Popular Receptions of Classical Antiquity

Jens A. Krasilnikoff, Vinnie Nørskov, Christian Thrue Djurslev

• Publisher: Aarhus University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9788775972272
• eBook ISBN:
  9788775975686
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The present volume offers a fresh take on classical antiquity's enduring presence in popular culture. It is structured around three key themes – historical receptions, comics, and contemporary society – covering a wide variety of material from literature and art to music and media. It also provides new methodological considerations for anyone interested in classical reception. One particularly innovative aspect of the volume is the special attention to the Danish experience of the ancient world. What role does classical antiquity play in Denmark? Contributors reveal how these ancient stories have been reinterpreted across time, highlighting Denmark's own rich history of engaging with the classical world from Julius Caesar's unlikely influence in Danish Romanticism to the revival of Greek myths in contemporary art.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction: In Memoriam Jens Krasilnikoff (5 April 1962 – 14 February 2024)
• 2 What’s behind the label?
• 3 Orality, literacy, and authority in Eudocia’s Martyrdom of Saints Cyprian and Justina
• 4 The vernacular Alexander
• 5 Finding Pericles lost: Indicators of the meaning of Danish travel accounts and nostalgic encounters with nineteenth-century Greece in transition
• 6 Ór na Gréige is stór na hÉigipt: Classical antiquity in Irish-language popular poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
• 7 From the Rubicon to Stevns and back: Intertwined receptions of Caesar in Elverhøi and Asterix in Danish
• 8 Wronged imperialists, primitive Romans, and advanced barbarians (and vice versa): The Romans and the Roman Empire in Claus Deleuran’s The Illustrated History of Denmark – a People’s History
• 9 Hercules and the Incredible Hulk: Myth meets Marvel’s megatext
• 10 Ancient history amplified: Herodotus, heavy metal and the Iron Maiden
• 11 The unruly power of myth: Classical narratives in contemporary Danish art
• 12 The Iliad and the twenty-first-century apocalyptic imagination
• Backcover