Greek & Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform (original) (raw)
Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform
Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception presents scholarly monographs offering new and innovative research and debate to students and scholars in the reception of Classical Studies. Each volume will explore the appropriation, reconceptualization and recontextualization of various aspects of the Graeco-Roman world and its culture, looking at the impact of the ancient world on modernity. Research will also cover reception within antiquity, the theory and practice of translation, and reception theory.
Classical Literature, 2023
Studies of receptions of ancient Greek and Roman literature analyze how so-called 'classical' texts are variously taken up and deployed by persons existing at later points in history. So far, the nature of such reception has not been conceptualized in an explicitly sociological manner. This paper proposes one way to do that, drawing upon key ideas developed by the Yale School of Cultural Sociology. This is done in order to re-narrate the ways in which ancient Roman texts were used by various interested parties in England, and later the United Kingdom, between the 15th and 18th centuries. The paper shows how Italian humanist understandings of the classicality of ancient Roman texts were taken up by English humanists, thereby purifying the overall set of such texts, rendering them seemingly context-free and adaptable to changing social circumstances. The relatively autonomous and free-floating nature of Roman literary texts defined as 'classical' allowed them to be taken up in different ways at different times for different purposes by different sorts of actors, especially aristocratic ones or those closely associated with aristocratic viewpoints. Texts describing republican Rome, and those depicting the transition from that political condition to the emergence of the Roman empire, were particularly appealing to English exegetes in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were deployed to make sense of the English Civil War and its aftermath, to carve out variant political identities, and to reflect upon the rise of the British Empire, which was understood to have surpassed its Roman counterpart, at the same time as it was feared that it might succumb eventually to a similar demise. The hopes and fears of English elites, as these were woven into the creation of political identities, were worked out through reflection upon and deployment of Roman texts taken to be timeless, processes that the paper models in a distinctive cultural sociological fashion.
International journal of the Platonic tradition, 2012
Demetriou's essays provide a most useful and nuanced guide to the understanding of the reception and uses made of Plato, "Platonisms" and Greek History in 19th century Britain. The volume is divided into two sections: "The History of Ancient Greece" (essays I-III) and "Platonic studies" (essays IV-IX). Much of both sections are devoted to George Grote, whose monumental History of Greece (1846-56), ideas about Socrates and Plato, and defense of the Sophists, began a new era in Hellenic Studies. A. Momigliano celebrated Grote the historian of Greece as one who combined moral and political interest with vast learning and respect for the evidence (VI.19). Demetriou's discussion of neglected historians, such as Connop Thirwell, enhances the book's appeal. It is well known that Grote broke with the old aristocratic/oligarchic picture of Athenian democracy as "mobocracy" and presented it in a positive and progressive light. He made Athenian democracy a respectable model for contemporary liberals (I. 295-97). Thirwell, however, forms a bridge between 'partisan' and 'scientifijic' historiography (intro, ix). He admired the post Persian war Athenian democracy of Aeschylus and Aristides, though he criticized the later "radical" Periclean period. (Late antique "cultural conservatives", such as the emperor Julian, expressed similar opinions.) Modern scholars, Demetrius points out (intro, ix), have skipped Thirwell, thereby missing signifijicant details of the debate (II.49-90). The collection includes an interesting piece, both positive and negative, on the complex relationship between philhellenism, British classicists and the revolutionary emergence of Modern Greece. While feeling obligated to "sympathize. .. with the concerns. .. of the people of liberated Hellas" (III.31-32), British classicists did not view favorably the rise of Greek nationalism. Demetriou shows the importance of the Mills, James and John Stuart, and Grote for 19th century Platonic studies in Britain. First, James Mill was seminal in the rejection of Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato. He viewed Thomas Taylor as a bad translator and a confused "mystic" who followed Proclus indiscriminately (V.16, 20). Others (in Germany as well) upheld Plato's Idealism, regarding him as an esotericist with systematic principles based in part on the "unwritten teachings" in the Academy, a problem that remains unresolved to this day (I.27 & n. 24 and VI.25). Contemporary Idealists-Jowett most notably (V.17)-saw Plato in Christian or Hegelian form. But the Utilitarians, steeped in recent scholarship, changed the terms of the debate. J.S. Mill, an important influence on Grote, reviewed his Plato and the other companions of Socrates (1865) (V.21), after rereading the entire Platonic corpus in Greek to prepare for the task. Grote emphasized Plato's "negative dialectic", yet remained a teacher of his ethics and views
Syme's Roman Revolution - and a British one.
K. Ascani & V. Gabrielsen, Ancient History Matters: Studies presented to Jens Erik Skydsgaard on His 70th Birthday (2002), 297-303., 2002
Much has been made of the parallel between Augustus and Mussolini in Ronald Syme's classic The Roman Revolution (1939). This essay argues that the parallel plays only a minor and purely superficial role as contemporary inspirational backdrop to Syme’s conception of the fall of the Roman Republic. Much more profoundly and pervasively, Syme's contemporary inspiration (though he never directly admitted to it) derived from British political history in the years immediately after The Great War, when Syme first came to Oxford from New Zealand in 1921. British political culture was commonly perceived to have gone through a parallel revolution at this time, as a new class of self-made ‘hard-faced men’, ruthless social climbers with new money, came to supplant the benevolent gentlemen politicians of inherited wealth and old aristocratic lineages.
Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire
('Classical Presences' series), 2010
This volume brings together scholars of modern and ancient culture to explore historical, textual, material and theoretical interactions between classics and imperialism during the heyday of the British Empire from the late eighteenth through to its collapse in the early decades of the twentieth century. It examines the multiple dialogues that developed between Classics and colonialism in this period and argues that the two exerted a formative influence on each other at various levels. Most at issue in the contexts where Classics and empire converge is the critical question of ownership: to whom does the classical past belong? Did the modern communities of the Mediterranean have pre-eminent ownership of the visual, literary and intellectual culture of Greece and Rome? Or could the populations and intellectual centres of Northern Europe stake a claim to this inheritance? And in what ways could non-European communities and powers – Africa, India, America – commandeer the classical heritage for themselves? In exploring the relationship between classics and imperialism in this period, this volume examines trends that are of current importance both to the discipline of Classics and to modern British cultural and intellectual history. Both classics and empire, this volume contests, can be better understood by examining them in tandem: the development of classical ideas, classical scholarship and classical imagery in this period was often directly or indirectly influenced by empire and imperial authority, and the British Empire itself was informed, shaped, legitimised and evaluated using classical models.
Sparta and the English Republic
Classical Receptions Journal, 2015
In 1659-60, as England teetered on the brink of political collapse in the series of events which (as it turned out) was to lead to the restoration of Charles II to the throne, two republican authors were engaged in a bitter dispute about ancient Sparta. Although both authors took pains to establish their scholarly credibilitywith differing levels of successtheir battle was primarily political, part of a fervent and urgent debate among republicans about how a viable commonwealth might yet be established on the ruins of the interregnum's constitutional experiments and in time to halt a slide towards monarchy. The authors in question were James Harrington, the author of the republican masterpiece of the interregnum, The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), and Henry Stubbe, a promising young academic and a protégé of the 'godly republican' Sir Henry Vane. The classical Greek focus of their dispute sheds light on the nature of English republican thought, the interplay of classical and scholarly authority with pamphlet debate and political argument, and the malleability of the Greek legacy for early modern readers. The classical offered a route through which political 'innovation', suspect as that always was in early modern England, could be legitimized. But while the rich and sometimes contradictory evidence of ancient texts could be brought to bear in multiple ways, some consensus positions developed in the early modern scholarship posed fairly effective limits to the claims it was possible to make. Both Harrington and Stubbe were writing in the context of a classical republican tradition (with origins in Italian humanism) which had been overtly and energetically adapted for English audiences by multiple authors only in the wake of the execution of
The Emerging Modern Greek Nation and British Romantic Literature
This dissertation contributes to the field of British Romantic Hellenism (and Romanticism more broadly) by emphasizing the diversity and complexity of Romanticera writers' attitudes towards, and portrayals of, Modern Greece, especially the ways that early nineteenth-century British literature about contemporary Greece helped to strengthen British-Greek intercultural relations and, ultimately, to situate Greece within a European sphere of influence. My study primarily focuses on fictional works because, as I demonstrate, Romantic literature, more than any other network of discourses of the early nineteenth century, intervened in debates about Modern Greece not merely by documenting facts but by creating realities, portraying imagined Greek-British encounters that encouraged readers to envisage new social, political, geographical, and cultural vistas and alliances for both Greece and Britain. As I argue, British Romantic writers' representations of cross-cultural relations between Greeks and Britons gesture toward their growing sense of, and concern with, Britain's international conduct and reputation, especially after 1815 when Britain was transforming into a dominant imperial power. The writers I examine use Modern Greece and Hellenism to interrogate and understand their country's role not only within Greece, but also within a transnational, global world, the geopolitical dynamics of which were in flux. In discussing Greek-British Romantic-era intercultural relations, my study focuses on the wide range of private and public political positions available to British Romantic writers and emphasizes that the Greek War of Independence and Greece's subsequent liberation were not isolated national events, but instead the outcome of the political, cultural, and literary debates and discourses taking place for at least half a century in Europe and Greece. By iii rooting my literary analysis in the historical, cultural, and geopolitical, I provide an account of British Romantic Hellenism that emphasizes the ways in which British writers engaged with a variety of discourses in reproducing versions of Greece that concretized the country. Greece is no longer merely the (imagined) topos of a glorified ancient people or of a degraded modern populace, but repositioned by British Romantic writers as a country integral to the modern, global world of the early nineteenth century. This dissertation would not have been possible without the intellectual, emotional, and financial support I have received from various family members, friends, professors, colleagues, and institutions during my academic studies. Paul Keen-thank you for encouraging me to pursue my literary interests, for helping me to both shape and refine my ideas, and for celebrating my successes. You have been a great supervisor and friend. Julie Murray-I have appreciated your intellectual generosity and personal warmth over the last six years. Thank you for being an amazing mentor and friend. Andrew Wallaceyour astute and very kind feedback on my writing has been tremendously beneficial. Thank you, too, to John Osborne and Jonathan Sachs for agreeing to join my dissertation committee and for offering feedback on my work. This dissertation was supported financially through a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, a Graduate Research and Innovative Thinking Award, an Alfred and Isabel Bader Student Travel Award, a George Alexopoulos Memorial Scholarship, and a Gordon J. Wood Graduate Scholarship in English. The Carleton University, Simon Fraser University, and University of Athens libraries provided me with most of the materials necessary to write this dissertation; thank you to the many staff members at all of these institutions that have helped me over the years. My early passion for Romantic Hellenism began at Simon Fraser University with my BA Honours supervisor Michelle Levy and was further pursued during my MA studies at The University of York with Stephen Minta and Jane Moody. I am grateful to all three of these professors for their knowledge, mentorship, and faith in my abilities. v My fellow Carleton PhD students-some of whom have themselves now finished their degrees-have been the best of academic colleagues and friends. I especially want to thank