Antipodean Antiquities: Classical reception down under

Professor Marguerite Johnson -  Antipodean Antiquities: Classical reception down under

Professor of Classics, Marguerite Johnson has published a new book titled Antipoden Antiquities: Classical reception down under.

Published by Bloomsbury the volume is an edited collection that explores the under-represented area of the Australasian Classical Tradition. It interrogates the interactions between Mediterranean Antiquity and the antipodean worlds of New Zealand and Australia through the lenses of literature, film, theatre and fine art.

Of interest to scholars across the globe who research the influence of antiquity on modern literature, film, theatre and fine art, Professor Johnson says this volume fills a decisive gap in the literature by bringing antipodean research into the spotlight.

“Research into early colonial Australian appropriations of the Classical Tradition has been a focus of my study since 2014 and has developed substantially since. While Classical Reception Studies (the study of the various influences or impacts of the uses and abuses of Greek and Roman traditions on a given culture at a given time) has been a significant scholarly topic for the last 25 years, it has taken a longer time to receive attention in Australasia and even longer to see it actually applied to an Australasian historical context,” Professor Johnson said.

Following a contextual introduction to the field, the six parts of the volume explore the latest research on subjects that range from the Lord of the Rings and Xena: Warrior Princess franchises to important artists such as Sidney Nolan and local authors whose work offers opportunities for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis with well-known Western authors and artists. As such it provides a well-rounded view of reception practices across Australia and New Zealand, and the varied roles that instances of reception can play in a given society.

“Taken together the chapters cover multiple distinct types of ‘texts’ from visual art to film to theatre to literature, as well as spanning multiple centuries,” Professor Johnson said.

“They also collectively explore how instances of reception in a colonial/post-colonial context can range from adhering to imperialistic, colonising values (e.g. in Laura Ginters’ study of staging Greek drama in 1880s Sydney), to subtly subverting dominant cultural values (as Ika Willis shows occurred in the later seasons of Xena), to examples where victims of oppression use Classical references to fight against the ideologies that underpin that oppression (particularly Rachael White’s study of Classically-inflected convict views of the penal colonies, and Jane Montgomery Griffiths’ meta-study of her own feminist theatrical response to Antigone).”

Review

“A well-rounded study highlighting the importance of Greco-Roman history and culture for many Australians and New Zealanders, from convicts to colonisers, ranging from novelists to poets to painters and film-makers. This is exemplary Classical Reception practice.” – Maxine Lewis, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Auckland, New Zealand,