January Conference 1999
THEATRE
: ANCIENT & MODERN
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Nineteenth
and Twentieth-Century Reception
One of the most noticeable
trends marking millennial studies in the reception of classical
texts is a broadening of the agenda. It is not simply that the
participants themselves are now drawn from a range of disciplines
– although that change has inevitably brought with it new
emphases and insights through the meeting of divergent perspectives.
It is, above all, the fact that the study of the classical tradition
as the appropriation of ancient authors on the part of an intellectual
and social elite is increasingly under scrutiny. There is now
a new awareness of the multiplicity of areas – from high
through middlebrow and even popular culture – that the classical
authors, and the Greek dramatists in particular, have penetrated.
That the appropriation
of the classical texts has been a means of empowerment for more
than simply the governing classes is a theme that runs throughout
the articles that appear in this section. When we look at the
range of these papers – from Lorna Hardwick's discussion
of women's appropriation of the Greek language in nineteenth-century
England down to the more recent post-colonial re-writings discussed
by Des O'Rawe and Marianne McDonald – we can see this broadening
of the former belle-lettriste agenda being clearly reflected.
Recent developments
in translation studies have increasingly insisted upon the need
to move away from the traditional Frostian focus on the losses
that are incurred through the translation process. Instead, it
is argued, the emphasis should be placed upon the very gains to
the host culture that the translation brings. Similarly it would
seem that this is the case with reception studies of Greek tragedy,
where we are increasingly invited to see classical tragedy as
a catalyst for wide creative endeavour. Miriam Handley's article
explores the influence of Greek drama on Shaw's creative aesthetic;
and Greek tragedy as catalyst is one of the themes in Ruth Hazel's
discussion of Electra at the end of the twentieth century. But
the claim that these modern re-workings of the ancient plays are
always a 'gain' to the host culture is something that Des O'Rawe
seeks to challenge in his provocative consideration of recent
Irish translations/versions of Greek tragedy.
It may well be that
our discussion of different modern versions of the Greek plays
does not simply afford insights into the host culture; these re-workings
can also tell us something new about the ancient plays themselves.
Lorna Hardwick's illuminating study of Augusta Webster and Amy
Levy bears this out, where radical nineteenth-century readings
not only anticipate late twentieth-century ones, they also transcend
them in their lucidity. Furthermore, as both Jan Parker's discussion
of Anouilh's Antigone and Ruth Hazel's account of modern
Electras remind us, when we watch these modern versions of the
Greek tragedies being played out against other earlier
versions, we may well be coming the closest we can in the modern
world to an understanding of how myth with its competing versions
in fact worked in the theatre of the fifth century
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Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English