Experiencing Immersion in Antiquity and Modernity

From Narrative to Virtual Reality

Emma Cole

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350419117
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: Literature

This book examines the links between experiencing immersion in antiquity and modernity. Immersive experiences are big business within today's creative economy. Forms range from immersive museum exhibitions, theatrical performances, art installations and experiences facilitated through virtual and augmented reality technologies. Yet the idea of immersion is not new; paintings, sculpture and theatre have all been theorised historically in terms of illusion, realism and immersion.

From antiquity to modernity, there has been an interest in theorising the relationship between reality and virtual realities, and in contemplating whether feeling present in an alternate universe is a sought-after experience or something problematic and dangerous. The chapters in this volume explore the warnings against immersion voiced by Plato and embodied in the figure of the Homeric sirens, contrasted with the pro-immersion perspectives championed by Aristotelian mimesis and embodied in the concept of enargeia. The volume also examines the integration of the ancient world into immersive novels, games, museum exhibitions and theatrical performances. Practice-as-Research contributions explore the benefits of this synergy from practitioner perspectives. Contributors from diverse fields – including classical reception studies, art history, game studies, heritage studies and theatre studies – approach the interplay between antiquity and modernity from varied standpoints. Together, they uncover previously unforeseen connections across disciplines and lay the groundwork for future research and additional classically inflected immersive experiences.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Antiquity and Immersivity: An Introduction
• Part 1: Immersion and Literature
• 2 Reading the River Maeánder: Immersive Narrative in the Literature of the Labyrinth
• 3 The Sirens and the Dark Side of Immersion in Antiquity
• 4 Immersion, Emotion and Sensory Hierarchy: Thucydides beyond Enargeia?
• Part 2: Immersion and Imagery
• 5 Total Immersion Tropes: Environmental Materiality and Roman World-Formation
• 6 Imitating Passions Visually, Imitating Ancient Authors: Lessing’s Laokoon as an ‘Immersive’ Lens for a Comparison Between Vergil and Petronius
• 7 ‘To Revive Ancient Life’: Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Perceptual Immersion
• Part 3: Immersion, Theatre and Intermediality
• 8 Experiencing the Sacred in the Theatre of Pentheus: Bad Faith Immersion from The Performance Group to Punchdrunk
• 9 The Voice of Gods in Your Ear: Becoming the Avatar in Immersive Performance
• Part 4: Immersion and Gameplay
• 10 Immersivity in ‘Virtual Antiquity’
• 11 Immersive Metalepsis and (Other) ‘Fantasies of Antiquity’ in Games
• Part 5: Immersion and Heritage
• 12 Bringing the Voices of Roman London to Life: Poetry and Space
• 13 Ancient Roman House to Modern Museum: Doubling the Horizons of Immersion Through Exhibitions
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright