In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the study of classical reception has moved from the periphery to the center of research and pedagogy in Classics. The reception process begins in antiquity itself, whether we are investigating genre and allusion in our Greek and Roman poets and dramatists or the transmission via pottery of visual motifs and techniques across the ancient Mediterranean. In recent decades we have used the tools of Classical Reception to analyze post-classical receptions of ancient works in different time periods and/or media. Everywhere, classical scholars are awake to the notion of the subject’s dynamic role in interpreting (and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, reinterpreting) its complex world through its own system of signs, culture, and personal experience. We must also take into account that in our role as scholars we find ourselves in the same kind of situation: we are interpreting subjects vis-à-vis our ancient material. This volume is part of this ongoing process and focuses on contemporary cinematic and televisual receptions where the connection between ancient and modern is unclear, indirect, and can even be contested. The reception of classical texts, myths, and history as well as narratives and characters on screen (cinema, television, and other digital media) has become a test case at the cutting edge of Classical Reception theoretical and methodological debates.¹ It is our hope that the theoretical questions and challenges posed by this collection might go some way towards creating uncertainty about where the bounds of reception are meant to lie, and thus to conceivably allow for such questionable instances of ‘reception’ to be included in the fold.

It is precisely the metaphorical relationship of a subject (audience; director/screenwriter/artist; scholar) consciously and intentionally standing face-to-face, ‘vis-à-vis’ some definite ancient entity, which this collection sets out to unmask. There are good reasons to do so—the Classics may be everywhere in the world of television, film, and popular culture,² but more often than not the authoritative text, the concrete allusion to an ancient work, is hard to pin down. Frequently this is because there is no authoritative text to speak of—the reception in question (for instance, a 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans) is a reception of another reception (the original 1981 Clash of the Titans) of another reception (some vague notion of ‘Greek mythology’ picked up from children’s books, popular texts, or some general cultural osmosis), with only the most tenuous link to any identifiable source text actually existing in either the ancient or modern world. In other instances , the source text may be ‘clear’ (the Iliad for 2004’s Troy, the Odyssey for 2000’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?), as it is enunciated in the title, the marketing, or certain names and situations, but the engagement is murky and impressionistic, making the question of reception anything but straightforward.

These are undeniably classical receptions, but they strain the boundaries of what is normally considered a straightforward instance of reception, and are thus ripe for theorization. They problematize either the notion of the object that the subject encounters in reception (there might be no identifiable or concrete object) or the encounter itself (there might even be no encounter at all, or the encounter is submerged beneath the artist’s solipsistic interpretation). Then there are case studies that cross Classical Reception’s standard boundaries, where there is some deep structural similarity between an ancient text and a modern film or television show, but where even murky classical intermediaries cannot be found. In this collection the reader will encounter several case studies where this is in fact the case.

If we conceive reception as a face-to-face encounter, what does it mean for us as scholars when our privileged subject (an artist, say) encounters (interprets, misinterprets, reinterprets) an ancient object that is neither concrete, nor ancient, nor localizable as being anywhere in particular? Such a formulation places a great deal of pressure on that figure of the privileged subject (the ‘Author’ of Foucauldian and Barthesian fame)³ to pin down a system of classical allusions by virtue of their authority, whether this manifests as fully articulated intentionality or merely as biographical plausibility (they studied Classics or engaged with Graeco-Roman narratives, characters, contexts elsewhere in their work etc.)

In the past, Classical Reception scholars have tended to privilege direct allusions and encounters, viewing them as worthy of study and debate (a remnant of our obsession with fidelity?). Opening up Classical Reception’s borders to make room for the analysis of ‘masked’ encounters can also help us redefine our role as scholars because there is undeniably a subject who frames an encounter with an ancient object in any instance of genuine classical reception, namely the scholar who juxtaposes ancient and modern works in his/her essays. Perhaps this is the ultimate unmasking of the subject in all their wondrous subjectivity: an artist and/or critic masquerading as a scholar interpreting the work of another author/artist, which in turn shapes how that work is understood, reinterpreted and adapted by later artists and scholars. A famous example of this process and its long-term effects is the reception of Greek drama in Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle offered a literary and philosophical analysis that has helped to mold our very understanding of the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. His work has haunted scholars and theater practitioners alike to the present day, even (or arguably especially) in cases where his meaning is hard to follow, as with the concept of catharsis.⁴ Modern practitioners tend to interpret this as the need for a play to ‘speak to’/emotionally connect with its contemporary audience.⁵ This fruitful ‘misunderstanding’ of a complicated concept put forward by Aristotle underlies much of modern theater since the rediscovery of Aristotle’s writings.

Another way to talk about our volume’s investigation of ‘masked’ receptions is to use the other two metaphors of our subtitle ‘echoes’ and/or ‘shadows’, privileging either the aural or the visual, although of course both are applicable when analyzing film. Both involve hard-to-pin-down refractions of our classical source(s), if indeed a connection can even be established in the first place. In many cases the task of unpacking the nature of the connection relies on the scholar’s ability to put together a strong case for the existence of a meaningful ‘encounter’, no matter how distorted or shadowy. This leaves plenty of room for healthy debate and encourages us to be self-reflective about our work and the assumptions upon which it is based. There are of course multiple instances of reception in any Reception Studies essay, of which the surest one is the scholar’s reception of his/her topic. As theorists like Bruno Latour remind us , scientific and scholarly processes straddle the lines of objectivity and subjectivity in uncomfortable ways.⁶ A hundred percent objectivity is of course impossible. Scientific narratives might attempt to occlude troublesome human elements such as happenstance, inspiration, dreams, whimsy, coincidence, political, and economic factors from their stories of discovery, but it is not actually possible to do so. These are all difficult topics which we, whether we ultimately agree with them or not, are duty bound to face up to if we are to fulfill our responsibilities as theoretically informed scholars of Classical Reception. Because ultimately, Classical Reception is at its most productive when it invites us to actively interrogate our own relationship with the classical past, as demonstrated in the drive to unpack the role Classics played in the colonization process.⁷ Engaging with Postcolonial Studies enabled us to appreciate more fully the many-faceted impact of the Graeco-Roman cultures (both as a negative and positive force) and to open up Classics to more inclusive, democratic, and non-elitist perspectives.⁸

Fortunately ...