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The embrace of reception theory has been one of the hallmarks of classical studies over the last 30 years. This volume builds on the critical insights thereby gained to consider reception within Greek antiquity itself. Reception, like 'intertextuality', places the emphasis on the creative agency of the later 'receiver' rather than the unilateral influence of the 'transmitter'. It additionally shines the spotlight on transitions into new cultural contexts, on materiality, on intermediality and on the body. Essays range chronologically from the archaic to the Byzantine periods and address literature (prose and verse; Greek, Roman and Greco-Jewish), philosophy, papyri, inscriptions and dance. Whereas the conventional image of ancient Greek classicism is one of quiet reverence, this book, by contrast, demonstrates how rumbustious, heterogeneous and combative it could be.
Why speak of ‘reception’ in classical antiquity, rather than ‘allusion’ or ‘intertextuality’? This chapter begins by assessing the reasons for the emergence of the term reception in the scholarship of the last thirty years, identifying (a) a shift away from unilateral models of ‘influence’; (b) a postmodern promotion of the status of the ‘copy’; (c) a pedagogical need for multiplication of access points into the ancient world. But the idea of ‘reception’ has been applied primarily to post-antique cultures: why? Speaking of reception helps us break down the idea that antiquity itself was sealed off from later cultures, and that it was a homogeneous monoculture through which a single, cohesive tradition ran. It puts the emphasis on discontinuity, and the specificity and idiosyncrasy of each act of receiving; such acts can therefore be understood as ‘theorisations’ of the idea of tradition. This approach to literary history creates an equivalence between all receptions, however apparently ‘central’ or ‘marginal’. It also spotlights the political embeddedness and materiality of each act of reception. The chapter closes by considering how the volume’s contributions further this agenda.