Synopses & Reviews
Classical material was traditionally used to express colonial authority, but it was also appropriated by imperial subjects to become first a means of challenging colonialism and then a rich field for creating cultural identities that blend the old and the new. Nobel prize-winners such as Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney have rewritten classical material in their own cultural idioms while public sculpture in southern Africa draws on Greek and Roman motifs to represent histories of African resistance and liberation. These developments are explored in this collection of essays by international scholars, who debate the relationship between the culture of Greece and Rome and the changes that have followed the end of colonial empires.
About the Author
Lorna Harwick is Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Reception of Classical Texts and Images Research Project at the Open University
Carol Gillespie is Project Officer of the Reception of Classical Texts and Images Research Project at the Open University
Table of Contents
Introduction,
Lorna Hardwick1. Case Studies
Trojan Women in Yorubaland: Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu, Felix Budelmann
Antigone's Boat: The Colonial and the Post-colonial in Tegonni: An African Antigone, by Femi Osofisan, Barbara Goff
Antigone and her African Sisters: West African Versions of a Greek Original, James Gibbs
Cross-Cultural Bonds Between Ancient Greece and Africa: Implications for Contemporary Staging Practices, John Djisenu
The Curse of the Canon: Ola Rotimi's The Gods Are Not to Blame, Michael Simpson
Post-Apartheid Electra: In the City of Paradise, Elke Steinmeyer
Sculpture at Heroes' Acre, Harare, Zimbabwe: Classical Influences?, Jessie Maritz
2. Encounter and New Traditions
Perspectives on Post-Colonialism in South Africa: The Voortrekker Monument's Classical Heritage, Richard Evans
Imperial Reflections: The Post-Colonial Verse-Novel as Post-Epic, Katharine Burkitt
A Divided Child, or Derek Walcott's Post-Colonial Philology, Cashman Kerr Prince
Arriving Backwards: The Return of The Odyssey in the English-Speaking Caribbean, Emily Greenwood
`If you are a woman': Theatrical Wominizing in Sophocles' Antigone and Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona's The Island, Rush Rehm
Finding a Post-colonial Voice for Antigone: Seamus Heaney's Burial at Thebes, Stephen E. Wilmer
3. Challenging Theory: Framing Further Questions
`The same kind of smile': About the `Use and Abuse' of Theory in Constructing the Classical Tradition, Freddy Decreus
From the Peloponnesian War to the Iraq War: A Post-Liberal Reading of Greek Tragedy, Michiel Leezenberg
Western Classics, Indian Classics: Postcolonial Contestations, Harish Trivedi
Shades of Multilingualism and Multivocalism in Modern Performances of Greek Tragedy in Post-Colonial Contexts, Lorna Hardwick
The Empire Never Ended, Ika Willis
Another Architecture, David Richards