The Reception of Classical Literature in Poetry in English since 1900

III.15 (e) The Reception of Classical Literature in Poetry in English since 1900.

 (this subject may not be combined with III.3 Historiography, 4 Lyric Poetry, 7 Comedy, or 15 (b) Medieval and Renaissance Latin Hexameter Poetry – nor of course with any other subject under III.15. It is examined by pre-submitted essay [see Introduction to this Greek & Latin Literature section].)

Poetry in English since 1900 has had a vital and continuing engagement with classical models. In the first half of the tweitieth century, this constituted reaction to and against culturally central texts such as Homer, Virgil and Greek tragedy; from the last third of the century, classical texts have been taken up again by poets who established themselves in other modes (Hughes and Heaney), as well as being a central thread in a career (Harrison, Carson), and the revival of Greek drama in major versions and of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in poetic treatments have been particular features. The reception of classical texts has also been a framework for treating the fall-out of colonialism (Walcott) or the politics of Northern Ireland (Heaney, Longley). This subject looks at this continuing and vital afterlife of classical literature in our own times.

Authors who are likely to feature include Hardy, Yeats, Frost, Eliot, Pound, H.D., Auden, MacNeice, Lowell, Hughes, Walcott, Carson, Harrison Longley and Heaney in English, and Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Virgil, Horace and Ovid in Classics.

Lorna Hardwick, Reception Studies (G&R New Surveys 33, Oxford 2003).