Maria Wyke

From Latin love poetry's dominating and enslaving beloveds, to modern popular culture's infamous Cleopatras and Messalinas, representations of the Roman mistress (or the mistress of Romans) have brought into question both ancient and modern genders and political systems. The Roman Mistress explores representations of transgressive women in Latin love poetry and British television drama, in Roman historiography and nineteenth-century Italian anthropology, on classical coinage and college websites, as poetic metaphor and in the Hollywood star system. In a highly accessible style, the book makes an important and original contribution simultaneously to feminist scholarship on antiquity, the classical tradition, and cultural studies.

Ancient and Modern Representations

The Roman Mistress

Brought vividly to life on screen, the myth of ancient Rome resonates through modern popular culture. Projecting the Past examines how the cinematic traditions of Hollywood and Italy have resurrected ancient Rome to address the concerns of the present. The book engages contemporary debates about the nature of the classical tradition, definitions of history, and the place of the past in historical film.

Ancient Rome, Cinema and History

Projecting the Past

Monika Woźniak

The Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1905 largely on the basis of his historical novel Quo vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero. The novel's vivid and moving reconstruction of religious persecution and struggle against tyranny catapulted its author into literary stardom. But, before long, Quo vadis began to 'detach' itself from the person of its author and to become a multimedial, mass culture phenomenon. In the West and in the East, it was adapted for stage and screen, provided the inspiration for works of music and other genres of literature, was transformed into comic strips and illustrated children's books, was cited in advertising, and referenced in everyday objects of material culture. This volume explores the strategies Sienkiewicz used to recreate Neronian Rome and the reasons his novel was so avidly consumed and reproduced in new editions, translations, visual illustrations, and adaptations to the stage and screen across Europe and in the United States. The contributions render visible for English-speaking readers the impact of a Polish work of high literature on the presence of Nero, Christian persecution, and ancient Rome in Western popular culture.

Sienkiewicz's Quo vadis

The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations

Andrew Hopkins

This collection of seventeen essays explores the dramatic changes in Western conceptions of the body, encompassing the cultural shifts that occurred across Empire, religion and science, from antiquity to the eighteenth century.

Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century

Roman Bodies

The figure of Julius Caesar has loomed large in the United States since its very beginning, admired and evoked as a gateway to knowledge of politics, war, and even national life. In this lively and perceptive book, the first to examine Caesar's place in modern American culture, Maria Wyke investigates how his use has intensified in periods of political crisis, when the occurrence of assassination, war, dictatorship, totalitarianism or empire appears to give him fresh relevance. Her fascinating discussion shows how--from the Latin classroom to the Shakespearean stage, from cinema, television and the comic book to the internet--Caesar is mobilized in the U.S. as a resource for acculturation into the American present, as a prediction of America’s future, or as a mode of commercial profit and great entertainment.

Caesar in the USA

Leonie J. Archer

Susan Fischler

This collection of essays represents research currently being undertaken on women's lives and their representations in various ancient societies. It provides a forum for the exchange and development of ideas and methods at a crucial period in the growth of women's studies in the UK.

An Illusion of the Night

Women in Ancient Societies

This book explores the significance of Julius Caesar to differentperiods, societies and people from the 50s BC through to thetwenty-first century. This interdisciplinary volume explores the significance ofJulius Caesar to different periods, societies and people. Ranges over the fields of religious, military, and politicalhistory, archaeology, architecture and urban planning, the visualarts, and literary, film, theatre and cultural studies. Examines representations of Caesar in Italy, France, Germany,Britain, and the United States in particular. Objects of analysis range from Caesar’s own commentarieson the Gallic wars, through Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, andimages of Caesar in Italian fascist popular culture, tocontemporary cinema and current debates about Americanempire. Edited by a leading expert on the reception of ancientRome. Includes original contributions by international experts onCaesar and his reception.

Julius Caesar in Western Culture

Michael Denis Biddiss

This multi-disciplinary volume brings together essays illustrating the diversity of forms in which the legacy of Antiquity has been used, and abused, by the Modern West. Here classicists and non-classicists combine to show how historiography, anthropology, philosophy, political thought, archaeology, poetry, drama, the novel, music, architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, and film can be rewardingly juxtaposed as sites rich in the appropriation of Greco-Roman culture. The book has a chronological span running from the 17th to the late-20th century, and it ranges geographically from Britain to Europe and the USA. The authors remind us that it is often not the past itself so much as constructed images thereof which do most to mould our cultural consciousness. The collection discloses the pluralism and flexibility of Antiquity as an important modern symbolic source, and the variety of socio-cultural circumstances which have oriented us towards it. At many points these essays also analyse signs of a certain desire for release from a tradition viewed as troublesome and constraining. Yet they also tend to confirm that, whenever we seek to escape classical culture, we are still likely to be held within its trammels - that, even when we think that we have thrown it off, we seem fated to remain within its protean thrall.

The Uses and Abuses of Antiquity

C. B. R. Pelling

Introduction to twelve authors from classical antiquity, whose works still address some of our most fundamental concerns in the world today

Ancient Ideas for Modern Times

Twelve Voices from Greece and Rome

From Latin love poetry's dominating and enslaving beloveds, to modern popular culture's infamous Cleopatras and Messalinas, representations of the Roman mistress (or the mistress of Romans) have brought into question both ancient and modern genders and political systems. The Roman Mistressexplores representations of transgressive women in Latin love poetry and British television drama, in Roman historiography and nineteenth-century Italian anthropology, on classical coinage and college websites, as poetic metaphor and in the Hollywood star system. In a highly accessible style, thebook makes an important and original contribution simultaneously to feminist scholarship on antiquity, the classical tradition, and cultural studies.

Pantelis Michelakis

The first systematic attempt to focus on the instrumental role of silent cinema in early twentieth-century conceptualizations of the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. It is located at the intersection of film studies, classics, Bible studies and cultural studies.

The Ancient World in Silent Cinema

Monika Wo'zniak

This volume explores the historical novel Quo vadis written by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, examining how Sienkiewicz recreated Neronian Rome so vividly and the reasons why his novel was so avidly consumed and reproduced in new editions, translations, visual illustrations, and adaptations to the stage and screen.

Maria Wyke

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