Recent years have seen an increase of interest in classicism and the reception and survival of antiquity. Classical Reception Studies is a rapidly developing field of research and teaching, and a growing number of new scholars are investigating issues of reception of classical texts, ideas, performance, and material culture across different cultural contexts and in different media. This volume adds new perspectives in this growing field of scholarship. This collection of essays explores the uses of the past from a wide range of perspectives. The papers are drawn from a spectrum of cultures and chronological periods; from medieval to modern times, from Italian to Byzantine, from French to British. The characters involved in each case study accessed the past through different means, employing varying combinations of texts, oral traditions, iconographic representations, and visible remains of the landscape. It is a snapshot of a field in movement, illustrative of current directions and hopeful of producing new ones. The legacy of antiquity is omnipresent, and is as multifaceted as suggested by the wide range of the papers. This volume presents new perspectives, dealing with ever-elusive enigmas and opening the way for future research and investigation to all those who seek to explore the constant fascination with the antique.

This book explores Symbolist artists' fascination with ancient Greek art and myth, and how the erotic played a major role in this. For a brief period at the end of the 19th century the Symbolist movement inspired artists to turn inwards to the unconscious mind, endeavouring to unveil the secrets of human nature through their symbolic art. But above all their greatest interest, and fear, was man (and woman's) sexuality. Building upon the traditions of Academic neoclassicism, but fired with a new zeal, they turned back to Greek art and myth for inspiration. That classical legacy was once again a vehicle for artists to express their dreams, ideas and revelries. And so too their anxieties. For at times the frightening spectre of the sexual unconscious drove them to a new and innovative engagement with antiquity, including in ways never before tried in the history of the classical tradition. The unnerving sirens of Gustave Moreau, unearthly heroines of Odilon Redon, or leering fauns of Felicien Rops all played their role, among others, in this novel and unprecedented chapter in that tradition. This book shows how in their painting, drawing and sculpture the Symbolists re-invented Greek statuary and transposed it to new and unwonted contexts, as the imaginary inner worlds of artists were mapped onto the landscapes of Greek myth. It shows how they made of the Greek body, whether female, male, androgyne or sexual other, at once an object of beauty, desire, fear, and - at times - of horror.

A Companion to the Classical Tradition accommodates the pressing need for an up-to-date introduction and overview of the growing field of reception studies. A comprehensive introduction and overview of the classical tradition - the interpretation of classical texts in later centuries Comprises 26 newly commissioned essays from an international team of experts Divided into three sections: a chronological survey, a geographical survey, and a section illustrating the connections between the classical tradition and contemporary theory