Fiona Hobden and Amanda Wrigley (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474412599
- eISBN:
- 9781474449526
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412599.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of ...
More
Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of Greece have been constructed through television’s distinctive audiovisual languages, and also in relation to its influential sister-medium radio, this volume explores the nature and function of these public engagements with the written and material remains of the Hellenic past. Through ten case studies drawn from feature programmes, educational broadcasts, children’s animations, theatre play productions, dramatic fiction and documentaries broadcast across the decades, this collection offers wide-ranging insights into the significance of ancient Greece on British television.Less
Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of Greece have been constructed through television’s distinctive audiovisual languages, and also in relation to its influential sister-medium radio, this volume explores the nature and function of these public engagements with the written and material remains of the Hellenic past. Through ten case studies drawn from feature programmes, educational broadcasts, children’s animations, theatre play productions, dramatic fiction and documentaries broadcast across the decades, this collection offers wide-ranging insights into the significance of ancient Greece on British television.
Fiona Hobden and Amanda Wrigley
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474412599
- eISBN:
- 9781474449526
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412599.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter offers an introduction to the subject of ancient Greece on British television from the mid-20th century to the present and to the particular topics and debates addressed in the volume. ...
More
This chapter offers an introduction to the subject of ancient Greece on British television from the mid-20th century to the present and to the particular topics and debates addressed in the volume. An opening analysis of The Drinking Party (BBC, 1965), a ‘modern recreation’ of Plato’s Symposium by Leo Aylen and Jonathan Miller, establishes the value of examining television’s engagement with ancient Greece and identifies avenues for wider investigation. In particular, it points to the significance of such televisual constructions of ancient Greece as part of wider historical conversations about British culture, society and politics; and it highlights tensions between education and entertainment, on the one hand, and ‘authenticity’ and authority, on the other, exploring what dominant ideas about national identity are being communicated. Earlier engagements with ancient Greece on British radio and television are broadly sketched out and set against relevant contours in the socio-cultural and televisual landscape, and wider cultural engagements with Hellenic antiquity. With the socio-historical and intellectual context mapped out, the contents and directions of individual chapters are outlined, with attention paid to their methods and approaches as well as their motivating questions and conclusions regarding the encounters with the Hellenic past on British television.Less
This chapter offers an introduction to the subject of ancient Greece on British television from the mid-20th century to the present and to the particular topics and debates addressed in the volume. An opening analysis of The Drinking Party (BBC, 1965), a ‘modern recreation’ of Plato’s Symposium by Leo Aylen and Jonathan Miller, establishes the value of examining television’s engagement with ancient Greece and identifies avenues for wider investigation. In particular, it points to the significance of such televisual constructions of ancient Greece as part of wider historical conversations about British culture, society and politics; and it highlights tensions between education and entertainment, on the one hand, and ‘authenticity’ and authority, on the other, exploring what dominant ideas about national identity are being communicated. Earlier engagements with ancient Greece on British radio and television are broadly sketched out and set against relevant contours in the socio-cultural and televisual landscape, and wider cultural engagements with Hellenic antiquity. With the socio-historical and intellectual context mapped out, the contents and directions of individual chapters are outlined, with attention paid to their methods and approaches as well as their motivating questions and conclusions regarding the encounters with the Hellenic past on British television.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. ...
More
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.Less
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.
