Seduction and Power: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts

Description

This volume focuses on the reception of antiquity in the performing and visual arts from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. It explores the tensions and relations of gender, sexuality, eroticism and power in reception. Such universal themes dictated plots and characters of myth and drama, but also served to portray historical figures, events and places from Classical history. Their changing reception and reinterpretation across time has created stereotypes, models of virtue or immoral conduct, that blend the original features from the ancient world with a diverse range of visual and performing arts of the modern era.The volume deconstructs these traditions and shows how arts of different periods interlink to form and transmit these images to modern audiences and viewers. Drawing on contributions from across Europe and the United States, a trademark of the book is the inclusive treatment of all the arts beyond the traditional limits of academic disciplines.

Silke Knippschild is senior lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Bristol, UK. Marta Garcia Morcillo is a lecturer in ancient history at the University of Wales, UK.

Readers interested in the future of reception studies should bookmark the Project's webpage and stay tuned. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review * An important contribution to the studies of reception of the classics in the visual and performing arts, for several reasons ... The specialists have approached their themes with great mastery of the issues and with the desire to make their contributions useful tools for further studies ... It is a well-presented and enjoyable read. * CADMO (Bloomsbury translation) * The contributors have made, with lucidity and perception, an original contribution to the growing scholarship on the reception of the ancient world. Everyone will find something new here. * Classics for All Reviews * This is an exceptionally lively and thought-provoking collection by an international team of scholars from the Imagines research project. The case studies bring evidence from an impressive range of examples into dialogue with the central themes of seduction and power, revealing in the process how power is itself a seductive force. Every reader will encounter something new. The editors' concluding discussion explores how the individual essays combine to provide a map of the relationships between antiquity and the histories of the visual and performing arts. -- Lorna Hardwick, The Open University, UK Seduction challenges conventional relations of power, thus undermining tradition and leading to unexpected turns and dramas. This explains the fascination with this subject throughout the centuries. Some of the ancient seduction stories and their reception studied in this volume are familiar, others are not, but all of them are interesting. By focusing on the relation between seduction and power this volume makes an original contribution not only to reception studies but also to the diachronic study of gender and emotion. -- Angelos Chaniotis, Professor of Ancient History and Classics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA Silke Knippschild and Marta Garcia Morcillo have brought together a remarkable company of leading scholars and inspiring new voices who explore how the persistent liaison between seduction and power is richly exposed in modern receptions of the myths, histories, and images emanating from the ancient world. In case studies extending from the Renaissance to the present day, in a variety of media from the performing and visual arts, the contributors to this volume reveal with compelling clarity and scholarly insight how the power of seduction continues to be wielded by ancient cultures, as their essays unpack the enduring fascination exerted by the charismatic men and alluring women of antiquity upon later artists and performers. This impressive collection represents an important contribution to the field of reception studies, since it offers an unfettered glimpse into our own fantasies and projections about the power and eroticism so often and so intimately linked with the ancient world. -- Monica S. Cyrino, Professor of Classics, University of New Mexico, USA