hindered the classical receptions perspective in making the classics truly relevant to the present. To reinvigorate Martindale’s methodology of comparison the field of ‘Comparative Literature’ might seem to offer promising perspectives. Ever since its emergence in the late nineteenth century this approach has studied the literatures of different countries, cultures and languages in relation to their specific social, political and economic contexts.16 The central premise underlying this perspective has been, and still is, that “[n]o single event, no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relation to other events, to 13  Martindale (2006) 2. 14  E.g. 2001, 2006, 2009. 15  Cf. Galinsky (2010) 11. 16  During (2004) 313.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

249

other literature”.17 In the broadest sense this ‘relational’ approach is of course inherently ‘comparative’ – for what else is relating things than establishing their similarities and differences? – but such a wide application of the term obscures the general absence of actual methodological comparison within the field. While Comparative Literature has become almost synonymous to ‘World Literature’ or ‘literature without borders’,18 performing literary studies across or between different cultures does not necessarily entail the active process of making a comparison between them – and it often does not, as may be discerned from a look at the contents of the June 2016 edition of the Comparative Literature journal: most articles are concerned with tracing the influence of different literary works and traditions on each other,19 understanding works in their historical socio-political contexts,20 or reading works from the perspective of social and literary theories,21 but not with directly comparing works on a certain point. Thus paradoxically, as Catherine Brown has observed, “much of what is done under [the] remit [of comparative literature] is not methodologically comparative”.22 Moreover, though in principle ‘literature without borders’ is certainly not hostile to comparative studies of literature across time, in practice the focus has been on synchronic studies of literature from different languages.23 Therefore true ‘comparisons’ between ancient and contemporary works of art are still rare.24 Yet this does not mean that no methodological insights may be drawn from this enormous field of Comparative Literature. Indeed, several authors have reflected upon the benefits of reading two similar, though not necessarily intertextuality linked texts next to each other – a method that, though usually applied to synchronous material, might work as well for diachronically divergent texts. For example, Odile Heynders argues for a “process of comparing,

17  Matthew Arnold [1857] in Brown (2013) 68; cf. Damrosch (2003) 326. 18  Cf. Damrosch (2003), Varsava (2007). 19  Leo (2016), Vicente (2016). 20  Dewulf (2016), Vicente (2016). 21  Edmeades (2016), Just (2016). 22  Brown (2013) 69. 23  Gikandi (2011) 257–8. 24  This is not to say that there are no diachronic studies within comparative literature at all. Some prominent examples are David Quint’s Epic and Empire (1993), Colin Burrow’s Epic Romance: Homer to Milton (1993) and, of course, Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis (1953). Still, in each of these cases the focus is on the way several works relate to a tradition (of a genre or literature in general), often “without bringing its examples into mutual relationship”, as I attempt in this chapter, Brown (2013) 70.

250

Vacano

associating and relating”25 different, thematically related poems.26 The upshot of this method, which she calls ‘corresponsive reading’ (corresponderend lezen), is the following: The confrontation between different poems reveals both the specific and the comparable in texts. Correspondence involves coincidence and direction by the reader, who decides which poems he wants to connect to each other. Corresponsive reading also entails showing similarity without being able to directly back it up with biographical or literary-historical evidence. Poets need not have known each other or read each other, yet their poems may be similar, evoking similar ideas. Corresponsive reading is an incentive to frame a certain reading experience and relate it to earlier readings. […] It is also about how one text is put in motion by another, how it is viewed in a different light, making matters visible in a broader perspective. The context of the poem or oeuvre to be read is essentially enlarged or transposed by placing it side by side or even collating it with another poet’s work … Thus different shades of meaning may be revealed.27 The most poignant conclusion to be drawn from Heynders’ argument is that if texts gain meaning in relation (i.e. through their comparative similarities and differences) to other texts and contexts, and if the author is no longer the primary determinant of those relations, the reader (in this case the scholar) gains the freedom or even responsibility to make these meaning-giving comparisons. An example of literary criticism that fully adopts these premises is Pierre Bayard’s Et si les œuvres changeaient d’auteur?, which argues that if texts are read as if they were written by a different author, they may “become different and take on unexpected resonances that enrich one’s perception and stimulate the imagination”.28,29 The underlying point of both Heynders and Bayard is not just that a comparison between two texts may lead to an appreciation of their similarities and differences, but more fundamentally that texts are actually transformed by the comparative relations they are placed in. When we read a comparison of Achilles and a lion we see not merely the similarities of the two separate entities, but rather an image of fighting fury that is more 25  I have translated the quotes from Heynders (2006) from the original Dutch. 26  Heynders (2006) 19. 27  Heynders (2006) 19–20. 28  Translated from French. 29  (2010) back cover.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

251

than the sum of its parts;30 just so, reading texts in comparison to other texts may reveal entirely new meanings in them that could simply not be perceived in each of them separately.31 Based upon these considerations we may assume an active reception of Euripides’ Medea comparing it to Breaking Bad to have similar, heuristic effects. That is, the comparison itself may reveal new meanings in both works and in their tertium comparationis, the ‘problematic’ protagonist. It is an exercise in this ‘heuristic comparison’ (or, if you like, ‘comparative reception’) that will take up the remainder of this chapter. Yet before we begin, since the success of this comparison depends heavily on its tertium comparationis, some justification must be given for the qualification of character development as such. First, we may wonder whether the story (and character) arcs of tragedies and television soaps are comparable at all: while tragedy generally revolves around one story arc (Aristotle’s ‘unity of action’), protagonists of TV-series may undergo change upon change, following story arc upon story arc fashioned by the whims of fans and writers. However, though Breaking Bad is divided over sixty-two one-hour episodes, each with its own internal arc, I shall argue below that the protagonist’s path to perdition (already present in the title) is a unifying, central and indeed tragic act; differences in character, notably sex and status, though significant, do not affect the core similarity in this tragic character development.32 The greatest difficulty in comparing the way in which the two protagonists ‘break bad’ however is the very definition of ‘bad’: the comparison would be less instructive, if not gratuitous, when fifth-century Athenians did not consider Medea’s infanticide morally wrong. In her canonical study Blundell (1989) argues that Greek morality is indeed significantly different from ours, since it is based on the principle which she calls ‘Helping Friends and Harming Enemies’ (‘HF/HE’). Contrary to our ‘turn-the-other-cheek’-influenced ethics this conception completely approved of taking pleasure in hurting one’s foes, and hence would not condemn Medea for horribly harming Jason.33 Also, while ‘morality’ to us is generally founded on principles that are abstract and universal, the basis of ‘HF/HE’ lies in the emotional world of the subject: my

30  Benzon and Hays (1987) 59. 31  Marcel Detienne has made a similar case for comparison in history and anthropology, advocating to study cultures across time side by side in order to “discover an unseen aspect, an unusual angle, a hidden property […] without fearing to mess up history or mock chronology”, (2000) 15; translated from French. 32  Kraak (2014) 10. 33  Blundell (1989) 27.

252

Vacano

friend may be your enemy.34 Therefore Athenians would have judged Medea’s actions not in relation to some Kantian norm – e.g. it is categorically wrong to kill children – but explicitly from her personal perspective. Yet from the ‘HF/ HE’-perspective Medea’s actions are reprehensible as well: in order to harm her enemy (Jason) she fails to help her ‘friends’ (the children). Thus the Medea, like so many tragedies, displays how ‘HF/HE’, which works so well on the epic battlefield where the frontline neatly dichotomises the two groups, runs amok in the increasingly urbanised landscape of fifth-century Athens where ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ on different levels (especially family/polis) inevitably intermingle and conflict.35 So, though they arrive at this conclusion for different reasons, we can safely assume that the Athenians too found Medea’s infanticide deeply problematic. 2

Antiheroes between Greeks and Gangsters

Perhaps the best way to begin a comparison between the problematic protagonists of Breaking Bad and Medea is to consider ancient and modern conceptions of the ‘arcs’ of tragic characters. In antiquity the most famous description may be the following passage from Aristotle’s Poetics: The change in the hero’s fortunes must be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery. And the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in some extraordinary instance of hamartia on his or her part.36 Although this primary determinant of the character arc, hamartia, has often been read morally – a downfall because of sinfulness – Aristotle’s preceding words explicitly contradict this, and the word’s root-verb ἁμαρτάνω literally means ‘missing the mark’.37 The essence of Aristotle’s definition then is that the tragic hero aims for one thing, but ‘misses’ (i.e. fails to achieve that aim) and thus causes his own downfall. In this way tragedy arouses its characteristic emotions of eleos (‘pity’) and phobos (‘fear’): we pity someone who fails despite, or indeed because of good intentions, and we fear the possibility that a similar

34  Blundell (1989) 265. 35  Blundell (1989) 52–3. 36  Aristotle 1453a7–10. 37  Bremer (1969) 63, Halliwell (1987) 128–30, Rijser (2016) 55.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

253

unintended harm may come to us.38 The modern conception of the tragic protagonist is not much different. Discussing the gangster film, a genre that according to series creator Vince Gilligan lies at the heart of Breaking Bad,39 Gilberto Perez notes that “[t]he gangster is a tragic hero because the very success that is his meaning is his undoing”.40 By asserting himself as an individual above the crowd, by living the American dream if you will, Scarface inevitably creates the enemies that will destroy him. As in Aristotle’s view, the very aspiration for a good outcome is the cause of failure. On the other hand a difference emerges as well, for in Greek tragedy this ‘good outcome’ was generally not equated with becoming a self-made man. Instead, it was often grounded in the welfare of the community: Oedipus undertook his mission to identify his father’s killer (which came at the price of convicting himself as such) in order to save Thebes from the plague, and Antigone’s burial of her brother (which led to her own demise) can be seen as an effort to protect divine justice. Thus while the essential linkage of success and failure constitutes a striking similarity between Greek tragedy and the modern gangster flic, the motivations that drive their protagonists seem to be quite far apart. Yet this comparison also reveals that the protagonists of Breaking Bad and Medea are so ‘problematic’ precisely because they fail to conform exclusively to either side in this crude dichotomy of motivation types: in both cases it is difficult to determine whether their ‘aim’ is closer to that of the gangster who fights for personal gain, or to the Sophoclean Oedipus who seeks to save the community. In this sense their characters represent a tension that is arguably inherent in every society (or in the living together of individuals in a community in general), between personal and collective identity, between individual choice and the common good. The scholarly debate about the motivations of Medea is a case in point. From one perspective Medea’s is a story of personal vengeance.41 Abandoned by Jason for another woman she finds herself exiled and robbed of her status as his respected wife. Thus the ‘success’ Medea strives for during the play is the reassertion of her own dignity (sexual and social) by taking away Jason’s in the worst way possible: by killing his (and her own) offspring and heirs. Yet from another perspective Medea’s actions appear to be motivated more by larger, ethical concerns. As Christopher Gill endeavours to show, at the 38  Aristotle, Poetics 1452b36–1453a7, Nussbaum (1986) 383–6. 39  MacInnes (2012). 40  Perez (1998) 251. 41  Mastronarde (2002) 8.

254

Vacano

heart of Medea’s plight lies an argument about philia,42 the Greek concept of interpersonal bonding, which entails certain mutual obligations:43 The specific idea is that the lives of Jason and Medea have been bound together by the very special circumstances of their marriage … in such a way as to render unacceptable Jason’s decision to sever those connections by a unilateral decision. […] There comes a point at which I can no longer say ‘This is my life and I shall live it as I will’, because it is no longer, solely, my life.44 Thus Medea’s vengeance is also, as Gill calls it, an ‘exemplary gesture’, demonstrating symbolically the moral importance of interpersonal bonds; Jason is taught the hard way that those who violate philia cannot simultaneously expect to enjoy their fruits, i.e. the children. In this way the case Medea makes is not so much for herself as for upholding norms that bind people together. In both perspectives Medea’s ‘success’ is accompanied by a (different) tragic downfall. From the social-ethical perspective, Medea, in a terrible irony, “see[s] it as necessary to kill her philoi [the children] to assert the importance of not severing the bonds of philia”.45 From the personal perspective, taking revenge on Jason requires her to hurt herself most horribly in the process as well. It is the uncertainty about which of these considerations really underlie Medea’s tragedy that makes her character so ‘problematic’, and decades of scholarly debate have not produced a definitive solution. Yet at this point a comparison with Breaking Bad becomes helpful, as the series is a prime example of how such duplicity and indeterminacy of motivations may constitute the foundation of character development. Already in the Pilot episode Walt’s selfavowed motivation for his actions, that he ‘does it all for his family’, his philoi, is ironized by hints that he actually enjoys his criminal rise to power. When his partner Jesse asks the series’ defining question – “Some straight like you, giant stick up his ass – age what, 60? – he’s just gonna break bad?” – Walt answers: “I am awake”. This ‘awakening’ consists primarily of the respect, power and excellence Walt comes to experience by breaking the moral constraints of society: whereas in the ‘normal’ world of suburban Albuquerque (represented by the white of his name, clothes and hideous car) Walt is a nobody whose intellectual qualities are wasted on two bland jobs that earn him no wealth, power 42  Gill (1996), and similarly Mueller (2001). 43  Cf. Blundell (1989) 39–49; Belfiore (2000) 131–2. 44  Gill (1996) 159. 45  Gill (1996) 170; cf. Mossman (2011) 40–1.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

255

or recognition, in the forbidden world of drugs (associated with the series’ theme colour green) he becomes alive. This newly found aliveness is constantly located in the deserts and wastelands surrounding the city, the landscape of the old Frontier. His journey of awakening thus places Walt literally outside of normal (post)modern society, and inside the symbolic domain of the classic Westerns, a genre that in terms of plot and character arcs has been observed to be close to ancient tragedy.46 Incidentally this means that whether we consider family or personal power his true motivation, Walt’s breaking out of (post)modern normality brings him closer to the morality of ancient Greece. His justification of killing others for the sake of his family fits the Greek maxim of ‘HF/HE’, while his enjoyment of his power and prestige is not unlike the heroic ideal of gaining glory by defeating one’s enemies on the battlefield. Yet whereas such a respect-centred morality was the status quo in Greek society, in Breaking Bad’s America Walt can only acquire this respect outside of normality – i.e. by ‘breaking bad’. Like in the case of Medea, Walt’s attempt to achieve these ends results in tragedy both if we consider his personal and philia-related goal. Regarding the first, as in the case of Scarface, Walt’s glorious rise to power also engenders an increasing amount of threats to this power. As a final enemy Walt faces the tellingly named ‘White Supremacist Gang’, a neo-Nazi group he previously employed as mercenaries who have now turned against him: as such, it represents both the last threat to Walt’s supremacy and its last remnant. Thus by defeating the gang (which he does in the final episode) Walt destroys both the last threat to his power and the empire he has built. Moreover in this final standoff, which takes place in a meth lab, Walt is fatally wounded, so that he dies in the very place that had made him feel so ‘awake’: the quest for aliveness tragically ends in his death. As to his supposed goal of providing for his family, he eventually achieves this – he anonymously leaves them his drug fortune – but only at the cost of becoming completely alienated from them: his wife and son come to despise him for his power-hungry behaviour. Tragically, the very philoi he attempted to help come to consider Walt as their enemy. Now while in the Medea the relation between the personal and philia motivations remained unclear, Breaking Bad continually highlights and problematizes their interaction. According to the series’ creator Vince Gilligan, Walt “is a man who lies to his family, lies to his friends, lies to the world about who he truly is. But … first and foremost he is lying to himself”. The ‘it-is-all-formy-family’ motivation is the lie that covers up Walt’s ‘true’ motivation of selfaggrandizement. Thus the arc of Walt’s character is not primarily a change 46  Winkler (1985).

256

Vacano

from good to bad, but a recognition of his own badness, an anagnorisis of his true nature achieved only in the final episode, when hunted down and beyond the point of no return he has a final conversation with his wife, Skyler:47 Walt: Skyler, all the things that I did, you need to understand … Skyler: [Crying, whispering] If I have to hear one more time that you did this for the family … Walt: [Interrupting suddenly] I did it for me. [Penetrating silence] I liked it. I was good at it. And, I was really … I was alive. [He closes his eyes in melancholy] When in Walt’s dying moments Badfinger’s soundtrack plays “Did you really think, I’d do you wrong?” we might imagine for a moment that the words are about his wife Skyler, only to realise that it is with “my baby blue,” his beloved blue meth that he dies a Liebestod.48 Still we should not completely renounce the value of Walt’s philia motivation just because Gilligan ‘unmasks’ it both in interviews and the series’ finale. When Walt and Jesse have just watched their new meth distributer Tuco violently beat one of his own henchmen to death (in ‘A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal’), Walt is forced to recognise the horrors and dangers of a criminal life. Instead of quitting the drug business however, he calculates meticulously how much money he needs for his family – college tuition, mortgage, cost of living – and concludes: “$737,000, that’s what I need. […] Eleven more drug deals … It’s doable, definitely doable”. ‘Family’ for Walt is less of an actual goal than a means of reconciling his self-image with the increasingly horrible deeds he commits in the pursuit of his real purpose.49 Commenting on Walt’s alter ego ‘Heisenberg’50 by means of which he operates incognito in the world of crime, Bryan Cranston notes that “he takes on that name – and that look – in order to not recognise himself”. Walt desperately strives to maintain his family-man selfimage by separating it physically from Heisenberg, the hidden self within him that craves aliveness and power. But Walt “wants the impossible, to conceal from his family that he’s cooking meth, but at the same time to get them to understand that he made the money by his own sweat and wits”.51 As this untenable 47  Meek (2013). 48  Significantly nicknamed ‘Blue Sky’ as a parallel to his wife Skyler. 49  Dean (2013). 50  Walt’s choice of the name ‘Heisenberg’ for his alias is significant, as it refers to the chemist who invented the ‘uncertainty principle’: just like all properties of a particle can never be exactly determined, Walt’s own character and moral status always remain uncertain. 51  Meek (2013).

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

257

separation gradually falters, Walt inevitably transforms into Heisenberg. In the end, when his identity is revealed to the world, Walt finds his house lying in ruins, Skyler and Walt Jr. have fled to a safe house, ‘HEISENBERG’ is written in graffiti on the wall. In a distressing irony, this outcome of Walt’s transformation into the greatest enemy of his family could only be achieved by telling himself that he did it all to protect his family. Now let us turn the comparison around and ask whether Walt’s process of ‘breaking bad’ can shed some light on the relative value of Medea’s philia and personal motivation. Perhaps they do not exclude, but rather, as in Breaking Bad, enable each other. The last words Medea speaks before killing her children may demonstrate the merits of this suggestion: Friends, my resolve is fixed on the deed, to kill my children with all speed and to flee from this land: I must not, by lingering, deliver my children to a less kindly hand. They must die at all events, and since they must, I who gave them birth shall kill them. Come, put on your armour, my heart! Why do I put off doing the terrible deed that must be done? Come, luckless hand, take the sword, take it and go to your life’s miserable goal! Do not weaken, do not remember that you love the children, that you gave them life. Instead, for this brief day forget them – and mourn hereafter: for even if you will kill them, they were dear to you [φίλοι γ᾽ ἔφυσαν].52 As a final justification before doing the deed Medea asserts that the children’s deaths are inevitable. Since she earlier mentioned the real possibility of taking them with her on her escape,53 the cause of the inevitability must be Medea’s own heroic vengeance:54,55 the children simply cannot live if Jason is to suffer. Nevertheless, she here passes over every personal responsibility she has in choosing to murder them, and instead presents it as a fait accompli; indeed, she suggests that since they must die anyway, it is her duty as a mother to be the one to do it!56 Thus in a perverse way she reconciles her philia obligations, her self-image as a caring mother, with killing her philoi. Since there is no need to hide her revenge motive from the chorus, for she made it explicit before,57 we must conclude that here she is “manipulating herself into completing her 52  Euripides 1236–50. 53  Euripides 1045, 1058. 54  This is supported by the fact that Medea earlier asserts the fixed nature of her plan (791– 93, 817, 1059). 55  Foley (1989) 84–5, Schlesinger (1983) 295. 56  Medea uses the exact same lines at 1062–3, underlining the statement’s importance. 57  Euripides 817.

258

Vacano

objective”.58 Often in tragedy, Blundell argues, “it is passion which sets the goals that reason defends” – yes, I would add, for it is the protagonists’ ethical reasoning which allows their passion to pursue its goals.59 Indeed, it enables Medea to finally accept her transformation: herself as philos of her children she now literally leaves in the past in order to achieve her aim of becoming an heroic avenger – a transformation like Walt’s into his alter ego ‘Heisenberg’ which takes its iconic form in the final scene where she is raised high above the stage like an avenging goddess in the chariot of her grandfather Helios.60 Yet “[t]he granddaughter of Helios may stand in triumph on her dragon-chariot, but Medea the woman is dead”.61 Thus, I hope to have shown, putting the plots of Breaking Bad and Medea side by side not only reveals interesting similarities and differences between the ancient and (post)modern conceptions of the tragic protagonist (like a similarity in the moral transformation of the protagonist, and a difference in their attitudes towards social norms). The comparison also functions as a heuristic tool, a creative prism that makes us see new things in both works, like a colour is perceived differently depending on the colour next to it. By putting Medea next to Walter White we gain a new way of understanding the character arc of the ‘problematic protagonist’ or antihero: it is a dialectical process in which self-justification (through philia arguments) and the protagonist’s (latent) aim of self-assertion drive each other towards a tragic transformation, the achievement of which entails both victory and defeat. In this light, Walter White is not only a classical, tragic protagonist, but with equal force we may observe that Medea is ‘breaking bad’. 3

The Labyrinth of Tragedy

Now let us take the comparison beyond the interpretation of these two specific ‘tragedies’, and consider whether it may also help us to understand our experience of their tertium comporationis, the problematic protagonist. During these narratives, our initial sympathy for the protagonist must eventually face the increasingly problematic consequences of his actions; a conflict which, we may assume, affects our moral and emotional perspective on the story. Yet how exactly does our perspective change? 58  Mastronarde (2002) 22; my emphasis. 59  Blundell (1989) 141. 60  φίλοι γ᾽ ἔφυσαν 1250. 61  Schlesinger (1983) 310.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

259

In order to understand this, the episode ‘Dead Freight’ in Breaking Bad may prove a particularly rich case, as it essentially captures the entire series’ antihero experience in its fifty-minute runtime. We watch Walt, Jesse, and their henchman Todd rob a train in the desert. The plan is perfect: when the train is forced to stop by a truck on the tracks, they will secretly drain some methylamine from the train and replace it with water (to compensate for the weight). No one will ever know. No one will be killed. The robbery is perhaps the most suspenseful scene of the entire series: as the exceptionally long and intense soundtrack fuels our excitement, the train starts moving too soon with Jesse still underneath and Todd on top of it, while Walt insists that they “hold it steady” as they pour the water in. Then, just in time, they are done, Todd jumps off the moving train, and Jesse emerges unharmed from underneath it. Overjoyed that they have pulled off this elaborate heist they pat each other’s backs, until one by one they fall silent and stare at a young boy who has seen it all. Sitting on his dirt bike he looks at them, waving, an innocent witness to their perfect robbery. Todd waves back and then, as Jesse shouts “no!” and Walt gawks in bewilderment, shoots him in a frame that substitutes the viewer for the victim (Fig. 1). The end credits roll. The episode exemplifies the hamartia that characterises the entire series: the aim of Jesse’s ‘perfect plan’ was specifically that they should not be caught and no one should be killed. Just before the robbery Jesse explained to Todd the quintessential precondition of the plan’s success: “no one, other than us, can ever know that this robbery went down – nobody”. It is significant therefore that the child’s murderer is Todd, who is presented throughout the episode as an immoral yet loyal henchman, a tool to be instructed towards a goal. As an embodiment of the plan’s perfectness he fulfils his function, causing a literal misdirection of the protagonists’ aim (that no one should be killed) towards the innocent boy, while Walt and Jesse can only observe the tragedy of their hamartia. Our perspective during the heist scene is characterised by suspense, a phenomenon which is founded in uncertainty; the train robbery is exciting because we continually wonder whether or not it will succeed. Indeed, more than merely waiting for the outcome, suspense consists of an eagerness, a hope of success.62 Thus through suspense we come to identify ourselves with the protagonists’ aims: as their goals and our hope of a good resolution coincide, we literally ‘sym-pathise’, or ‘feel with’ their endeavour to achieve their ends. As a consequence, Frederic Jameson argues, suspenseful narratives, “like detective stories, [are] read ‘for the ending’ – the bulk of pages becoming sheer devalued 62  Belton (1991) 934.

260

Vacano

figure 1 Capture Breaking Bad (2012), season 5, episode 5, “Dead Freight”, Todd shoots the innocent boy. Source: Breaking Bad season 5 (part 1), Vince Gilligan (creator), 2012, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, DVD version

means to an end – in this case the ‘solution’”.63 When we concentrate on a hoped-for resolution that lies in the fictional ‘future’, the narrative events before our eyes are meaningful only insofar as they function to bring about this end. In this ‘functionalist’ perspective, we, the readers and viewers, are always ‘in the dark’, as if inside a labyrinth suspensefully following and sympathising with the protagonist as he searches for the way out; and when he does, when Sherlock Holmes has ‘solved’ the crime, we think back to the labyrinth only as an exciting experience, but otherwise meaningless. In the same way, the suspenseful train episode would have been an entirely unmemorable event if Walt, Jesse and Todd had never encountered the boy. They would simply, like the audience, have moved on smilingly and left it all behind. But there he is! The innocent boy, shot to death right in front of us. The effect this has on our perspective is best illustrated by the scene’s relation, ‘reference’ I daresay, to another Western, Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903). Like the Breaking Bad episode, this very first Western follows a gang robbing a train. The film’s violence must have been exciting to look at, especially for the contemporary audience which had never seen a narrative film before.64 But in the final shot, the film turns enjoyment into anguish, as one of the bandits suddenly points his gun at us (Fig. 2), and shoots! The violence which had 63  Jameson (1979) 132. 64  Perez (1998) 233.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

261

figure 2 Capture The Great Train Robbery (1903), the bandit shoots the viewer. Source: The Great Train Robbery, Edwin S. Porter (director), 1903 Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0oBQIWAfe4 [Accessed 2 October 2019]

previously been an instrumental element of the suspenseful story – ‘Will the bandits succeed?’ – is suddenly realised in the startling power of the present image. In this sense we now have not a functionalist, but a ‘comprehensive’ perspective: what we see is not relevant as a step towards the outcome of the story, nor is it merely valuable as a powerful present event, but it seems to comprehend the significance of the entire story in the single image, similar to the way ekphrasis functions in epic, so that we, the audience, at once comprehend the true meaning of the story’s events. This is probably what Jameson means when (without elaborating) he contrasts the ‘functionalist’ perspective to Erich Auerbach’s contention that “what [Homeric epic] narrates is for the time being the only present, and fills both the stage and the reader’s mind completely”.65,66 Such a perspective seems to require a lack of suspense, for that would pull our attention away from the 65  Jameson (1979) 132. 66  Auerbach (1953) 4–5.

262

Vacano

present towards future developments of the plot. This marks one crucial difference between the two shooting scenes: although both Breaking Bad and The Great Train Robbery show someone firing a gun in the direction of the camera after the main story arc has ended, the latter still has some element of suspense, namely the new question “whether it will hurt [since, especially in those early days of film, the audience feels the illusory threat], and we’re reassured that it will not”.67 When the bandit’s bullet fails to harm us, the shock of the image disappears with the solving of the final suspense; in ‘Dead Freight’ however, there is no solution – the shock pervades throughout the credits, ending the episode in the opposite of a cliffhanger: instead of wondering what will happen next, our mind cannot but remain with the dreadful image of the dead boy. It has sometimes been suggested that such ‘comprehensivism’ is the default perspective ancient audiences had while watching a tragedy.68 If one assumes that most myths were common knowledge in Antiquity, the outline of many plots must have been “already thoroughly familiar to the audience”.69 If so, the unfolding events are always ‘comprehended’ in relation to the larger structure of the story: we understand Oedipus’ search for Laius’ killer(s) both in relation to his background, his attempt to save Thebes from the plague, and in relation to his impending fate. The plot’s past and future, in short, are ‘comprehended’ in the present. As such, the Oedipus Rex would differ fundamentally from modern detectives: while Sherlock Holmes always knows more than we do, keeping us in suspense, we always know more than Oedipus.70 Hence Oedipus Rex has been called the tragedy of dramatic irony: we know that almost every word Oedipus speaks in his quest for answers (his aim) is true in a different way than he thinks.71 This gives the protagonist’s attempts to realise his (‘perfect’) plan something pitiful: like men in the eyes of the Homeric Gods, tragic protagonists may appear to us like rats who futily attempt to make their way out of a labyrinth, which we, from our ‘comprehensive perspective’, know to be without end. To be sure, audiences of the Medea had foreknowledge as well:72 the deaths of the children were canonically part of the Medea-myth. Since there existed 67  Perez (1998) 233. 68  Moles (1979) 90. 69  Burian (1997) 183, Erp Taalman Kip (1997) 66. 70  Belton (1991) 934. 71  Vernant (1983) 191, Rijser (2016) 50. 72  At times, Breaking Bad aspires to this as well: we often already get to see the ending of the season in the first episode: it is never all-revealing, but enough to make us ask “how does Walt end up in that pitiful condition?”

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

263

many versions of the story,73 the audience was bound to ask how Euripides would make it happen.74 Nevertheless, their expectations must have been beaten: there is no attestation of Medea as their (conscious) murderess before Euripides.75,76 Although the nurse fears that Medea may harm the children, she predicts the danger to arise from suicidal despair, while the actual deed is done in full consciousness.77 Medea’s subsequent emphasis on killing Creon, Jason, and his bride moreover distracts the attention from the children.78 Hence there is a significant element of surprise in the Medea, suggesting that ancient tragedy at times may have been quite a suspenseful event. In fact, Aristotle notes that “even the familiar stories are familiar only to a few”.79 So although we, from the perspective of present-day scholarship, always tend to read dramatic irony in tragedy, ancient audiences may (as in ‘Dead Freight’) sometimes only have realised the true meaning of events after watching the outcome.80 We may therefore recognise in ancient tragedy, like in Breaking Bad, a change of perspective from functionalism to comprehensivism. Indeed, according to Aristotle it is such a change that intensifies the tragic emotions of eleos (‘pity’) and phobos (‘fear’): Tragedy … is a representation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly [παρὰ τὴν δόξαν] and at the same time in consequence of one another [δι᾽ ἄλληλα]; there is more of the marvellous in them then than if they happened of themselves or by mere chance.81 Above we saw that in Aristotle’s view fear and pity are caused by a gap between a good intention and a bad outcome, that is, by the protagonist’s hamartia. Yet in this passage the one who ‘misses’ is not just the protagonist, but the audience too; the plot’s chain of events, Aristotle argues, takes us inevitably (by cause and effect, δι᾽ ἄλληλα), yet against our assumption (παρὰ τὴν δόξαν) to an 73  E.g. killed by the Corinthians, killed accidentally by Medea. 74  Erp Taalman Kip (1997) 69. 75  One exception is perhaps Neophron, although most of the evidence suggests that his play is post-Euripidean, Mossman (2011) 23–8. 76  Mossman (2011) 8. 77  Euripides 36, 90–5, 100–18. 78  Euripides 374–5. 79  Aristotle 1451b25. 80  Erp Taalman Kip (1997) 65. 81  Aristotle 1452a1–5.

264

Vacano

unfortunate outcome, so that, as he elsewhere calls it, we are astonished.82 The solution the audience aims for (in the suspense of the functionalist perspective), our doxa that the protagonist should attain her goal, is shown (in the comprehensive oversight) to lead against our doxa to a terrible misfire of that self-same aim.83 Thus, as Nussbaum calls it, presented with “the vulnerability of our deepest commitments”, a gap between our own commitment to the protagonist’s cause and its outcome, fear and pity are felt the strongest.84 This dynamic pervades the Medea up to and including the grand revelation of infanticide: in the first epeisodion Medea persuades Creon to postpone her exile for one day, ostensibly so that she may provide for her children.85 The chorus has sympathy for this aim, which it expresses directly afterwards in an uncommon anapaestic interlude:86 [Unhappy woman,] Ah ah, crushed by your misfortunes, where will you turn? What protector of strangers will you find, what house, what land, to save you from calamity? A god has cast you, Medea, into a hopeless sea of troubles.87 Yet the naïve sympathies of the chorus are immediately overthrown by Medea’s revelation of her true intentions: The situation is bad in every way: who will deny it? But things are not at all as you describe them, do not imagine it: there are still struggles for the newly wedded pair, and for the maker of the match difficulties that are not trifling. Do you think I would ever have fawned on this man unless I stood to gain, unless I were plotting?88 Significantly, by posing this latter rhetorical question Medea herself explicitly confronts the audience with the falsehood of its doxa. For although we, who due to Euripides’ influence have come to equate Medea with infanticide, cannot but recognise Medea’s manipulation of Creon, contemporary audiences would have recalled earlier versions of the myth in which Medea actually endeavoured to protect her children, and would therefore (wrongly) have 82  Aristotle ekplexis 1453b37–1454a9, 1456a21. 83  Cf. Moles (1979) 90. 84  Nussbaum (1986) 385. 85  Euripides 340–7. 86  Mastronarde (2002) ad loc. 87  Euripides 358–63. 88  Euripides 364–9.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

265

supported Medea in her appeal for delay.89 Thus the audience was led to make the same ‘mistake’ as most of the tragedy’s principle characters: Creon is eventually convinced because he sympathises with Medea’s aim to provide for her children. Later, Aegeus is similarly persuaded because he sympathises with her maltreatment by Jason.90,91 The chorus too is ‘manipulated’ into swearing silence to Medea because it completely sympathises with her aim of punishing Jason for violating philia-relations. Only later is it revealed that this same aim, pursued in the absolute by Medea, leads her to murder those who are most philoi to her. By lending their sympathy to Medea’s ‘good’ cause, hoping from a functional perspective for her success – quite irrevocably in the case of Aegeus and the chorus, since they swear an oath – Creon, Aegeus, the chorus, and by the same principle the audience, become co-responsible for allowing Medea to take her aim to its logical, ‘evil’ conclusion: we are shockingly implicated in the crime. This is what we feel when Todd fires towards the camera: not, as in Porter’s precedent, relief that it does not hurt, but hurt that what we so happily went along with has hit this boy, while we, like Walt and Jesse, can only watch. It is thus precisely this shift of perspective which defines our experience of these tragedies.92 Only when (following the functionalist perspective) we have first been involved in the process of sympathising with the protagonist’s aim, do we feel implicated in its horrible misfire; only when (in a comprehensive shock) we are afterwards made to fear and pity the terrible consequences of these sympathetic aims, may we recognise the implications of our own functionalist feelings. Unlike Homer’s protagonists, Medea and Walt often know more than we do – or at least equally little – allowing us to sympathise with their desperate search for a solution, and surprising us with the unfathomable outcomes of their intentions; yet unlike Holmes, they do not lead us to a perfect solution which devaluates every page turned as a means to an end, but rather produce a shocking ending that puts the process of (functionalist) page-turning itself in a new perspective. The Medea and Breaking Bad make us dialectically immerge in and rise above the labyrinth, forcing us to recognise our own hamartia.

89  Mossman (2011) 45 ad loc. 364–409. 90  Another reason for his sympathy is that Medea promises to provide him with children, which he lacks. 91  Euripides 663–758. 92  And which I believe separates them from epic, wherein the narrator’s comprehensive oversight, his ‘epic distance’ as he looks back towards the absolute past, arguably leaves no room for a similarly suspenseful, functionalist identification with the protagonist’s endeavours cf. Bakhtin (1981) 39–40.

266

Vacano

The content of this recognition (or anagnorisis) however is not that ‘good’ intentions may lead to ‘evil’ outcomes; rather it shows us that the rigorous demarcation of such categories is problematic in the first place. While functionalism proceeds under the expectation that there is a fixed ‘solution’, one ‘good’ way out of the labyrinth, the comprehensive perspective provides the tragic truth that such attempts are futile, or indeed counter-productive. We suddenly see the labyrinth from above, and, realising that there is no escape, come to fear and pity our vain attempts to impose some plan, some moral rationale, some Apollonian order on the chaotic unpredictability of the world. Through antihero tragedies we become shockingly aware of our own limitations in defining, reaching and controlling the ‘good’ itself. Still in tragedy this perspective on human fallibility is not without hope or consolation. As Aristotle defines the genre: Tragedy … is a representation (mimesis) of an action that is serious and complete, and which has some greatness about it. […] It achieves, through pity and fear, the ‘washing out’ (catharsis) of such feelings.93 If we focus on ‘representation’ (mimesis) as the defining characteristic of tragedy, as many recent scholars, its very fictionality becomes the central determinant of the catharsis (the ‘washing out’ of negative emotions) it purportedly achieves: the pity and fear that are stirred by tragedy, are simultaneously ordered, and thereby controlled in the work of art.94 That is why we may enjoy watching Walt’s and Medea’s terrible failures: because through the stylization and ordering that is specific to works of art, it provides us with an oversight of the human struggle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that we can never seem to attain in real life.95 For once, tragedy provides us with a comprehensive perspective on the labyrinth of life. 4

Conclusion

Now let us consider once more the central question of this chapter: is the methodological principle of comparison a way to improve our interpretations? What this case study has made clear, I believe, is that the answer to this question goes to the very foundations of interpretative scholarship. ‘Comparative 93  Aristotle, Poet. 1449b21–29. 94  Janko (1992) 342, Lear (1992) 320, Nuttall (1996) 36. 95  Rijser (2016) 41.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

267

reception’ is not merely a different way of arriving at an interpretation, but, as much of Martindale’s writings already suggested, it entails an entirely different vision of what an ‘interpretation’ is. A text’s relations to its historical context, the texts it refers to, and the texts it is received by, are not mere tools in the interpretative process; ‘comparison’ is the fundamental mental process at work at the moment of interpretation. That is, an interpretation consists of a vision of a text’s contrasts and similarities with other texts (and other comparable phenomena). Indeed, naturally it is not only the specific point of comparison explored in this chapter, the ‘problematic’ status of the protagonist, that gives meaning to the character of Medea; we inevitably understand her through the way she ‘compares’ to other famous ‘mothers’, ‘foreigners’, ‘murderers’, ‘ancient protagonists’, and so on, as well. If we accept both this potentially endless variety of points of comparison, and the fact that any interpretation depends on what a thing is ‘compared’ to, then interpretation, and consequently scholarship itself, must be a profoundly creative process: by determining which ‘relations’ we want to look at – e.g. whether we select Euripides’ oeuvre, fifth-century Athens, or the postmodern antihero as its context – the scholar does not (passively) ‘interpret’, but in a way creates the ‘object’ of his attention. It is precisely this observation that scholarship is always comparative, performative, and implicated in its object, that becomes clear from our case study: the process of ‘breaking bad’ in Medea’s character or the two tragedies’ labyrinthian change of perspective are essentially things we would not have seen without putting the two works side by side. Yet this creative aspect of comparative reception also renders the selection of objects no longer neutral, since the very choice of what to compare becomes critically important to the outcome. How then should we make a selection? Would comparing Medea to Sharknado 4 (2016) render equally relevant insights? I believe not. For one, a natural limit to comparison lies in the tertium comparationis: if two objects are simply too dissimilar or, conversely, practically identical, there can be no meaningful interaction between them. Indeed the insights gained from comparing Breaking Bad and Medea derived primarily from their slightly different presentations of the same thing, the ‘problematic protagonist’. Furthermore, the principle of ‘finding meaning through comparison’ may, perhaps unexpectedly, revitalise the argument for a literary canon: if we interpret by means of relating things to comparable phenomena, like relating Medea to other ‘antiheroes’ or ‘mothers’, then the most well-known cultural artefacts and motifs become essential to understanding how people read, perceive and think: they are essentially the framework of comparative points through which a culture experiences the world. Comparing phenomena

268

Vacano

diachronically across a cultural canon will therefore not just render currently relevant ways of looking at the past, but also insights in how we ourselves think. This is how a renewed emphasis on comparison seeks to realise the foundational promise of Classical Reception Studies, that by studying the past we may understand ourselves. 5

Further Reading

Anyone interested in further exploring the approach of ‘comparative reception’ may find inspiring case studies in the work of Odile Heynders, Correspondenties: Gedichten lezen met Gedichten (2006) and Pierre Bayard, Et si les œuvres changeaient d’auteur (2010), which, as this chapter has argued, may be fruitfully combined with a (re)reading of Charles Martindale’s original version of Redeeming the Text (1991). For other takes on the reception of Greek tragedy in film, one may consult Pantelis Michelakis, Greek Tragedy on Screen (2013) and much of Martin Winkler’s large oeuvre on classics and cinema, notably Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (2001). In-depth analyses of Breaking Bad and the contemporary antihero may be found in recent studies by Stache, Breaking Bad. A Cultural History (2017) and Vaage, The Antihero in American Television (2017). Bibliography Auerbach, E., Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Trask, W.R. (Princeton, 1953). Bakhtin, M.M., “The Epic and the Novel: Towards a Methodology for the Study in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Holquist, M. (Austin, 1981), 4–40. Bayard, P., Et si les œuvres changeaient d’auteur? (Paris, 2010). Belfiore, E., Murder among Friends. Violation of Philia in Greek Tragedy (New York, 2000). Bellis, R., “Which Great Literary Work Explains Breaking Bad Best?” The Atlantic (2013) Available from: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/ 10/which-great-literary-work-explains-em-breaking-bad-em-best/280149/ [Accessed 15 February 2017]. Belton, J., “Language, Oedipus, and Chinatown,” Modern Language Notes 106.5 (1991), 933–950.

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

269

Benzon, D.L. and Hays, D.G., “Metaphor, Recognition and Neural Process,” The American Journal of Semiotics 5.1 (1987), 59–80. Bremer, J.M., Hamartia: Tragic Error in the Poetics of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam, 1969). Brown, C., “What is ‘Comparative’ Literature?” Comparative Critical Studies 10.1 (2013), 67–88. Burian, P., “Myth into muthos: the shaping of tragic plot,” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. Easterling, P.E. (Cambridge, 1997). Burrow, C., Epic Romance: Homer to Milton (Oxford, 1993). Damrosch, D., “Comparative Literature?” PMLA 118.2 (2003), 326–448. Dean, M., “Walter White Didn’t Break – He Was Always Bad,” Flavorwire (2013). Available from: http://flavorwire.com/415408/walter-white-didnt-break-he-was-always-bad [Accessed 15 February 2017]. De Pourcq, M., Thou Art More Lovely: klassieke tradities en de kunst van het vergelijken (Nijmegen, 2016). Detienne, M., Comparer l’incomparable (Paris, 2000). Dewulf, J., “Blaise Cendrars and the Nietzschean Roots of Multiracial Identity in Stefan Zweig’s Brazil: Land of the Future,” Comparative Literature 68.2 (2016), 199–217. During, S., “Comparative Literature,” ELH 71 (2004), 313–322. Edmeades, L., “Affect and the Musication of Language in John Cage’s ‘Empty Words’,” Comparative Literature 68.2 (2016), 218–34. Foley, H., “Medea’s Divided Self,” Classical Antiquity 8.1 (1989), 61–85. Galinsky, K., “Film,” in A Companion to the Classical Tradition, ed. Kallendorf, C.W. (Malden, 2010), 393–407. Gikandi, S., “Contested Grammars: Comparative Literature, Translation, and the Challenge of Locality,” in A Companion to Comparative Literature, eds. Behdad, A. and Thomas, D. (Malden, 2011). Gill, C., Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue (Oxford, 1996). Halliwell, S., The Poetics of Aristotle (London, 1987). Heynders, O., “Het lezen van poëzie,” in Correspondenties: Gedichten lezen met Gedichten (Amsterdam, 2006), 13–22. Jameson, F., “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” Social Text 1 (1979), 130–148. Janko, R., “From Catharsis to the Aristotelian Mean,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. Rorty, E. Oksenberg (Princeton, 1992). Just, D., “Literature and Learning How to Live: Milan Kundera’s Theory of the Novel as a Quest for Maturity,” Comparative Literature 68.2 (2016), 235–250. Kip, A.M. van Erp Taalman, Bokkenzang: over Griekse tragedies (Amsterdam, 1997). Kraak, H., “Einde verhaal,” Sir Edmund 1.6 (2014), 8–12.

270

Vacano

Lear, J., “Katharsis,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. Rorty, E. Oksenberg (Princeton, 1992). Leo, R., “Hamlet’s Early International Lives: Geeraardt Brandt’s De Veinzende Torquatus and the Performance of Political Realism,” Comparative Literature 68.2 (2016), 155–80. MacInnes, P., “Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan: the man who turned Walter White from Mr Chips into Scarface,” The Guardian (2012). Available from: https://www .theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/may/19/vince-gilligan-breaking-bad [Accessed 2 April 2017]. Martindale, Ch., “Redeeming the Text: The Validity of Comparisons of Classical and Postclassical Literature (A View From Britain),” A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 1.3 (1991), 45–75. Martindale, Ch., Redeeming the Text: Latin poetry and the hermeneutics of reception (Cambridge, 1993). Martindale, Ch., “Introduction: Thinking Through Reception,” In: Martindale, Ch. and Thomas, R., Classics and the Uses of Reception (London, 2006), 1–13. Martindale, Ch., “Reception – a new humanism? Receptivity, pedagogy, the transhistorical,” Classical Receptions Journal 5.2 (2013), 169–183. Mastronarde, D.J., Euripides: Medea (Cambridge, 2002). Meek, J., “It’s the moral thing to do,” London Review of Books 35.1 (2013), 7–9. Moles, J., “Notes on Aristotle, Poetics 13 and 14”. The Classical Quarterly 29.19 (1979), 77–94. Mossman, J., Euripides: Medea (Warminster, 2011). Mueller, M., “The Language of Reciprocity in Euripides’ Medea,” American Journal of Philology 122.4 (2001), 471–504. Nussbaum, M.C., The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1986). Nuttal, A.D., Why Does Tragedy Give Pleasure? (Oxford, 1996). Perez, G., “American Tragedy,” in: The Material Ghost: Films and their Medium (Baltimore, 1998), 233–259. Quint, D., Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, 1993). Reese, H., “Why Is the Golden Age of TV So Dark?” The Atlantic (2013). Available from: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/why-is-the-golden-age -of-tv-so-dark/277696/ [Accessed 15 February 2017]. Rijser, D., Een telkens nieuwe Oudheid: of hoe Tiberius in New Jersey belandde (Amsterdam, 2016). Schlesinger, E., “On Euripides’ Medea,” in Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy, ed. Segal, E. (Oxford, 1983), 294–310. Stache, L.C., Breaking Bad. A Cultural History (Lanham, 2017).

Breaking Bad as Mirror of Medea

271

Tarán, L. and Gutas, D., Aristotle: Poetics (Leiden, 2012). Vaage, M.B., The Antihero in American Television (New York, 2017). Vernant, J.-P., “Ambiguity and Reversal: Oedipus Rex,” in Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy, ed. Segal, E. (Oxford, 1983), 189–209. Vicente, M.V., “Pornography and the Spanish Inquisition: The Reading of Le Portier des Chartreux in Eighteenth-Century Madrid,” Comparative Literature 68.2 (2016), 181–198. Werff, T. Van de, “Breaking Bad als moderne tragedie,” Motherboard (2013). Available from: https://motherboard.vice.com/nl/article/breaking-bad-als-moderne-tragedie [Accessed 15 February 2017]. Whitlock Blundell, M., Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics (Cambridge, 1989). Winkler, M.M., “Classical Mythology and the Western Film,” Comparative Literature Studies 22.4 (1985), 516–540. Winkler, M.M., Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (Oxford, 2001). Winkler, M.M., Spartacus: Film and History (Malden, 2006). Winkler, M.M., Cinema and Classical Texts: Apollo’s New Light (Cambridge, 2009).

Epilogue: Nothing to Do with Oedipus? Towards New Roles for Classics David Rijser 1

Jane Campion and Oedipus

According to Plutarch, the phrase ‘nothing to do with Dionysus’ was what we would call a conservative quip, coined by critics of Aeschylus’ and Phrynichus’ replacement of traditional subject-matter in tragedy by tales of travel and adventure.1 Plutarch’s topic in the passage at hand, table talk at symposia, should be treated in a similar fashion, he states: keine Experimente. Rather than intellectually taxing and pretentious, it should be simple, traditional and accessible to all present. Plutarch’s classicism, in social situations at least, preferably covers common ground. Yet what he considers of good taste and of the first order – and thus what contemporary Aulus Gellius would call classicus – is at the same time deeply rooted in the past, deriving its nurture, its virtue from these very roots.2 I would like to explore some of the resonances, parallels and contrasts of this proverbial expression when confronted with the role Classics play in our culture today, being reminded of the passage from Plutarch in the course of watching a modern tragedy. What I seek to find out is what classical receptions can do today and tomorrow in the media, in our classes, in our culture. My frame thus is educational, or cultural-political: why reception, and if for valid reasons, how. Arguably, at present, one of the most important functions of tragedy in antiquity, the enactment in the ‘open’ form of drama of tensions and changes in society, is closely paralleled by the genre of the up-market television-series. Within this medium, the flawed and tragic detective’s quest for a criminal is a major sub-genre. Rather than with Dionysus, this genre and its quest have everything to do with Oedipus.3 Or do they? The two instalments of Jane Campion’s and co-writer Gerard Lee’s acclaimed mini-series Top of the Lake from 2013 and 2017, star Elisabeth Moss 1  Μὐθους καὶ πἀθη. The proverb runs τἰ ταῦτα πρὸς τὸν Διὀνυσον’; Plutarch Moralia 615A. 2  Gellius 19.8.15. 3  See Belton (1991), Winkler (2001), Rijser (2016).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004427020_015

Epilogue

273

as a detective investigating what is hidden beneath the reflecting surface of the water referenced in the title. This includes rape, murder, incest and mistaken parentage, themes that increasingly appear intimately connected to the personal experiences of the protagonist. The first series has her tracking a disappeared pregnant teenage girl, Tui, and in the course of events uncover a pedophile network for group rape. Robin, the detective, has herself been subjected to gang-rape and borne a child in consequence. Both the pregnant girl and the pursuing detective repeatedly seek counsel from an enigmatic and oracular female commune leader, GJ, who is surrounded by a chorus of displaced and desperate post-menopausal women; they both promptly receive choral-like sententiae concerning the issues of the female body and identity. Back in the plot-line, the prime suspect of the pregnant girl’s assumed rape is her aggressive and pathological father; this father, eventually, turns out to be innocent of his daughter’s pregnancy, but does disclose to be Robin’s father, (which makes Tui Robin’s sister both in spirit and in the flesh) and in the finale, he is killed by his own daughter. Although it may be true that a tendency to give in to the temptations of Grand-Guignol is among the less persuasive characteristics of Campion’s work, the negative impression a brief summary like this might give, namely that Top of the Lake is merely a sort of freak show of oedipal spare-parts, would certainly do insufficient justice to the many great merits of the series. These include its superb visuals, casting and actors-direction. But even more impressive is Campion’s relentless exploration of the role of women, in a society fundamentally hostile to their problems and sensitivities; and also more generally, as women in their roles of mothers or children and as active subjects moving in a body that can, or cannot give birth, and that can, or cannot identify with the roles traditionally associated with this function. What is evident from the summary above is that Oedipus is written all over Top of the Lake. The question is how, and to what ends. Is it gratuitous lip service to fashionable, Freudian topics? Or is it a sort of flag-waving, consciously pointing out to us, the viewers, not merely that the series is rooted in Sophocles’ play, but that we must do something with that information? In short, what has this got to do with Oedipus? Plutarch’s answer would perhaps be: too little. Campion’s interaction with Sophocles’ play is certainly very loose, and hardly literal or philological; it is extremely complex and indirect, and in an important sense, Top of the Lake moves away from the antique play, as we shall see. Yet, in contrast with ancient criticism launched at unwarranted innovations, Plutarch’s criticism of Campion would perhaps be, not that the old subjects had been discarded, but

274

Rijser

that constitutive elements of an old and venerated play had been taken apart, shaken up and tousled as it were in a lottery-machine, and poured out again at random to create a pile of Oedipal spare-parts. One could think of several reasons for this reconfiguration of plot elements. One could be aesthetic: the deconstruction of coherence of plot and character as an aesthetic choice. Another could be that, just as certain topical improbabilities end up as almost de rigueur in many genres, from ancient tragedy itself to modern horror or action movies, oedipal elements in the detective genre have acquired a status of self-evidence, to the extent that both public and authors accept their presence as completely natural and not in any need of explanation or legitimation. But in fact, a neo-Plutarchean argument would run, such references to Oedipus are superficial and gratuitous, typical for modern culture’s general trend not to engage with antique culture in a decent, that is, ‘philological’ way anymore. This, basically, was the argument of Salvatore Settis in 2004 when discussing gratuitous references to the classics in modern culture, and it is a recurrent argument with classicists.4 Superficial or not, reference to tragedy in Top of the Lake is in any case marked by explicit pointers. Especially the theatrical insertion of the ‘chorus’ of women, led by a GJ, the enigmatic contamination of Sphinx and Tiresias, and set against an absurd backdrop of containers that create a ‘separate space’ similar to a theatre, literally brings into play an element of the ancient genre which in modern adaptations has usually been deleted, muted or transposed as perhaps the most problematic of ancient literary conventions to modern sensitivities.5 But to accuse Top of the Lake of superficiality would be odd in any case, because the problems it broaches are of such a profound character. At heart, Top of the Lake asks Kantian questions: where do I come from, why does that matter, and what should I do? One may object, as some have, that to suppose that existential themes are that prominent in tragedy is itself a projection of modern audiences, but that does of course not affect the profundity of Top of the Lake.6 In Top of the Lake these existential questions, however, are addressed exclusively from a gendered perspective: it is the mother-daughter theme that is central and it is the role of women that is explored in-depth. It has therefore plausibly been suggested that, rather than the myth of Oedipus, that of Demeter and Persephone takes centre-stage here.7 In any case, the re4  In Futuro del classico (2004). For a critique, see Rijser (2016), chapter 20. The issue is also addressed, with characteristic subtlety, by Martindale (2013). 5  See Goldhill (2012) 166–200. 6  Dawe in his commentary on the Oedipus Rex is a notorious example of this line of criticism, see Dawe (1982). 7  Thornham (2017).

Epilogue

275

sult is a striking revision of Sophocles’ exploration of the theme of identity, constructed by unpacking and reassembling Sophoclean themes to reveal a totally different ‘significance’, namely the questioning of female identity in our modern world. Despite all this, as far as I can see, the handling of Sophoclean themes is not performed by way of a direct engagement with the text of the Oedipus, let alone an assessment of what that text actually said or intended to say to its original public, and how that content may or may not have distorted through time and misunderstanding, which would be, I suppose, the traditional, ‘humanist’ way of dealing with classical themes. If not philological or ‘humanist’, what function does the reception of tragedy have here? As in other cases in contemporary cinema, Top of the Lake could be regarded as a case of ‘anchoring innovation’, the strategy by which what is in fact strikingly innovative is legitimized and made palatable by connecting it to, and to a certain extent dressing it up as, something old, and hence acceptable and venerable – like the classical in Plutarch.8 To be sure, what the writers of Top of the Lake were after can be qualified as an innovation: the opening up of viewers’ horizons to the extent to which the cultural tradition has been dominated by male perspectives. Yet to see the function of the Oedipus in Top of the Lake merely as anchoring would, I think, be reductive. In the first place this implies that ‘innovation’ is not merely a means, but somehow also an end; yet to identify the ends of cultural production as ‘innovation’ smells like the projection of academic concepts of progress onto cultural practices: modern culture does not, like science, incrementally develop on a balance sheet towards the new – nor, by the way, did ancient culture. Rather, culture is a communicative system, in which at times it is desirable and necessary to say something new, often indeed with the help of the old. Certainly, this new thing can be presented in the context, or even the guise, of the old, but even so the use of, in this case, the classical prototype is not merely to legitimize and make palatable. Also, and just as powerfully, the old, the tradition, is used as a heuristic tool: a way to find not only old ways to say new things, but the very new things one is looking for themselves. The way this is done is by ‘search and replace’, as it were: take the Oedipus, replace the protagonist by a woman, and see what a fundamental change takes place.9 From this point of view, it also becomes clearer that the confrontation in reception practice or theory with the cultures of classical antiquity on a 8  For the Dutch research project introducing this concept see https://www.ru.nl/oikos/ anchoring-innovation (consulted 30.05.2018). 9  For the ‘heuristic comparison’ see also Koen Vacano’s essay on Breaking Bad and Medea in this volume.

276

Rijser

fundamentally modern issue like feminism does not need to be contrastive and judgmental towards the supposedly (morally) ‘incorrect’ past. Indeed, such a confrontation can show both how much has changed with time, and how little (modern New Zealand is in some respects similar to ancient male-dominated cultures, but New Zealand, contrary to ancient cultures, should know better). In this context it is essential once more to point out how terribly important it is, when considering classical receptions, to keep a firm eye on the mediations and mediators of ancient traditions involved in a given case of reception. The full impact of the theme of identities that we are tracing, using Oedipus as a prism, is only revealed when taking into account these ‘mediators of Oedipus’, the stations by which Oedipus has arrived at its destination, in this case Jane Campion. A significant role in the chain is played by Roman Polanski’s film noir Chinatown and the reception of both Freudian Oedipality and Sophocles’ tragedy that it contains.10 The importance of Chinatown for Top of the Lake is already revealed in the title of Campion’s second series, China Girl. What the first series of Top of the Lake did with Sophoclean tragedy, the second, so it seems, does with Chinatown, that is, it re-configures its thematic material in unexpected ways in order to create new layers of significance. Especially by way of the presence and the exploitation of an ‘alien’ ethnic group in a prosperous western community (represented here by Asian prostitutes, who double as surrogate mothers, renting out their wombs for money) the second series insistently questions the status of self and other, and the moral and political questions concerned. These themes are structured in China Girl with an eye on Chinatown rather than on Chinatown’s ‘exemplar’ Oedipus Rex. Yet in Campion’s world, the dark otherness emblematized by Chinatown that remained unseen and abstract in Polanski’s film, little more than a symbol, is explored in-depth and is thus connected more structurally to the plot. Nonetheless, Campion’s interaction with Chinatown seems respectful rather than disdainful. In fact Polanski and his scenarist Robert Towne themselves had used the technique of deconstruction and subsequent re-assemblage that Campion adopts: Chinatown is a recombination and contamination of multiple reference-points, among which the noirs of Chandler and Hammett, and John Huston’s Maltese Falcon are of equal importance as Sophocles’ Oedipus. One of the results in Chinatown was a marked sensitivity to issues of gender completely absent in Sophocles’ tragedy. The detective Jake Gittes as played unforgettably by Jack Nicholson is emphatically part of a world that has, at the very least, an extremely limited respect for women, and this is one of the major reasons that Gittes does not see what is right there in front of his eyes. 10  For more detailed argument see Rijser (2016).

Epilogue

277

Campion adopts the theme of distorted vision and distorting perspectives, working it through a plot that dramatizes the idea that he who seeks to unravel a problem is or becomes part of that problem himself. But she handles it with reference to Polanski-Towne rather than to Sophocles, from the psychological perspective rather than from the theological. This is indeed why the ‘dialogical model’ in reception studies is so difficult a critical concept: we do not know to whom we are talking, and through which intermediaries; we do not know who hide behind the masks that the dramatis personae of our dialogues with antiquity wear.11 2

Show Me the Way to the Next Oedipus

Naturally, all of this should not keep us from attempting to ‘converse’. On the contrary: the above shows that when we would decline to, much more is at stake than the classical past alone. To put it the other way around: classical receptions provide an ideal tool to show a new generation of students, not per se the classical past and the present, but what lies between and therefore also what separates us from that past. The phrasing here suggests a metaphor that may be useful, different from that of the dialogue: the itinerary.12 A contemporary student, for instance, departing from Top of the Lake, could travel via (and thus see and gain knowledge of, as the Odyssey already knew) aspects of film history and American culture in the seventies of the twentieth century, the impact of Freud and Nietzsche on receptions of Sophocles’ Oedipus, and the contrast they provide with classicist readings like Voltaire’s, all the way back to Sophocles’ tragedy and beyond to Homer. Of course, there are alternative routes well worth taking, and the odd masterpiece along the way that vaut le détour may or may not be included (Thomas Mann’s late excursion into Oedipus land and the Middle Ages, Der Erwählte, is an example). By whatever route, the excursion would be long and taxing, covering little less ground than a cultural history of the West. Daunting perhaps, but also adventurous and exciting. What would one be seeing, then? Not merely disruptions, diversity, chaos, misunderstandings, although one would be seeing those as well; but also the coherence of the cultural tradition as a system of communication, either by 11  For more problems with the dialogical model and secondary literature on the subject see Hardwick, this volume. 12  Itineraries are expanding as a heuristic tool in cultural history; see e.g. David Wallace’s collaborative Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418 (2016).

278

Rijser

‘dialogue’, or by ‘travel’, with or towards classical antiquity and its culture, through time, with interlocutors, or alternatively, stops, from every age and extraction. Students, I think, would be well served by such talks or excursions. A curious incident in a recent seminar on classical receptions brought this forcefully home to me. Students (with visible abashment, it is true) confessed they felt ‘moral scruples’ in complying with the assignment to watch Polanski’s Chinatown, on the grounds that the director was a ‘rapist’, and would profit by their downloads of his work because he is still alive. The incident not merely shows that the study of the past is becoming politicized in a way that endangers an unbiased evaluation – we have seen above that, rapist or not, Polanski has things to say in Chinatown that can be aligned with feminist perspectives; but even if not that would of course be no excuse for not seeing it. We certainly should want to continue viewing the nazi propagandist Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens – if for no other than aesthetic reasons – or read the anti-Semite Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit – even if, I would add, the authors were still alive. Another thing that becomes clearer from an incident like this, is that works of art are losing the sacrosanct status they had gained through romantic art theory: art is no longer considered to exist autonomously, outside of society and politics both personal and public. But perhaps the most alarming aspect of the affair, is that what Martindale called ‘radical presentism’ is apparently becoming something one may confess to without too much shame.13 The past, in other words, is being subjected to a judgement exclusively based on the present. This makes sense, since our culture in general seems increasingly to be occupied with the present: the present is what we experience on the interactive screen. Our smart phones and other devices suggest to us an eternal present of ‘connectedness’. As a consequence (or is it, partly, also a cause?), history is receding from school curricula, while libraries and museums, traditional treasure-troves of a shared past, are only able to capture public attention when their ‘shows’ are represented as ‘events’. This all-consuming present envelops us with an orgy of likes, snapchats and whatsapps that on the one hand defy categorisation into a consensus and on the other make it ever more difficult to see the past. This letting go of the past in fact amounts to a shift of paradigm, rivalled perhaps only by the cultural watershed that occurred in Late Antiquity, which is in some ways strangely similar – early Christianity’s defiant moralism, and the resounding condemnation it espoused of some of the most cherished values of the world it rose in, certainly does ring a bell under the present cultural 13  Martindale (2013), resuming Redeeming the Text (1987).

Epilogue

279

circumstances. Yet in the post-classical world, as in the classical one itself, the past nevertheless remained both culturally and politically absolutely essential for the construction of identities.14 Up to fairly recently the only way to affirm your identity and show who you were was with the help of a past. The result was that everyone who counted in society sought the help of experts to produce for them an appropriate, that is, classical past, if possible real, if not, invented. These experts usually were scholars and/or artists – the conjunction of these two categories as performing the same function, by the way, is quite significant: what we now consider to be the historical ‘truth’ started out on a par with ‘fiction’. Indeed, this situation goes a long way to explain the traditional importance of historical studies. It also helps to explain their present crisis. In that crisis, the model of reception studies is, I think, extremely valuable: in education, and perhaps even in culture in general, because it connects present and past in a theoretically sound way, and shows us the coherence of our culture, which has ‘everything to do with Dionysus’, so to speak. 3

Mummius and the Burden of Conservatism

Centuries before Plutarch, Polybius had another account of the etymology of ‘nothing to do with Dionysus’. He traced it to the soldiers of the Roman sacker of Corinth, Mummius, who had a priceless masterpiece of Aristides portraying Dionysus and Ariadne from his loot taken out in the courtyard of his quarters to give his soldiers something to play draughts on. One does wonder how they went about it. Were incisions made on the panel to enable play, like in the marble of the steps of the Curia Julia in Rome? Or had Aristides perhaps painted some kind of Mondrian?15 Details being beyond reconstruction, what remains is a curious case of classical reception, illustrating graphically, as classical receptions do so often, what the receiving end values most. Usually this results in other new interpretations, locations, uses and functions for works of art and literature. The story of the maltreated masterpiece is so funny because it shows us what we thought we already knew: Romans prefer law and order over the fuss about art that the ‘Greeklings’ make all of the time: whereas the Greek connoisseur savours the illusion, the Roman just sees the object. Like Plutarch’s story about the proverb did, Polybius’ thrives on the tension between origin and re-configuration central to reception theory. 14  See for this Enenkel and Ottenheym (2017) and their forthcoming volume (2018). 15  Polybius 39.13.

280

Rijser

And yet: draughts in antiquity are quite an interesting subject; so is the spare time of Roman soldiers in Greece (were they perhaps held at close quarters to keep them from teaming up with the notorious demi-monde of Corinth and so have them avoid the fate of Hannibal’s soldiers in Capua in the Second Punic War?).16 But Polybius clearly prefers Aristides’ masterpiece to the playing soldiers, when he considers what is worthy of recording and respect. That is a far from obvious choice from today’s perspective. Most archaeologists or ancient historians today would almost certainly value social history over high art, and even to concede a superior status to a classical ‘original’ over a draught board that witnessed as important an occasion as the Sack of Corinth, would probably be ‘not done’.17 Seen from this perspective, the modern academic disciplines of archaeology and ancient history are forms of ‘reception’, selecting from a (con)text only the information that interests the modern ‘reader’ of this text and passing by ‘what was in it’ for its writer or original public. The question what this interest would be is of course a theoretical quicksand, and many tend to let it rest, preferring to distribute the type of knowledge that technique and technology allow us to attain rather than the answers to questions produced by logical discourse. But apart from these considerations, the most important point, perhaps, is that ancient discourse tends towards the valuation of the old, while our discourse tends towards the valuation of the new. Of course, reception theory teaches us that its study is a two-way system, yielding insight in both ‘original’ and ‘reception’. Nevertheless, when putting this into practice, I think more emphasis comes to rest on the receiving end. Thus, we encounter a paradox: in reception, we look particularly at the new. But many ancient observers couldn’t have cared less about the new. The case of Aristides’ Dionysus and Ariadne shows that artefacts may change function and status as dramatically as the lives of men, who for instance may be captured and sold into slavery, as Polybius, who recounts the story, experienced himself. The point is that ancient observers tended to evaluate such changes as being for the worse. There are, I think, only two notable exceptions to the rule that, in Antiquity, cultural change implies cultural decline: Periclean Athens and Augustan Rome. Perhaps because of the cultural optimism that characterizes these ‘movements’, they have been admired and canonized most 16  Narrated in Livy bk. 23. 17  A striking illustration of this is provided by the Museum for the Dutch Canon in Arnhem, which displays an excellent portrait of Queen Wilhelmina that was maimed by the knife of an Indonesian nationalist in the struggle for Indonesian independence in the state of disrepair after the attack: what happened to the painting is considered more important than the painting itself.

Epilogue

281

thoroughly and most consistently (helped by the fact that Augustan Rome canonized Periclean Athens). But in the second half of the last century, largely through associations with totalitarianism or Empire, their spell had ceased to work its magic. In general, in evaluating processes of change, ancient observers more often than not complained of the decline and fall of culture and civilisation; especially, of course, when one was Greek. Indeed Mummius himself became a celebrated example of the ‘Roman bull in the Greek china shop’, sending on other priceless works of art with the stern warning to the carriers that they would have to replace what was lost by their fault with other works of ‘exactly the same value’.18 Modern classicists (myself included) often have difficulty freeing themselves entirely of such negative evaluations of historical development when it comes to the tradition of which they are the self-appointed guardians: it has been part of the DNA, so to say, of the trade for too long to be discarded with complete insouciance. This, I think, is what causes Settis to say that we need ‘serious’ interaction with antiquity, based on a detailed understanding of linguistic and historical cultural data: it was so much better of old, in the golden days of humanism and philology. At heart, classicists are conservative, by definition almost, so to speak. Paradoxically, when classicists start something new, they often turn away from Classics, like the Dutch ‘Beweging van ‘80’, a group of post-romantic poets dominated by classicists at the turn of the 19th Century, or soixante-huitards like Barthes and Foucault.19 For many who remained in the discipline, however, it has been too threatening to be forced out of their ancient comfort zone by having to study modern receptions, and thus to undermine the impenetrability of their fortress of authority. To anyone studying Classical Receptions it is a truism that to select information from the store of the historical record, even in open-source societies that are in principle without constraint or limit of access, implies putting into play psychological, moral and political priorities (a receptionista will of course be looking especially at those priorities of any given subject receiving classics). The problem is that this phenomenon applies not only to the object of those studies but to those studies themselves. In other words: not only the content of classical receptions, but studying classical receptions also is a form of projection and implies moral and political choices. A look at the development of the field may illustrate this more clearly. Comparing the position of classical reception studies in 2013, the time of the 18  Velleius Paterculus 1. 13. 4. 19  The exception would seem to be the humanists, but perhaps it is misleading to call them classicists; rather they are the founding fathers of classicists.

282

Rijser

conference that occasioned these papers, and the present of their belated publication in this book, it is safe to conclude that the field is still expanding and that the trend of past decades, which saw the rise to prominence of programmes, courses, and publications on classical receptions in academia, has established itself.20 One of the causes is that we think differently about the nature of our knowledge of the past since the third quarter of the previous century. The revolution of thought represented by post-structuralism, with its shift of focus from ‘text’ and ‘author’ to reader, and its implied inversion of power from the institutions that guarded interpretation, and thus truth, to any reader, learned or not, welcome to the club or not, first brought reception into play. In the concomitant plurality of meanings and interpretations that emerged it moreover appeared hazardous to establish solid, objective hierarchies of validity. All readers, after all, from their specific perspectives could produce valid readings. Evidently, for post-structuralism the theme of authority is the most important of all. It is therefore not surprising that one of the most important themes in Classical Receptions has become the cultural authority of the classics. The fact that post-structuralism has contributed to the rise of reception theory and the consequent flowering of the field in classics as well shows that, in an important sense, reception studies reinvent classics, turning them from a basically conservative discipline in a moderately (depending of course, what ‘frame’ one adopts) progressive one. All of this implies that Classical Receptions is in principle positioned on the liberal side of the academic spectrum. But it also means that the field is in a certain sense at war with at least a part of itself. For the DNA of ‘nothing to do with Dionysus’ spells tradition, continuity and one form or another of conservatism. If we keep to the right and either hold on to ‘tradition’ or stick to synchronic, positivistic search for the ‘truth’ in antiquity, we lose touch with the society we live in, which is so very much living in the present. If we keep to the left, we expose ourselves to two dangers in particular: an excessive emphasis on power discourse, and an excessive presentism that, eventually, is harmful for the classics because if they are only interesting because of their similarity to the present, there is no intrinsic reason to study them. Martindale has advocated different variants of a middle position, either through the dialogical model, or through a return to aesthetic theory, both of which I am greatly sympathetic towards.21 But the most important reason for pursuing reception studies and giving them prominence in syllabi and programmes is this: we live in an age of 20  As was the case when James Porter took stock of the situation in Porter (2013). 21  Dialogue in Martindale (2013) and aesthetics in Martindale (2005).

Epilogue

283

fragmentation, and of proliferation: of sources of knowledge, cultures and points of view. Thus, to impose unity and coherence on this diversity is not only difficult but may even seem unwelcome, because we deem pluralism to be of the highest value. The increasing conviction that text and art have no inherent meaning at all, but that their meaning is assigned to them in different ways by different readers and viewers, thus seems to preclude beforehand the emergence of any form of synthesis. On the other hand, this very pluralist diversity creates a strong need, a yearning even, for cultural cohesion in politics and society that surfaces in many ways, some of them, like populism, utterly deplorable. But even more civilised observers consider some cultural cohesion and unity important, or even a precondition for a satisfactory cultural existence. This is also the motivation for recent attempts to re-create some form of a cultural canon, to agree about which cultural past we are sharing or agree on sharing. It is widely recognised that, for better or for worse, the arts, or rather works of art, have been essential at certain pivotal moments in the creation of this mirage of cultural unity. Whether we think of the Athenian tragedies, of the Romans listening to Virgil’s Aeneid, of Shakespeare’s history plays, or of twentieth-century Americans collectively watching Westerns that simultaneously explained and determined their roots, in all these cases that which we now call ‘Art’ attempted to bring about cohesion, and to provide a sense of sharing, of ‘belonging’. Often these same works of art still represent the cultural past that has remained important to subsequent culture: and these works constitute what we call the ‘canon’. The canon can only be studied properly with the help of reception, because every link of the chain responds and connects to the others. The study of canonical art from the perspective of reception-theory is therefore the ideal way to illustrate both diversity and continuity, and thus show coherence. Total (and totalitarian) synthesis is both unwarranted and impossible (perhaps unwarranted because it is impossible), it is true. But it is possible to follow processes of signification and interpretation, and thus enrich our understanding of both the past and the recipient of that past in a given period, place or social context. Indeed, this study of the process of attributing significance teaches us things of fundamental importance about ourselves, the observers of the process. This is what happens in reception studies: they follow the attribution of meaning on the moment of receiving, not that of production, and consider this ‘reception’ a new instance of production. The fact that this perspective is enticing for so many scholars and academics, reflects their readiness to embrace pluralism and the ‘openness’ of the processes of signification. An open eye for the protean nature of cultural traditions has had momentous consequences also for the study of Antiquity itself. The realisation that

284

Rijser

Antiquity, even in the most conservative estimation, lasted for a period of well over 1000 years, and extended over a territory from the Near East to Hadrian’s Wall, makes it difficult to consider it the monolithic, unitary culture that it was identified as for so long. What is more, ancient cultural diversity can no longer serve as a model for a unitary programme of civic or princely virtue in the way that it has done in so many of our cultural pasts. This realization has changed the nature of the disciplines concerned with classical antiquity in a fundamental way. Until the nineties of the last century the classics themselves whatever they are were the main course of the feast of education and research, possibly followed by a desert of classical ‘tradition’, which was likewise seen as more or less stable and knowable. Now not only the content of antiquity itself has been destabilised, but also the nature of the ‘tradition’ that it gave rise to. At the same time, it has become methodically advisable to work into our own interpretations of antiquity different historical reactions as well as the role antiquity has played in cultural history, because these teach us aspects that are difficult for us to see from the perspective of our own position in space and time. Finally, academics are more and more conscious of the fact that processes of cultural transmission and transformation studied in Classical Receptions are extremely relevant within Antiquity itself. Broadening what has traditionally been denominated as ‘classical’ both chronologically and ‘ethnically’, the pluralist view of the ancient world is relevant for our educational system in yet another way. The ancient world was a crucible of different cultures, languages, cults and identities to an extent that is now so difficult to fathom (and, alas, for some, to stomach), because of the very cultural selections, appropriations, canonisations and transformations that it was subjected to in the postclassical world; for it was especially in postclassical times that the concept of the ‘classical’ became functional and seen as of a more or less uniform (and ethnically European) nature.22 Again, reception studies in particular have pointed out to what extent this habit of referring to the ‘classical’ world and supposing that this is something unitary and knowable conceals a projection of the Christian West onto societies that were in fact much more diverse, and of quite different extraction than that of the North Western Europe which increasingly sought its foundational moment in classical culture. This ties in with one of the larger problems of higher education today. That is, that a significant group of students has an ethnic or cultural background 22  Ancient multi-culturality is now an established aspect in text-books of e.g. Beard (2016), Woolf (2012), Price and Thonemann (2010). For the ‘crucible’ of late Antiquity in the Middle East and the establishment of Islam see Bowersock (2017).

Epilogue

285

or sympathy that does not recognize itself in ‘male-white-European’ appropriation of the Classics, but would welcome the inclusion into the discourse of what formerly had been defined as fringe: the cultures of Northern Africa, the Middle East and Asia minor. To that group, reception studies could give both answers as to the question how all of this came about, but perhaps also new ways of looking at ancient culture itself, as a multi-cultural society they could identify with more easily and from whence they might select other works and objects of study than the ones selected by the traditional canon and curriculum. For both the processes of cultural interactions in antiquity itself, and their subsequent vicissitudes are scrutinized in reception studies. Reception studies are a response to questions that arose in academic discourse itself. But it should be evident that they are as important outside of the academy as they are within, because they show the interaction between different pasts and presents, including our own present. It is this cultural interaction that demonstrates the way in which our varied and mutable cultural past coheres none the less. It is kept together by continuous series of responses and reactions that form a dialogue, or routes that form an itinerary. Yet reception studies can also show and to a certain extent create new forms of coherence in the study of the interaction between the traditional heartland of classical culture and its fringes. To act as an interlocutor of dialogues, or a participant in excursions like these not only activates the enormous interpretive potential that the series of earlier interpretations has to offer to our own critical debate. It also shows in what way our cultural heritage is consistent. Finally, by providing new artistic and intellectual energy it can give impulses for both social and cultural renewal. That is why Classical Receptions are, or should be a fundamental part of academic and other teaching. Bibliography Beard, M., SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (London, 2015). Belton, J., “Language, Oedipus and Chinatown,” Modern Language Notes 106.5 (1991), 933–950. Bowersock, G.W., The Crucible of Islam (Cambridge, MA, 2017). Dawe, R.D., Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, ed. Dawe, R.D. (Cambridge, 1982). Enenkel, K. and Ottenheym, K., eds., In Search of an Appropriate Past, 2 voll. (Leiden – New York, 2018). Goldhill, S., Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy (Oxford – New York, 2012). Hardwick, L. and Stray, C., eds., A Companion to Classical Receptions (Malden – Oxford – Chichester, 2008).

286

Rijser

Martindale, C., Redeeming the Text. Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge, 1993). Martindale, C., Latin Poetry and the Judgment of Taste: An Essay in Aesthetics (Oxford, 2005). Martindale, C. and Thomas, R.F., eds., Classics and the Uses of Reception (Malden – Oxford – Carlton, 2006). Martindale, C., “Reception – a new humanism? Receptivity, pedagogy, the transhistorical,” Classical Receptions Journal 5.2 (2013), 169–183. Porter, J.I., “Reception Studies: Future Prospects,” in Hardwick and Stray (2013): 469–481. Price, S. and Thonemann, P., The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (London, 2010). Rijser, D., Een telkens nieuwe oudheid. Of: hoe Tiberius in New Jersey belandde (Amsterdam, 2016). Rijser, D., Antiquity Renewed: How Tiberius Landed in New Jersey (Cambridge, 2020, forthcoming). Settis, S., Futuro del ‘Classico’ (Turin, 2004). Thornham, S., “Beyond Bluebeard: feminist nostalgia and Top of the Lake (2013),” Feminist Media Studies 19.1 (2017), 102–117. Wallace, D., ed., Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, 2 voll. (Oxford, 2016). Winkler, M.M., “Tragic Features in John Ford’s The Searchers,” in Winkler, M.M. ed., Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (Oxford – New York, 2001), 118–147. Woolf, G., Rome: An Empire’s Story (Oxford, 2012).

Index Nominum Abstemius, Laurentius (Lorenzo Bevilaqua) 183n38, 186n44 Accius (Lucius Accius) 58 Clytemnestra 58 Achilles 232–235, 250 Adonis (Adunis) (Syrian poet) 240 Aegeus 265 Aegisthus 58–59 Aemilius Probus 178, 180, 185n42 Aeneas 135, 207n21, 214n52, 218n68, 219, 221n83 Aeschylus 45, 49, 60, 272 Oresteia 45, 49–50, 58–60 Aesop Fables (Aesopian Fables) 76, 99, 103 Africa 23, 83, 285 Agamemnon 45, 49, 58–60 Alain of Lille 99 Ars praedicandi 99 Sermo Regia Solis 100n13 Alba, duke of (Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel) 153, 153n1, 157, 157n16, 158, 161, 167, 169 Alberti, Leon Battista 148n38, 229 Albuquerque 254 Alcmene 238 Alfieri, Vittorio 59 Agamemnone 59 Allen, Thomas 73 Alsium 131n29 Alÿs, Francis 47–50, 52 Fabiola 48–50 The Fabiola Project 48 America 39, 255 Amsterdam 141, 143, 164 Anacreon 236 Andrade, Oswald de 228 Manifesto Antrópofago 229, 242 Andreä, Johann Valentin Christianopolis 148n38 Andromeda 153, 156–160, 163, 163n36, 164–165, 165n43, 165n45, 166–170 Antigone 253 Antiphates 134n45 Antoninus Pius 188

Antunes, Leonardo 230, 236 Antwerp 154 Apelles 89 Apollo (Phoebus) 212n44 Arendt, Hannah 26 Illuminations 26 Ariadne 279 Aristides 279, 280 Dionysus and Ariadne 280 Aristophanes 84 Aristotle 20, 125, 245, 251–253, 263, 266 Poetica 125n7, 252, 263, 266 Arras 114n49 Artes praedicandi 99 Asia 83 Asia Minor 285 Assmann, Aleida 205n16 Assmann, Jan 205n16, 205n18 Atalanta 103, 103n29 Athena 45, 77–79 See also Pallas Athens 43n49, 252, 267, 280–281 Atticus 178, 180n27, 191 Atwood, Margaret 62 The Penelopiad 62 Auerbach, Erich 249n24, 261 Augustine 103n31 De doctrina christiana 99 Augustus 183, 201, 213 Aurelius Victor 178, 183n38, 184 Ausonius 126 Mosella 126 Austen, Jane 47 Avienius 126, 126n9 Ora maritima 126 Avignon 202, 218 Aygi, Gennadiy 240 Babylon 108n42, 220n79 Bacon, Francis 150 The New Atlantis 148n38, 150 Badfinger 256 Baïf, Jean-Antoine de 229 Bakhtin, Mikhail 21, 76 Barrow, Rosemary 33

288 Barthes, Roland 40, 160, 208n25, 281 Basel 108, 111–113, 183 Batrachomyomachia 71, 76, 76n12, 77–79 Bayard, Pierre 250 Beard, Mary 37 Bekmambetov, Timur 56 The Arena 56–57 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 56 Hardcore Henry 56 Ben Hur 56–57 Bellerophon 132, 132n38, 134n45, 158 Ben Hur 54–56, 58 Ben Hur (1880 novel) 54–55 Ben Hur (1899 stage version) 54 Ben Hur (1907 silent film) 54 Ben Hur (1925 silent film) 54 Ben Hur (1959 film) 53, 55, 57n100, 60 Ben Hur (2016 film) 56–57 Benjamin, Walter 26, 234 Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers 234 Illuminations 26 Bennett, Susan 55 Benson, Frank 51, 59 Bernal, Martin 93 Black Athena 93 Bernheimer, Charles 5 Beroaldo, Filippo 185n43 Bersuire, Pierre, 105, 105n35, 106, 115 Ovidius moralizatus 97n4, 101–102, 105–106, 108 Bible 40, 71, 97, 102n25, 116 See also Gospel See also Old Testament See also New Testament Bible des poètes 106 Billings, Joshua 46 Billington, Michael 49 Binoche, Juliette 46 Blanshard, Alistair 34n8 Blundell, Mary 251, 258 Blythe, Louise 47 Boccaccio, Giovanni 101n18, 179 De mulieribus claris 179 De casibus virorum illustrium 179 Born, Georgina 41 Boyer, Claude 59 Agamemnon 59 Brabant 154

Index nominum Bracciolini, Poggio 212n43 De varietate Fortunae 212n43 Bragg, Melvyn 46 Brando, Marlon 57n100 Brant, Sebastian 109n43 Narrenschiff 109n43 Brazil 10, 227–229, 231, 232, 236, 238–241 Breaking Bad 10, 245–246, 251–260, 262, 262n72, 263, 265, 267 Breda 154 Bristol 88 Britain 38, 40, 50, 60, 84, 89, 91, 229, 246 British India see India Brown, Catherine 249 Brundisium 126 Brunet, Philippe 239n16 Antigone (transl.) 239n16 Brussels 153, 165n43 Bryant-Davies, Rachel 41 Buarque, Chico 239 Burrow, Colin 249n24 Butler, Shane 34n8 Byzantium 1, 71–72, 83 Cacus 207n22 Caesar (Julius Caesar) 183, 215n55, 218n71 Caligula 179 Callimachus 76–79 Aetia 76–79 Cambridge 45, 51 King’s College 45 Camillus 218n68 Camões, Luís Vaz de 231 Os Lusíadas 231, 231n4 Campanella, Tommaso Civitas solis 148n38 Campbell, Lewis 51 Campion, Jane 272–273, 276–277 Top of the Lake 272–277 Campos, Haroldo de 230–231, 231n5, 233–234, 234n9, 235, 235n10, 236, 240n17 Cannadine, David 25 Capraria 132n37 Capua 280 Cardoso, Leandro Dorval 230, 236–238 Carson, Ann 16 Cassiope 166, 169

289

Index nominum Castrum 131n29, 131n33 Cato 177–178, 180n27, 183, 191 Catullus 177n12, 209n28 Cavander, Kenneth 51 The Bacchae (transl.) 51 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 278 Voyage au bout de la nuit 278 Centumcellae 133n40 Cepheus 169 Chandler, Raymond 276 Chapman, George 44 Charlemagne 7, 179n20, 183–184 Charles V 183–184 Chimaera 132n38 Christ 101–103, 103n29, 105, 107, 109–110, 113–114, 132n38, 215 Church fathers 102n25 Cicero 145, 146n29, 175, 177, 188, 193, 209n30 De oratore 175n6, 182n35, 192n67 Epistulae ad Atticum 180n27 Epistulae ad familiares 180n27 Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem 180n27 Somnium Scipionis (De re publica) 145 Circe 132n37 Claudian 124, 134 Clement of Rome 215n54 Cleopatra (1963 film) 248 Clytemnestra 58–60 Coen, Joel & Coen, Ethan 50 O Brother, Where Art Thou? 50 Hail, Caesar! 50, 63 Comenius, Daniel 141 Comenius, Iohannes Amos 9, 139, 141–150 Didactica magna 141, 141n5, 146n26, 148 Ianua linguarum reserata 150n43 Comte, Auguste 228 Constantinople 218n71 Conte, Gian Biagio 208, 208n25, 209n32 Corinth 279–280 Corsica 130 Cosa 131n29, 134n45 Cranston, Bryan 256 Creon 263–265 Crete 84 Cumae 133n40 Cumberbatch, Benedict 46 Cusk, Rachel 49 Czech Republic 141

Dante 6, 101, 248 Divina Commedia 101 Daphnis 144n16 Datames 191 Dati, Leonardo 229 Delphi 43 Deluc, Louis 60 Demeter 274 Den Briel 157, 169 Derrida, Jacques 234 Descartes, René 146 Detienne, Marcel 251n31 Dickens, Charles 46–47 Dido 130, 214n52 Dillenburg 158 Diogenes Laertius 191 Dionysus 272, 279 Domitian (Domitianus) 183 Drummond de Andrade, Carlos 228 Dryden, John 16 Du Bellay, Joachim 201n3 Antiquitez de Rome 201n3 Descriptio Romae 209n30 Dürer, Albrecht 109n Duym, Jacob 9, 10, 153–158, 160, 161, 163, 165–170 Ghedenck-boeck 153, 160 Nassausche Perseus 9, 153, 156–158, 160–161, 163, 166 Egnazio, Giovanni Battista 189, 190 Einhard 178–179, 183 Vita Caroli Magni 178, 181n33, 183–184 Electra 46, 60 Eliot, Thomas Stearns 59 The Family Reunion 59 England 89–90, 153, 240 See also Britain Entman, Robert 161 Epicurus 145, 149 Epidaurus 42 Erasmus, Desiderius 97, 116, 187–190 Erll, Astrid 208 Euripides 49, 246, 263–264, 267 Medea 11, 49, 245–246, 251–253, 255, 257, 262–264, 265n91, 267 The Bacchae 51, 61

290 Europe (continent), European 202, 220, 227–228, 284 Evander 207n21, 218n68 Eve 179 Faleria 127, 133n40 Fallujah (Iraq) 53 Fano 183n38 Farber, Yaël 45 Molora 45, 60 Feeney, Dennis 34n5, 49, 56 Ferreri, Zaccaria Vicenzo 207n24 Fischer-Lichte, Erika 23 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 20 Flavio Biondo 215n57 Roma instaurata 215n57 Florence 97, 201, 213, 215 Florianus, Johannes 158 Fortuna (Fortune) 179, 187, 212, 214, 219 Foucault, Michel 281 France 84, 89, 106, 229 See also Gaul Francus 219n74 Freud, Sigmund 125, 277 Fulnek (Moravia) 145 Gallus, F.M. 189 Gama, Basílio da 231n4 O Uraguai 231n4 Game of Thrones 62–63 Gamson, William 161 Garin, Eugenio 202n5 Gaul 125, 129, 131n29 Gellius (Aulus Gellius) 92, 272 Attic Nights 92, 177n12, 272 Gély, Véronique 21 Geiler von Kaysersberg, Johannes 101n18 Genette, Gérard 72–73 Gennep, Arnold van 128 Germany 101, 103, 106, 108, 153, 167, 229, 240 Gesta Romanorum 102 Gibbon, Edward 129n21 Gildenhard, Ingo 33 Gilgamesh 125 Gill, Christopher 245n3, 253–254 Gilligan, Vince 253, 255–256 Giphanius, Obertus 178n18 Gittes, Jake (Chinatown) 276

Index nominum GJ (Top of the Lake) 273–274 Gladiator (2000 film) 248 Goldhill, Simon 5, 6, 34, 44, 50n86 Goltzius, Hendrick 158–159, 163n36 Gorgon (Island of) 132n37, 134n45 Gorgon (Medusa) 167 Gorp, Baldwin van 161–162 Gospel 103, 107, 115 Graviscae 131n29 Greene, Thomas 210 Greenwood, Emily 22, 28, 34n8 Greece 23, 34–35, 41–42, 83, 86, 219, 255, 380 Griffin, Robin (Top of the Lake) 273 Gritsch see Grütsch, Conrad Grütsch, Conrad 99, 101, 103, 103n27, 104–105, 105n35, 106–108, 110, 113, 116 Quadragesimale 99, 104, 106, 108 Grütsch, Johann 103n27 Grynaeus, Simon 185n42 Guidobaldo, duke of Urbino 183n38 Gurd, Sean 74–75 Güthenke, Constanze 27–28, 46 Hades 233, 235 Hadrian’s Wall 284 Halbwachs, Maurice 205n15–16 Hall, Edith 50, 60, 86, 124 Hamilcar 191 Hammett, Dashiell 276 Hannibal 191, 280 Hardwick, Lorna 2–4, 34, 86 Harris, Wilson 24 Hecht, Hartmut 142 Hector 219n74 Hegghammer, Thomas 63 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 20 Heidegger, Martin 27 Heisenberg (Breaking Bad) 256–258 Helios 258 Henderson, John 37 Hera 78 See also Juno Heracles (Hercules) 77, 134n45, 207n22 Hercules (2014 film) 248 Herman, Theo 48 Herodotus 76n12, 191 Hesenthaler, Magnus 141, 141n8, 141n9, 150 Hessey, James Augustus 88

291

Index nominum Heston, Charlton 53, 55, 57n100, 60 Heynders, Odile 249–250 Hieronymus 177, 179 Highet, Gilbert 2n1 Hildebert of Lavardin 214n50 De Roma 214n50 Hinds, Stephen 208n25, 209n28, 210n33–34 Hippocrene 134n45 Hippomenes 103n29 Historia Augusta 178, 184 Holland 154n6 Hollywood 1 Holmes, Brooke 6 Holmes, Sherlock 262, 265 Homer 9, 10, 40, 44–46, 50, 76n12, 125–126, 135, 228, 230–234, 265, 277 Iliad 45–46, 70, 71–76, 78–79, 126, 134n45, 230–231, 233–234, 236n11 Odyssey 45–46, 50, 62, 76, 126, 231, 233, 235, 277 Honig, Bonny 26 Hooft, Pieter Corneliszoon 163 Granida 163 Hopkins, David 24–26 Horace 9, 35, 126, 134–135, 144, 177n14 Carmina (Odes) 134n44, 209n31, 212, 236n13 Houwaert, Johan Baptista 165n43 Hugo, Victor 228 Humphreys, Sally 18 Ibn Quzman 240 Icke, Robert 44–45, 49, 60 Oresteia 44–45, 49, 60 India 84 Ion of Chios 58 Agamemnon 58 Iphigenia 59–60 Iraq 53 Isidore of Seville 103n31 Italy 180, 202, 229, 248 Jackson, Michael 127–129 Jacobus de Lenda 114–115, 118 Jakobson, Roman 234 James, Simon 62 Jameson, Frederic 259, 261 Jason 251–254, 257, 263, 265

Jauss, Hans Robert 4, 70, 240–241 Jerusalem 219 Joanna I, queen of Naples 179 John of Garland 102 Jones, John 88 Jordan, Tony 46 Jowett, Benjamin 51 Joyce, James 231 Finnegan’s Wake 231 Judaea 131n34 Julius II (pope) (Giuliano della Rovere) 215 Juno 170 See also Hera Jupiter 166, 166n46, 170, 215n55 See also Zeus Juvenal 213n47 Satires 213n47 Kallendorf, Craig 75 Kant, Immanuel 20 Keats, John 43, 88 Kingsley, Charles 93 Komensky, Jan Amos see Comenius Kristeller, Paul Oskar 202n5 Kristeva, Julia 76 Kvačala, Jan 141, 146n29 Lackington, James 88–89 Laestrygonians 134n45 Laius 262 Landino, Cristoforo 201, 209n31, 211–213, 215, 217, 220 Xandra 213, 213n47 Xandra 2.30 (De Roma fere diruta)  201n2, 212n43–44 Lee, Gerhard 272 See also Jane Campion, Top of the Lake Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 9, 139, 141, 141n7, 141n8, 141n9, 142–143, 143n10, 144, 146, 146n29, 147, 147n34–35, 148–149, 148n41, 150, 150n44 In Johannem Amosum Comenium 9, 139 Leiden 153–154 Leipzig 142 Lemaire de Belges, Jean 219n74 Les Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troye 219n74 Lens 114n49

292 Leo X (pope) (Giovanni de’ Medici) 201, 214n50, 215–216 Leszno (Poland) 145 Lessig, Lawrence 44 Leyhausen, Wilhelm 43 Livius Andronicus 58 Aegisthus 58 Livy 174, 218 Ab urbe condita 218n68 London 41, 43–44, 51, 88–89 Almeida Theatre 44–47, 49, 60 British Museum 62 Barbican Centre 46 Gate Theatre at Notting Hill 43 Globe Theatre 45, 60 Mermaid Theatre 51 Old Vic 46 Longueil, Gilbert de 191–192 Lowenthal, David 204n11, 216n59, 217 Lucan 177n14, 212n46, 213, 215 Bellum Civile 212, 212n46, 215n55 Lucian 227 Lucilius 126 Lucretius 9, 144–145, 178n18 De rerum natura 145 Luther, Martin 97 Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria 228 MacNeice, Louis 23 Perspectives 23 Malaspina, Ermanno 140 Malta Campos, André 236n11 Iliad (transl.) 236n11 Mander, Karel van 163n39 Mankiewicz, Joseph L. 57n100 Mann, Thomas 277 Der Erwählte 277 Mantuanus, Baptista (Battista Spagnoli)  207n24 De Dionysii Areopagitae vita et agone 207n24 Marc Anthony 57n100 Marius Maximus 178, 184 Martial 201, 215 Epigrams 215n53 Martindale, Charles 2–4, 15, 17–18, 22, 33, 46, 58, 70, 73, 79, 246–248, 267, 278, 282 Marx, Karl 20

Index nominum Mary (Virgin Mary) 115–116 Mary Magdalene 113 Matthew, archduke (Matthias of Austria)  165n43 Matthieu, Pierre 59 Clytemnestre 59 Mau, August 48n76 Maximilian 184 Mayakovsky, Vladimir 240 Medea 10, 49, 245, 251–255, 257, 257n56, 258, 262–263, 263n73, 264–265, 265n90, 266–267 See also Euripides, Medea Meder, Johann 107–110, 113, 114n50, 115, 117 Quadragesimale novum 107, 109, 113 Medici, de’ (family) 213, 215n57, 216 Medici, Giovanni de’ see Leo X Medici, Piero de’ 201 Medina Rodrigues, Antonio 231 Medusa 167 Melanchthon, Philipp 92 Meleager 134n45 Meliboeus 143–144 Mendes, Manuel Odorico 228, 230–231, 231n5, 232–234 Virgílio Brazileiro 230 Mercury 158 Messala 54 Mickiewicz, Adam 240 Middle East 285 Miller, Frank 58 300 58, 62 Miłosz, Czesław 240 Milton, John 22, 231, 247–248 Mnouchkine, Ariane 60 Les Atrides 60 Modigliani Andre 161 Molorcus 77–78 Mondrian, Piet 279 Moravia 141 More, Thomas 148n38, 182n36 Historia Richardi regis Angliae eius nominis tertii 182n36 Moss, Elisabeth 272 Mount Argentarius 134n45 Mullarky, Rory 45, 60 Oresteia (transl.) 45, 60 Mummius (L. Mummius) 279, 281

Index nominum Monro, David 73 Murray, Gilbert 51 Narducci, Emanuele 139 Nassau, Prince of see Orange, prince of Near East 284 Nemea 77 Neophron 263n75 Nepos 10, 174–175, 176n11, 177–180, 181n32, 182–183, 183n38, 185, 185n42, 186, 186n44, 190–192, 194 Chronica 177 De viris illustribus 177 Liber de excellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium 176–178, 180n27, 181n35, 191n62–67 Liber de Latinis historicis 176–178, 182 Nereids 166 Nero 179 Nerva 183–184 Netherlands, the 89, 153, 153n1, 154–155, 157–158, 161, 164–167, 169 New Testament 110n44, 145n24, 215n54 New Zealand 276 Nicholson, Jack 276 Nietsche, Friedrich 277 Niwnitz (Moravia) 141 Nolpe, Pieter 164 Nora, Pierre 205n16 Norwid, Cyprian 240 Nunes, Carlos Alberto 230, 232–234, 234n9, 235–239, 240n17 Aeneid (transl.) 239 Nünning, Ansgar 208 Nussbaum, Martha 264 Octavian 144 Odysseus 125, 132n37, 134n45 Oedipus 11, 253, 262, 272–274, 276–277 Old Testament 113, 219 Oldenbarnevelt, Johan van 154n6 O’Neill, Eugene 59 Mourning becomes Electra 59 Orestes 45, 60 Orange, Frederik Hendrick prince of 164 Orange, Maurice prince of 157, 160n19, 161, 167

293 Orange, William prince of 156–157, 157n16, 158, 160n19, 161, 167–169 Osiris 127, 131–132 Ostia 125, 129n23 Otto of Freising 181n33 Gesta Friderici 181n33 Ovid 9, 40, 58, 97–98, 100n13, 101–102, 105, 108n42, 114, 135, 146, 158, 165 Ars Amatoria 59 Epistulae ex Ponto 146n28 Fasti 144n19, 209n28 Metamorphoses 97, 99, 101, 114, 114n50, 134n44, 153n2, 158, 160, 165, 165n43 Tristia 58, 126 Ovidian (myth, scene) 103, 113, 153n1, 166 Ovide moralisé 101–102, 105 Oxford 50 Palladius 132n36 Pallas 170 Paolo Emilio of Verona 182n36 De Rebus Gestis Francorum 182n36 Pan 131 Paranapiacaba, Barão de 239n15 Paris 114, 219n74 Pater, Walter 22 Paul (apostle) 99 Pausanias 34n9 Pazzi, de’ (family) 215 Pegasus 158 Peleus 232 Peloponnesus 134n45 Perez, Gilberto 253 Pericles 84 Persephone 274 Perseus 153, 153n1, 156–161, 164–165, 165n43, 166, 166n46, 167–170 Persius 177n14 Petrarch (Petrarca) 179, 188, 202n6, 203n8, 207 Africa 207n22, 207n24 De viris illustribus 179, 188 Phaeton 114n50 Phoebus 212n44 See also Apollo Philip II 153 Phrynichus 272

294 Picasso, Pablo 16 Pigres of Halicarnassus 76n12 Pinkman, Jesse (Breaking Bad) 245, 256, 259–260, 265 Pisa 131 Plato 19–20, 148n38 Plautus 227 Amphitruo 237–238 Aulularia 239n15 Pliny the Elder 89 Naturalis Historia 89 Pliny the Younger 177 Epistulae 177n12 Plutarch 92, 177, 180, 182, 191, 227, 272, 273, 275, 279 Moralia 272 Poel, William 51 Poland 145 Polanski, Roman 276–278 Chinatown 276, 278 Polybius 182n35, 279–280 Polydore Vergil 182n36 Anglica historica 182n36 Pomeroy, Arthur 57 Pomponius Mela 177 Populonia 131n29, 133n40, 134 Porter, Edwin 260, 261, 265 The Great Train Robbery 260–262 Porter, James 22, 282n20 Porto Ercole 131n29 Potter, Pieter Symonsz 164 Pound, Ezra 233 Praxiteles 212n44 Propertius 201, 212–213, 215n55 Proserpina 114n50 Protadius 132n36 Protoevangelium of James 115 Proust, Marcel 228 Prudentius 145n21 Peristephanon 145n21 Ps. Aurelius Victor 183, 186n44 Ptolemaios 58 Clytemnestra 58 Pyramus 97, 98, 100–102, 102n23, 103, 105–114, 116 Quint, David 249n24 Quintilian 125, 227 Institutio oratoria 125n7

Index nominum Rahewin of Freising Gesta Friderici 181n33 Reece, Robert 59 Agamemnon and Cassandra 59 Riefenstahl, Leni 278 Triumph des Willens 278 Rimini Protokoll 43n49 Rio de Janeiro 227 Robin (Top of the Lake) see Griffin, Robin Rodosthenous, George 49 Rood, Tim 26 Rome 10, 23, 34–35, 41–42, 83, 86, 126, 129, 131, 134n45, 175, 187, 201–203, 205–207, 209, 211, 212–216, 216n60, 217, 217n64, 218–220, 220n79, 220n81, 221, 248, 279, 280–281 Aventine 207n22 Capitol (Capitoline hill) 203n8, 206, 207n24, 221 Campus Martius 207 Castel Sant’Angelo 207n24 Circus Maximus (‘Magnus’) 212n44 Coliseum 206 Curia Julia 279 Forum Romanum 206 Palatine 212 Rostra 209n30 Temple of Apollo (Palatine) 212 Theatre of Pompey 58 Romero, Silvio 231 Rosa, João Guimarães 230 Rufius 132n36 Russell, Bertrand 150 Rutilius Namatianus 9, 124–127, 129–135 De reditu suo 9, 124–125, 127–135 Sabellico, Marcantonio 186n43 Sadler, Victoria 49 Sallust 174 Salomon, Bernard 158 Santa Rita Durão, José de 231n4 Caramuru 231n4 São Paulo 227 Sappho 236 Sartre, Jean-Paul 59 Les Mouches 59 Savonarola, Girolamo 97, 116 Scarface 253, 255

295

Index nominum Schechner, Richard 51 Dionysus in 69 51 Schelling, Friedrich von 20 Scipio Africanus the Elder 145, 149 Scotland 90 Scott-Thomas, Kristin 46 Scripture(s) 97, 103n31 See also Bible Seneca 59, 99 Agamemnon 59 De clementia 188 Sens, Alexander 78 Servius Tullius 92 Settis, Salvatore 274, 281 Severus Alexander 188 Shakespeare, William 38, 40, 46–48, 51, 54, 57–58, 84, 247n9, 283 Coriolanus 84 Hamlet 46 Julius Caesar 54, 57 Shankar, Maya 39 Sharknado 4 (film 2016) 267 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 240 Silk, Michael 33 Sixtus IV (pope) (Francesco della Rovere) 215n57 Skyler (Breaking Bad) 256–257 Sluiter, Ineke 27 Socrates 19–20 Solon 237 Sophocles 84, 125, 275, 276–277 Antigone 84, 239 Oedipus Rex 253, 262, 273, 274n6, 275–277 Sousãndrade (Joaquim de Sousa Andrade)  231n5 Spain 153, 154, 154n6, 155, 157–158, 164 St. Clair, William, 63 Stead, Henry 124 Strabo 34n9 Strasbourg (Straβburg) 101n18, 107n40, 183, 183n38 Stray, Christopher 34, 86–87 Suetonius 10, 174–175, 176n11, 177–180, 181n32, 182–190, 192, 194 Caesares 175n9, 176, 178–179, 183–186, 188–190, 193, 194, 213n49 De grammaticis et rhetoribus 177

De viris illustribus 177 Pratum 177 Sulpicius Severus Vita S. Martini 181n33 Tacitus Agricola 181n33 Tápia, Marcelo 230, 235, 240n17 Odyssey (transl.) 235 Taylor, John 88 Terentius (Terence) 177n14, 227 Adelphoe 236n13, 238n15 Tertullian Ad Scapulam 220n79 Tamos, Márcio 231n4 Thackeray, William 59 Vanity Fair 59 Thebes 253, 262 Theodosius II 178 Theognis 236 Thisbe 97, 98, 100–102, 102n23, 103, 105–109, 111–117 Thomson, James 59 Agamemnon 59 Thorpe, Chris 43 Chorus 43 Thucydides 26, 191 Tiber 130n27 Tiberius 179 Tiresias 274 Tityrus 143, 144, 149 Todd (Breaking Bad) 259–260, 265 Toulouse 126 Towne, Robert 276–277 Trajan 188 Triturrita 130n27 Troy, Trojans 212, 215, 218–219, 219n74 Tuco (Breaking Bad) 256 Tui (Top of the Lake) 273 Turner, Victor 128, 130n26 Tysbe see Thisbe Valla, Lorenzo 182n36 Gesta Ferdinandi regis 182n36 Vasconcellos, Paolo Sérgio de 230, 232 Velleius Paterculus 281n18 Veloso, Caetano 239 Venice 180

296 Venus 163n39 Venuti, Lawrence 230 Vergil (Virgil) 6, 9, 22, 124, 126, 130, 135, 143–144, 147, 177n14, 228, 230–232, 234, 247–248 Aeneid 75, 99, 101, 126, 130, 130n26, 131n30, 207n21, 214, 214n52, 218, 221, 233, 239, 283 Eclogues 143, 143n13, 144n16, 146 Georgics 92, 143n12 Verino, Ugolino 207, 207n24 Carlias 207n24, 209n30 Victorinus 132n36 Vieira, Trajano Odyssey (transl.) 235n10, 239 Villa-Lobos, Heitor 228 Vitalis, Janus 201, 211, 214–218, 220 Roma instaurata 201n3, 214, 215n55, 218 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 228, 277 Volterra 130, 130n27, 131, 133, 133n40 Voss, Johann Heinrich 229 Wagner, Alexander von 54 The Chariot Race 54 Wales 90

Index nominum Wallace, Lew 54–55, 62 Ben Hur (1880 novel) 54, 62 Wenzel, Siegfried 99 White, Walter (Walt) (Breaking Bad) 245, 254–260, 265–266 White, Walt Jr. (Breaking Bad) 257 Wildens, Jan 164 Wilhelmina, queen 280n17 Wimpfeling, Jacob 183 Epithoma Rerum Germanicarum 183 Winkler, Martin 248 Wtewael, Joachim 165n40 Wyke, Maria 34, 53, 55–56 Wyler, William 55 Ben Hur (1959 film) 55 Young, William 54 Zeno of Elea 20 Zeus 77–78, 233, 235 See also Jupiter Zizek, Slavoj 26 Zoffany, Johan 52 The Tribuna of the Uffizi 52, 61

Index Rerum Affiliation 24, 76n10 Allegory 100–110, 113–116, 156, 160n19, 163n38, 164 Allelopoiesis 100, 176, 184, 186, 192–194 Anagnorisis 256, 266 Anthopology 125, 127–128, 135, 251n31 Apparatus criticus 74–75 Appropriation 18, 99–100, 105, 113n47, 119, 174–176, 184–186, 189, 192–194, 204–205, 206n18, 207–210, 215, 221–222, 234, 241, 285 Audiences 40–41, 44, 47–49, 56–58, 61–63, 161, 262–264 Big data 221 Book trade 88–89 Canon, the classical 2n1, 92, 125, 192, 194, 229–230 Chronology 6, 60–61 Class, in classical receptions 25, 84–94, 124 Classical tradition 2–4, 16n4, 33–36, 126–127 Cohesion, cultural 64, 283 Commentaries 27, 71–72, 102, 175, 182n37, 185, 187, 189–195 Comparative literature 21, 140, 248–251, 266–268 Consensus 33n3, 51–52, 278 Constructionism 161–163, 170 Conversation model 24–26 Cross-cultural comparison 23–25, 27–28, 246, 249, 251n31, 267–268 Cultural memory 7, 36, 155, 163, 170, 205, 208–210 Cultural theory 21 Curricula, academic 92–93, 278, 285 Dialogical model 2, 15–21, 28–29, 107, 277, 282 Dialogism 2, 7, 19–20, 76 Digital humanities 220–221 Drama, Greek 34, 42–51, 60–61, 251–258, 262–268, 272–277

Education 37–38, 51, 85–88, 90–93, 139, 141, 146–150, 202, 227–228, 284 Eighty Years’ War 153–161, 163–168 Ekphrasis 100, 133, 206, 261 Fables 76, 99, 103 Film and television, classical receptions in  36, 57, 60, 246–248, 251, 272–277 Gender 21, 56, 89, 274, 276 Hamartia 245, 252, 259, 263, 265 Heritage studies 203–211 Hermeneutics 2, 4n5, 16, 21, 26, 90, 150n44, 247 Heuristic comparison 28, 246, 251, 258, 275 Historicism 22, 24, 208n25 Historiography 26–27, 174–175, 180–186, 189, 192–193 Hour-glass models 23 Humanism 15, 19, 21, 27, 83, 116, 149, 174–176, 179–188, 190–195, 201–207, 209–216, 220, 275, 281 Images (of Rome) 201–203, 205–206, 211–221 Imitations 124–125, 126, 174n4, 210, 217n64 Indeterminancy 126, 130, 132, 254 Intertextuality 28, 40, 76, 124, 126–127, 206–213, 220n78 Interweaving model 23–24 Lieux de mémoire 205–206, 208–210, 221 Liminality 128–129, 132, 135 Literary studies 208, 210n34, 249 Materiality 15n2, 18, 24–26, 70–76, 79 Metapoetics 129, 132–134, 208n28 Mirror for princes 188–189, 192, 193 New humanism 15 Palimpsest 23 Parabola 107–109, 113

298 Paratext 72–73, 155, 180, 182, 185, 189, 192, 193–194 Pedagogy 4, 58, 91n7, 139, 141, 146, 148 Periodisation 35, 49 Philia 254–258, 265 Philosophy 19–20, 93, 141n6, 180 Platonic dialogue 19–20 Pluralism 283–284 Presentism 22, 246, 278, 282 Prism, dispersive 86–87 Recognition 37–40, 41–42, 44, 47–48, 51–52, 55–56, 58, 61–64

Index rerum Repetition, concept of 36–40, 48–49, 64 Revenge (in tragedy) 245, 254, 257 Rite de passage 127–129, 131 Ruins (Roman) 131, 134, 201, 211–215, 217, 219 Series, television see Film and television Sociology 33n3, 84, 207, 208n25 Tertium comparationis 246, 251, 258, 267 Transtextuality 28 Travelling concepts 4–5 Typology, of receptions studies 34, 48–50, 176, 186, 203, 206