Christopher B. Balme
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184447
- eISBN:
- 9780191674266
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184447.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This book is a major study devoted to post-colonial drama and theatre. It examines the way dramatists and directors from various countries and societies have attempted to fuse the performance idioms ...
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This book is a major study devoted to post-colonial drama and theatre. It examines the way dramatists and directors from various countries and societies have attempted to fuse the performance idioms of their indigenous traditions with the Western dramatic form. These experiments are termed ‘syncretic theatre’. The study provides a theoretically sophisticated, cross-cultural comparative approach to a wide number of writers, regions, and theatre movements, ranging from Maori, Aboriginal, and Native American theatre to Township theatre in South Africa. Writers studied include Nobel Prize-winning authors such as Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, and Rabindranath Tagore, along with others such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Jack Davis, Girish Karnad, and Tomson Highway. This book demonstrates how the dynamics of syncretic theatrical texts function in performance. It combines cultural semiotics with performance analysis to provide an important contribution to the growing field of post-colonial drama and intercultural performance.Less
This book is a major study devoted to post-colonial drama and theatre. It examines the way dramatists and directors from various countries and societies have attempted to fuse the performance idioms of their indigenous traditions with the Western dramatic form. These experiments are termed ‘syncretic theatre’. The study provides a theoretically sophisticated, cross-cultural comparative approach to a wide number of writers, regions, and theatre movements, ranging from Maori, Aboriginal, and Native American theatre to Township theatre in South Africa. Writers studied include Nobel Prize-winning authors such as Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, and Rabindranath Tagore, along with others such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Jack Davis, Girish Karnad, and Tomson Highway. This book demonstrates how the dynamics of syncretic theatrical texts function in performance. It combines cultural semiotics with performance analysis to provide an important contribution to the growing field of post-colonial drama and intercultural performance.
Christopher B. Balme
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184447
- eISBN:
- 9780191674266
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184447.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This chapter examines different ritualization strategies incorporated in syncretic theatres. One method of ritualizing the theatre is to adopt existing ritual forms and adapt them so as to alter the ...
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This chapter examines different ritualization strategies incorporated in syncretic theatres. One method of ritualizing the theatre is to adopt existing ritual forms and adapt them so as to alter the entire performance frame. The relationship between theatre and ritual in post-colonial societies is uniquely manifested in the Maori theatre, which attempted to ritualize the overall frame of the entire theatrical performance. This chapter also explains how indigenous ritual forms can be incorporated into a Western liminal dramaturgical frame through the analysis of the ritual dramas of Wole Soyinka. It also examines the phenomenon of possession in terms of both its dramaturgical functions and its performance aesthetics. Possession is a striking feature of African-American religious celebration and is particularly important in West African and in Caribbean syncretic cults such as voodoo, kumina, shango, and pocomania.Less
This chapter examines different ritualization strategies incorporated in syncretic theatres. One method of ritualizing the theatre is to adopt existing ritual forms and adapt them so as to alter the entire performance frame. The relationship between theatre and ritual in post-colonial societies is uniquely manifested in the Maori theatre, which attempted to ritualize the overall frame of the entire theatrical performance. This chapter also explains how indigenous ritual forms can be incorporated into a Western liminal dramaturgical frame through the analysis of the ritual dramas of Wole Soyinka. It also examines the phenomenon of possession in terms of both its dramaturgical functions and its performance aesthetics. Possession is a striking feature of African-American religious celebration and is particularly important in West African and in Caribbean syncretic cults such as voodoo, kumina, shango, and pocomania.
Astrid Van Weyenberg
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199595006
- eISBN:
- 9780191731464
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199595006.003.0020
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, African History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter discusses Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, It explores, first of all, how Soyinka draws on Yoruba mythology and cosmology to emphasise the revolutionary ...
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This chapter discusses Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, It explores, first of all, how Soyinka draws on Yoruba mythology and cosmology to emphasise the revolutionary potential of ritual sacrifice. Then, the focus shifts to the politics that the adaptation performs through its ambiguous relation with the Euripedean pre‐text, a relation that is characterised by a dual emphasis on correspondence and difference. In the final part, the cultural politics at play in Soyinka's refiguration of Dionysus and in his theory of ‘Yoruba tragedy’ is considered in relation to Martin Bernal's Black Athena project. The primary intention is to demonstrate how Soyinka does with ‘tragedy’ what Bernal does with ‘Greece’: challenging its conventional definition and destabilising the Eurocentrism that has traditionally inhibited it.Less
This chapter discusses Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, It explores, first of all, how Soyinka draws on Yoruba mythology and cosmology to emphasise the revolutionary potential of ritual sacrifice. Then, the focus shifts to the politics that the adaptation performs through its ambiguous relation with the Euripedean pre‐text, a relation that is characterised by a dual emphasis on correspondence and difference. In the final part, the cultural politics at play in Soyinka's refiguration of Dionysus and in his theory of ‘Yoruba tragedy’ is considered in relation to Martin Bernal's Black Athena project. The primary intention is to demonstrate how Soyinka does with ‘tragedy’ what Bernal does with ‘Greece’: challenging its conventional definition and destabilising the Eurocentrism that has traditionally inhibited it.
Keith Cartwright
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604732115
- eISBN:
- 9781604733549
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604732115.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter presents a comparative study of Faulkner and Wole Soyinka. By drawing global South connections between Mississippi and Nigeria, it maps Yoknapatawpha’s local racialized violence in ...
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This chapter presents a comparative study of Faulkner and Wole Soyinka. By drawing global South connections between Mississippi and Nigeria, it maps Yoknapatawpha’s local racialized violence in stories such as “Red Leaves,” “That Evening Sun,” and “Delta Autumn” onto a larger transnational grid of ethnic economies shared by Soyinka’s Africa. The chapter analyzes the “carriers” of ritual cleansings (often African American or Native American characters in Faulkner) and the “medicinal models” of healing in the fiction of Faulkner and Soyinka, who move their readers to “cathartic responsibility” by triggering a startling recognition of the reader’s own participation in repeating the violence.Less
This chapter presents a comparative study of Faulkner and Wole Soyinka. By drawing global South connections between Mississippi and Nigeria, it maps Yoknapatawpha’s local racialized violence in stories such as “Red Leaves,” “That Evening Sun,” and “Delta Autumn” onto a larger transnational grid of ethnic economies shared by Soyinka’s Africa. The chapter analyzes the “carriers” of ritual cleansings (often African American or Native American characters in Faulkner) and the “medicinal models” of healing in the fiction of Faulkner and Soyinka, who move their readers to “cathartic responsibility” by triggering a startling recognition of the reader’s own participation in repeating the violence.
Simon Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813036021
- eISBN:
- 9780813038636
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813036021.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter tries to portray that the British drama's canon illustrates the stubborn “otherness” of Africa, permitting the repetition of stereotypical, historically incurious representations of ...
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This chapter tries to portray that the British drama's canon illustrates the stubborn “otherness” of Africa, permitting the repetition of stereotypical, historically incurious representations of Africa by British dramatists—whether conservative or progressive—while still holding Anglophone African writers at arm's length. The chapter scrutinizes three plays: The Cocktail Party by T. S. Eliot, Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka, and Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill. All these novels re-create a moment in colonial history as per the author's modern point of view.Less
This chapter tries to portray that the British drama's canon illustrates the stubborn “otherness” of Africa, permitting the repetition of stereotypical, historically incurious representations of Africa by British dramatists—whether conservative or progressive—while still holding Anglophone African writers at arm's length. The chapter scrutinizes three plays: The Cocktail Party by T. S. Eliot, Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka, and Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill. All these novels re-create a moment in colonial history as per the author's modern point of view.
Fiona Macintosh
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199208791
- eISBN:
- 9780191709029
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208791.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter reviews Murray's involvement with the theatre. It situates his translations in the performance traditions of early 20th-century England and also in a wider context, including that of the ...
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This chapter reviews Murray's involvement with the theatre. It situates his translations in the performance traditions of early 20th-century England and also in a wider context, including that of the Salvation Army and the influence of Nietzsche. The chapter ends by exploring the influence of Murray's translations on the reworking of Greek tragic plots by the Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka.Less
This chapter reviews Murray's involvement with the theatre. It situates his translations in the performance traditions of early 20th-century England and also in a wider context, including that of the Salvation Army and the influence of Nietzsche. The chapter ends by exploring the influence of Murray's translations on the reworking of Greek tragic plots by the Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka.
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804774765
- eISBN:
- 9780804782555
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804774765.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This chapter compares two novels: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh's (Mendele Moykher-Sforim) Di Klyatshe and Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters. Comprised of twenty-four chapters, Di Klyatshe parodies haskole ...
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This chapter compares two novels: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh's (Mendele Moykher-Sforim) Di Klyatshe and Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters. Comprised of twenty-four chapters, Di Klyatshe parodies haskole by telling the story of Yisrolik, a would-be university student who rescues—in his dream—a mare from a band of juvenile delinquents. In this fiction, Abramovitsh shows the explicit connection between culture and power, placing the mare at the center of an unequal showdown between the putative maskil and the imperial state. Both Di Klyatshe and The Interpreters highlight the collapse of previous distinctions between tradition and modernity. The Interpreters stresses the continuity between tradition and modernity, the paradoxical oldness of independent Nigeria.Less
This chapter compares two novels: Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh's (Mendele Moykher-Sforim) Di Klyatshe and Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters. Comprised of twenty-four chapters, Di Klyatshe parodies haskole by telling the story of Yisrolik, a would-be university student who rescues—in his dream—a mare from a band of juvenile delinquents. In this fiction, Abramovitsh shows the explicit connection between culture and power, placing the mare at the center of an unequal showdown between the putative maskil and the imperial state. Both Di Klyatshe and The Interpreters highlight the collapse of previous distinctions between tradition and modernity. The Interpreters stresses the continuity between tradition and modernity, the paradoxical oldness of independent Nigeria.
Christopher B. Balme
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184447
- eISBN:
- 9780191674266
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184447.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This chapter deals primarily with dance and movement. It focuses on the different aspects of the kinetic body, the body in motion, particularly the textual aspects of dance. The kinetic art of ...
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This chapter deals primarily with dance and movement. It focuses on the different aspects of the kinetic body, the body in motion, particularly the textual aspects of dance. The kinetic art of syncretic theatre is by no means exclusively danced art. There are numerous other forms of body language and kinetic expression which are culturally coded and incorporated into theatrical texts. This chapter analyses other forms of kinetic communication such as gesture and sign language and discusses the crucial importance of non-verbal performance devices. Examples are drawn from South African township theatre, from Aboriginal drama, from a play by Asif Currimbhoy, The Dumb Dancer, and from Wole Soyinka's play Death and the King's Horseman.Less
This chapter deals primarily with dance and movement. It focuses on the different aspects of the kinetic body, the body in motion, particularly the textual aspects of dance. The kinetic art of syncretic theatre is by no means exclusively danced art. There are numerous other forms of body language and kinetic expression which are culturally coded and incorporated into theatrical texts. This chapter analyses other forms of kinetic communication such as gesture and sign language and discusses the crucial importance of non-verbal performance devices. Examples are drawn from South African township theatre, from Aboriginal drama, from a play by Asif Currimbhoy, The Dumb Dancer, and from Wole Soyinka's play Death and the King's Horseman.
Alan Riach
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637744
- eISBN:
- 9780748652143
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637744.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter explores the cultural critic offering an assessment that must be especially ready to historicise the work of Hugh MacDiarmid and Wole Soyinka, and to see the different roles their ...
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This chapter explores the cultural critic offering an assessment that must be especially ready to historicise the work of Hugh MacDiarmid and Wole Soyinka, and to see the different roles their nations have played historically, beginning from the understanding that not all nations are the same or fulfil the same function. MacDiarmid based his literary effort on the validity of national identity. His conviction, far more than any comparable or contemporary figure, was that in Scotland, nationality was a vital consideration in the development of the totality of cultural production and the concurrent well-being of people generally. The differences between the national identities of Nigeria and Scotland show amply how useless any single theory of nationalism is, unless it describes specific historical circumstances. The natural concerns and responsibilities that come with place and connection are what Soyinka's words remind his readers of.Less
This chapter explores the cultural critic offering an assessment that must be especially ready to historicise the work of Hugh MacDiarmid and Wole Soyinka, and to see the different roles their nations have played historically, beginning from the understanding that not all nations are the same or fulfil the same function. MacDiarmid based his literary effort on the validity of national identity. His conviction, far more than any comparable or contemporary figure, was that in Scotland, nationality was a vital consideration in the development of the totality of cultural production and the concurrent well-being of people generally. The differences between the national identities of Nigeria and Scotland show amply how useless any single theory of nationalism is, unless it describes specific historical circumstances. The natural concerns and responsibilities that come with place and connection are what Soyinka's words remind his readers of.
Tessa Roynon
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199595006
- eISBN:
- 9780191731464
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199595006.003.0023
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, African History: BCE to 500CE
Building on recent scholarly interest in Toni Morrison's engagement with the classical tradition, this chapter demonstrates that her interest in the Africanness of classicism is a significant feature ...
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Building on recent scholarly interest in Toni Morrison's engagement with the classical tradition, this chapter demonstrates that her interest in the Africanness of classicism is a significant feature of novels she published both before and after the appearance of Bernal's Black Athena in 1987. It examines key vignettes in Sula, The Bluest Eye and Paradise, showing that though repeated engagement with Ovid's Metamorphoses the author asserts the confluence of African, Greek, and Roman cultures. Exploring her interest in the Nag Hammadi texts; in African‐American strategic appropriations of a performed ‘Egyptianness’; in Aesop; in the Antiquities collections at the Louvre; and in the work of other ‘diasporic classicists’ such as Wole Soyinka, it concludes that the Morrisonian oeuvre forms a significant contribution to recent reconceptualization of classical culture, and of the implications of this for modernity.Less
Building on recent scholarly interest in Toni Morrison's engagement with the classical tradition, this chapter demonstrates that her interest in the Africanness of classicism is a significant feature of novels she published both before and after the appearance of Bernal's Black Athena in 1987. It examines key vignettes in Sula, The Bluest Eye and Paradise, showing that though repeated engagement with Ovid's Metamorphoses the author asserts the confluence of African, Greek, and Roman cultures. Exploring her interest in the Nag Hammadi texts; in African‐American strategic appropriations of a performed ‘Egyptianness’; in Aesop; in the Antiquities collections at the Louvre; and in the work of other ‘diasporic classicists’ such as Wole Soyinka, it concludes that the Morrisonian oeuvre forms a significant contribution to recent reconceptualization of classical culture, and of the implications of this for modernity.
Eleftheria Ioannidou
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199664115
- eISBN:
- 9780191833380
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199664115.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The fourth chapter discusses hybrid plays that unsettle the distinction between translation and adaptation. The chapter relates this mode of rewriting to the idea of the death of the Author, coined ...
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The fourth chapter discusses hybrid plays that unsettle the distinction between translation and adaptation. The chapter relates this mode of rewriting to the idea of the death of the Author, coined by Roland Barthes in the late 1960s. Ted Hughes’s Alcestis and Simon Armitage’s Mister Heracles adapt the figure of Heracles to contemplate the demise of the male hero via a translational practice that embodies the demise of the male Author. In Brendan Kennelly’s versions of Greek tragedy, the same practice is adopted to voice the silenced female stories. In Wole Soyinka’s postcolonial adaptation The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, the end of the authorial patriarchy entails the cultural fluidity of the classical canon.Less
The fourth chapter discusses hybrid plays that unsettle the distinction between translation and adaptation. The chapter relates this mode of rewriting to the idea of the death of the Author, coined by Roland Barthes in the late 1960s. Ted Hughes’s Alcestis and Simon Armitage’s Mister Heracles adapt the figure of Heracles to contemplate the demise of the male hero via a translational practice that embodies the demise of the male Author. In Brendan Kennelly’s versions of Greek tragedy, the same practice is adopted to voice the silenced female stories. In Wole Soyinka’s postcolonial adaptation The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, the end of the authorial patriarchy entails the cultural fluidity of the classical canon.
Tessa Roynon
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199698684
- eISBN:
- 9780191760532
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698684.003.0007
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, American History: pre-Columbian BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines Morrison's challenge to the fabricated conception of classicism as a ‘pure’ boy of culture, as a European pedigree on which so many aspects of dominant American identity depend. ...
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This chapter examines Morrison's challenge to the fabricated conception of classicism as a ‘pure’ boy of culture, as a European pedigree on which so many aspects of dominant American identity depend. It demonstrates the novelist's interest in the historical connectedness of Africa (both North and West) with Ancient Greece and Rome. It explores her affinities with Martin Bernal, Paul Gilroy, Joseph Roach, and Wole Soyinka; her anthologizing of African literature in the 1970s; her use of Egyptian traditions and of the Gnostic gospels in the Nag Hammadi library; her revisionary deployment of Ovid's Metamorphoses to restore Africa to both the classical tradition and to the American structures that depend on that tradition; and her adaptations of Aesop's fables. The key novels discussed her are Sula, Paradise, and Jazz.Less
This chapter examines Morrison's challenge to the fabricated conception of classicism as a ‘pure’ boy of culture, as a European pedigree on which so many aspects of dominant American identity depend. It demonstrates the novelist's interest in the historical connectedness of Africa (both North and West) with Ancient Greece and Rome. It explores her affinities with Martin Bernal, Paul Gilroy, Joseph Roach, and Wole Soyinka; her anthologizing of African literature in the 1970s; her use of Egyptian traditions and of the Gnostic gospels in the Nag Hammadi library; her revisionary deployment of Ovid's Metamorphoses to restore Africa to both the classical tradition and to the American structures that depend on that tradition; and her adaptations of Aesop's fables. The key novels discussed her are Sula, Paradise, and Jazz.
Daniel Orrells, Gurminder K. Bhambra, and Tessa Roynon
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199595006
- eISBN:
- 9780191731464
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199595006.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, African History: BCE to 500CE
Building on recent scholarly interest in Toni Morrison’s engagement with the classical tradition, this chapter demonstrates that her interest in the Africanness of classicism is a significant feature ...
More
Building on recent scholarly interest in Toni Morrison’s engagement with the classical tradition, this chapter demonstrates that her interest in the Africanness of classicism is a significant feature of novels she published both before and after the appearance of Bernal’s Black Athena in 1987. It examines key vignettes in Sula, The Bluest Eye and Paradise, showing that though repeated engagement with Ovid’s Metamorphoses the author asserts the confluence of African, Greek, and Roman cultures. Exploring her interest in the Nag Hammadi texts; in African-American strategic appropriations of a performed ‘Egyptianness’; in Aesop; in the Antiquities collections at the Louvre; and in the work of other ‘diasporic classicists’ such as Wole Soyinka, it concludes that the Morrisonian oeuvre forms a significant contribution to recent reconceptualization of classical culture, and of the implications of this for modernity.Less
Building on recent scholarly interest in Toni Morrison’s engagement with the classical tradition, this chapter demonstrates that her interest in the Africanness of classicism is a significant feature of novels she published both before and after the appearance of Bernal’s Black Athena in 1987. It examines key vignettes in Sula, The Bluest Eye and Paradise, showing that though repeated engagement with Ovid’s Metamorphoses the author asserts the confluence of African, Greek, and Roman cultures. Exploring her interest in the Nag Hammadi texts; in African-American strategic appropriations of a performed ‘Egyptianness’; in Aesop; in the Antiquities collections at the Louvre; and in the work of other ‘diasporic classicists’ such as Wole Soyinka, it concludes that the Morrisonian oeuvre forms a significant contribution to recent reconceptualization of classical culture, and of the implications of this for modernity.