Playful Classics: Classical Reception as a Creative Process (IMAGINES – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts)

Playful Classics: Classical Reception as a Creative Process (IMAGINES – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts)

This is the first book to deal exclusively with ludic interactions with classical antiquity – an understudied research area within classical reception studies – that can shed light on current processes of construction and appropriation of the Greco-Roman world. Classical antiquity has, for many years, been sold as a product and consumed in a wide variety of forms of entertainment. As a result, games, playing and playful experiences are a privileged space for the reception of antiquity. Through the medium of games, players, performers and audiences are put into direct contact with the classical past, and encouraged to experience it in a participative, creative and subjective fashion. The chapters in this volume, written by scholars and practitioners, cover a variety of topics and cultural artefacts including toys, board games and video games, as well as immersive experiences such as museums, theme parks and toga parties. The contributors tackle contemporary ludic practices and several papers establish a dialogue between artists and scholars, contrasting and harmonising their different approaches to the role of playfulness. Other chapters explore the educational potential of these manifestations, or their mediating role in shaping our conceptions of ancient Greece and Rome. Altogether, this edited collection is the first to offer a comprehensive overview of the ways we can play with antiquity. “This volume will certainly provide a fruitful place to start for those interested in play and creative approaches to classical reception.” ― Bryn Mawr Classical Review “A brilliant and playful demonstration of how to organise, focus and contextualise these important individual contributions from a remarkable conference.” ―Gregory N. Daugherty, Professor Emeritus of Classics Randolph-Macon College, USA “One of the successes of this edited volume is the wide variety of specialities displayed and insights into varied areas of research. Extensive bibliographies after each entry will guide the novice reader to new possibilities. In the concluding Coda, Juliette Harrisson reiterates that “a playful reception of the ancient world is an active one, not a passive one” (261). 'Playing' in the ancient world not only creates deeper connections with the source material, it bathes it in a new light.” ― Classical Journal Juliette Harrisson is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Birmingham Newman University, UK. Filippo Carlà-Uhink is Professor of Ancient History at Potsdam University, Germany. His main research areas are the social and economical history of Late Antiquity, the history of the Roman Republic, the cultural history of ancient Rome, with a particular attention for space concepts and the construction of space, and the reception of antiquity in modern media. He is co-editor of Bloomsbury Academic's series IMAGINES - Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts, and editor of Caesar, Attila & Co. Comics und die Antike (2014) and, with Irene Berti, Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Martin Lindner is Lecturer in Ancient History and Curator of the Tom Stern Collection film archive at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Luis Unceta Gómez is Lecturer in Latin Philology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain.