Videos by Marguerite Johnson
An evening get-together for students during COVID lockdown
2 views
Marguerite performs a few passages from Lucan's Pharsalia Book 6 for the undergraduate course, AH... more Marguerite performs a few passages from Lucan's Pharsalia Book 6 for the undergraduate course, AHIS2370: Magic and Witchcraft in Greece and Rome 21 views
Books by Marguerite Johnson
For over half a century, organizations and individuals promoting ex-gay, conversion and/ or repar... more For over half a century, organizations and individuals promoting ex-gay, conversion and/ or reparative therapy have pushed the tenet that a person may be able to, and should, alter their sexual orientation. Their so-called treatments or therapies have taken various forms over the decades, ranging from medical (including psychiatric or psychological) rehabilitation approaches, to counselling, and religious healing.
Gay Conversion Practices in Memoir, Film and Fiction provides an in-depth exploration of the disturbing phenomenon of gay conversion 'therapy' and its fictional and autobiographical representations across a broad range of films and books such as But I'm a Cheerleader! (1999), This is What Love in Action Looks Like (2011) and Boy Erased (2018). In doing so, the volume emphasizes the powerful role the arts and media play in communicating stories around conversion practices. Approaching the timely and urgent subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, contributors utilize film theory, queer theory, literary theory, mental health and social movement theory to discuss the medicalization and pathologizing of queer people, the power of institutions ranging from church, psychiatry and family (sometimes in alliance), and the real and fictional voices of survivors.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I: Memoirs and Memoirists
1. 'A Life of Unlearning': The Author Reflects - Anthony Venn-Brown (author and co-founder of Freedom 2b, Australia)
2. 'Being Gay, Being Christian': The Professional Reflects - Stuart Edser (Counselling Psychologist, Australia)
II: Stories of Repentance and Defiance in Documentaries and Biopics
3. 'I remember Feeling Like I was Sitting on the Wrong Side of the Circle': Documentary Film and the Exposition of Conversion Practices - James E. Bennett (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
4. Three Films, Conversion Practices and the Paratext: I am Michael, Michael Lost and Found, and Once Gay – Matthew and Friends - Marguerite Johnson (University of Queensland, Australia)
III: Memoir, Film and Fiction
5. But I'm A Cheerleader: Awkward and Flippant, Accurate and Ground-breaking - Tom Sharples (University of Newcastle, Australia)
6. Save Me: Reconciling Queerness and Christianity - David R. Coon (University of Washington Tacoma, USA)
7. The Quiet Violence of Denying Queerness in the Novel and Film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Jessica Ford (University of Adelaide, Australia) and Annika Herb (University of Newcastle, Australia)
8. Defined by their Abjection: Boy Erased and the Limits of Queer Victimhood in Activist Cinema - Scott McKinnon (La Trobe University, Australia)
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index
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Antichthon Special Issue: Catullus in the 21st Century, 2021
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Remembering Paris in text and film / edited by Alistair Rolls and Marguerite Johnson, 2021
An investigation of Paris as an urban space and a poetic site of remembrance.
Experiencing ur... more An investigation of Paris as an urban space and a poetic site of remembrance.
Experiencing urban space conjures visions of the past alongside contemplation of the present. This edited volume investigates this feeling of seeing double by investigating Paris—a city that has come to embody the tension of this sensation—through a dual lens of nostalgia and modernity.
Contributors survey Paris in film, poetry, and prose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, presenting the city as both a concrete reality and as a collection of the myths associated with it. Interdisciplinary and deeply researched, the essays distill complex concepts of the urban, the textual, and the modern for a wide readership.
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This second edition includes an updated review of sexuality in Greece and Rome, an expanded bibli... more This second edition includes an updated review of sexuality in Greece and Rome, an expanded bibliography and numerous new passages with original translations.
This book provides readers with detailed information, notes, and original translated passages on the fascinating and multi-faceted theme of ancient sexuality. The sources range from the era of Homer and Hesiod through to the Graeco-Roman world of the Fourth Century CE and explore the diversitiy of approaches to sexuality and sexual expression, as well as how these issues relate to the rest of ancient society and culture.
Sexuality in Greek And Roman Society and Literature is an invaluable resource to students and academics alike, providing a detailed series of chapters on all major facets of sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome. It will particularly appeal to those interested in sexuality and gender in antiquity, as well as ancient literature and social studies.
CONTENTS:
Index of passages
List of figures
Preface
Note to the second edition
Acknowledgements from the first edition
List of abbreviations
Introduction: a socio-sexual background to Greece and Rome
I The divine sphere
II Beauty
III Marriage
IV Sexual labour
V Same-sex attraction
VI Sex aids, didactic literature and handbooks
VII Sex and violence
VIII Repulsion and anxiety
IX Taboos, alterity and marginal activities
X Celebrity sex
A Final Word
Glossary of authors, inscriptions and papyri
Glossary of terms
Alphabetical index of authors, inscriptions and papyri
Bibliography
Index
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Chapter on Dio Cassius on Boudicca attached.
Boudicca (Boadicea), Leader of the Iceni, is syno... more Chapter on Dio Cassius on Boudicca attached.
Boudicca (Boadicea), Leader of the Iceni, is synonymous with rebellion and feminine strength, yet what we know of her is often far removed from the time in which she lived and the early authors who first wrote about her.
In this new study, Marguerite Johnson returns to the original sources and interrogates them in order to unearth what the ancients thought of this most enigmatic heroine of British freedom. After a concise overview of Boudicca and the British rebellion against Rome, she turns to the writings of Tacitus and Dio and provides an in-depth analysis of their views on Boudicca and her people.
These readings, which form the centrepiece of the book, are followed by an insightful series of readings of Boudicca post-antiquity, including the scant references to her in the writings that emerged after the fall of the Roman Empire to the most modern re-workings of this most fascinating of historical icons.
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Alcibiades and the Socratic lover-educator
In the Platonic work Alcibiades I, a divinely guided Socrates adopts the guise of a lover in orde... more In the Platonic work Alcibiades I, a divinely guided Socrates adopts the guise of a lover in order to divert Alcibiades from an unthinking political career. The contributors to this carefully focussed volume cover aspects of the background to the work; its arguments and the philosophical issues it raises; its relationship to other Platonic texts, and its subsequent history up to the time of the Neoplatonists. Despite its ancient prominence, the authorship of Alcibiades I is still unsettled; the essays and two appendices, one historical and one stylometric, come together to suggest answers to this tantalising question.
Introduction
Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia and Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia
The role of Eros in Improving the Pupil, or What Socrates Learned from Sappho
Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia
Socrates and Models of Platonic Love
Dougal Blyth, University of Auckland, New Zealand
The Eye of the Beloved: Opsis and Eros in Socratic Pedagogy
Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto, Canada
Plato's Oblique Response to Issues of Socrates' Influence on Alcibiades: An Examination of the Protagoras and the Gorgias
Reuben Ramsey, University of Newcastle, Australia
Socratic Ignorance, or the Place of the Alcibiades I in Plato's Early Works
Yuji Kurihara, Gakugei University, Tokyo
Did Alcibiades Learn Justice from the Many?
Joe Mintoff, University of Newcastle, Australia
The Dual-Role Philosophers: An Exploration of a Failed Relationship
Anthony Hooper, University of Sydney, Australia
Authenticity, Experiment or Development: The Alcibiades I on Virtue and Courage
Eugenio Benitez, University of Sydney, Australia
Revaluing Megalopsuchia: Reflections on the Alcibiades II
Matthew Sharpe, University of Melbourne, Australia
Improvement by Love: From Aeschines to the Old Academy
Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia
Ice-Cold in Alex: Philo's Treatment of the Divine Lover in Hellenist Pedagogy
Fergus King, University of Newcastle, Australia
Proclus' Reading of Plato's Sôkratikoi Logoi: Proclus' Observations on Dialectic at Alcibiades 112d-114e and Elsewhere
Akitsugu Taki, Josai International University, Japan
Socrates' Divine Sign: From the Alcibiades to Olympiodorus
François Renaud, Université de Moncton, Canada
'The Individual' in History and History 'in General': Alcibiades, Philosophical History and Ideas in Contest
Neil Morpeth, University of Newcastle, Australia
Appendix 1. Fourth-Century Politics and the Date of the Alcibiades I
Appendix 2. Report on the Working Vocabulary in the Doubtful Dialogues
a. The Working Vocabulary of the Alcibiades
b. The Working Vocabulary of the Theages
Bibliography
Index
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Chapter on Love Between Women attached.
This series of short incisive books introduces major f... more Chapter on Love Between Women attached.
This series of short incisive books introduces major figures of the ancient world to the modern general reader, including the essentials of each subject's life, works, and significance for later western civilisation. In the newly created tradition of the "Ancients in Action" series, Marguerite Johnson has written a fascinating and accessible account of what remains of the life and works of the Greek poet, Sappho. Sappho's ancient biography is covered in addition to the post-classical accounts of her life, which continue to appear, in a variety of creative and non-creative contexts, in contemporary literature and art. Sappho's poetry, essentially preserved in tantalising fragments, is discussed in a series of thematic chapters that include her religious writings, particularly directed to the goddess of love, Aphrodite; personal interpretations of mythological themes; marriage hymns; and love songs to female companions.
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Classical Reception by Marguerite Johnson
Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Reception Down Under. Edited by Marguerite Johnson, 2019
The colonization of both New Zealand and Australia in the 1800s was recorded in numerous publicat... more The colonization of both New Zealand and Australia in the 1800s was recorded in numerous publications based on the original journals of explorers, naval captains and crew members. Accounts of the voyages, the explorations of the lands of New Zealand and Australia, and the processes of colonization were accompanied by illustrations of flora, fauna and maps; in addition, descriptions of Aboriginal Australians and Māori were recorded in the fieldnotes of scientists and natural history artists who were also members of the crew. These books were popular and catered to the West’s fascination with recently ‘discovered’ lands and peoples.
This chapter examines the illustrations in two publications and two artists’ field illustrations with a methodological eye to Classical Reception Studies to consider the representations of First Australians and Māori with recourse to ancient Mediterranean sculpture. This use of classicism is evident in two engravings from the monograph of John Hunter published in 1793: the watercolour, ‘A Native Wounded while asleep’ (c. 1788–97) by the ‘Port Jackson Painter’; and a pen and wash, ‘New Zealand War Canoe bidding defiance to the Ship’ (1770) by Sydney Parkinson, reproduced in the monograph by John Hawkesworth (1773).
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Our Mythical Hope. The Ancient Myths as Medicine for the Hardships of Life in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture (Edited by Katarzyna Marciniak), 2021
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Antipodean Antiquities - Classical Reception 'Down Under', 2019
Leading and emerging, early career scholars in Classical Reception Studies come together in this ... more Leading and emerging, early career scholars in Classical Reception Studies come together in this volume to explore the under-represented area of the Australasian Classical Tradition. They interrogate the interactions between Mediterranean Antiquity and the antipodean worlds of New Zealand and Australia through the lenses of literature, film, theatre and fine art.
Of interest to scholars across the globe who research the influence of antiquity on modern literature, film, theatre and fine art, this volume fills a decisive gap in the literature by bringing antipodean research into the spotlight. Following a contextual introduction to the field, the six parts of the volume explore the latest research on subjects that range from the Lord of the Rings and Xena: Warrior Princess franchises to important artists such as Sidney Nolan and local authors whose work offers opportunities for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis with well-known Western authors and artists.
Introduction (Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia)
Part 1: The Colonial Past – Classical Influences in White Australasia
1. Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, Australia): Black Out: Classicizing Indigeneity in Australia and New Zealand
2. Rachael White (University of Oxford, UK): Australia as Underworld: Convict Classics in the Nineteenth Century
Part 2: Theatre – Then and Now
3. Laura Ginters (University of Sydney, Australia): Agamemnon comes to the Antipodes: The Origins of Student Drama at the University of Sydney
4. John Davidson (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Salamis and Gallipoli: The Campaigns of Phillip Mann
5. Michael Ewans (University of Newcastle, Australia) and Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, Australia): Wesley Enoch's Black Medea
6. Jane Montgomery Griffiths (Monash University, Australia): What Women Critics Know that Men Don't
Part 3: Poetry and Classical Echoes in New Zealand
7. Geoffrey Miles (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): James K. Baxter and the Gorgon Moon
8. Anna Jackson (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Clodia Through the Looking Glass
Part 4: Fictionalizing Antipodean Antiquities
9. Nicolas Liney (University of Oxford, UK): Parilia Poscor - David Malouf Remembers the Parilia (Fasti 4.721)
10. Elizabeth Hale (University of New England, Australia): Imaginative Displacement: Classical Reception in the Young Adult Fiction of Margaret Mahy
11. Babette Pütz (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Classical Influences in Bernard Beckett's Genesis, August, and Lullaby
12. Anne Rogerson (University of Sydney, Australia): Displaced Persons and Displaced Narratives in S. D. Gentill's Hero Trilogy
Part 5: Australasia, Greece and Rome - Paper and Canvas
13. Sarah Midford (La Trobe University, Australia): Painting Anzacs in an Epic Landscape: Greek Myth, the Trojan War and Sidney Nolan's Gallipoli Series
14. Melinda Johnston (independent scholar) and Thomas Köntges (University of Leipzig, Germany): Of Heroes and Humans: Marian Maguire's Colonization of Herakles' Mythical World
Part 6: Antiquity on the Australasian Screen
15. Ika Willis (University of Wollongong, Australia): Temporal Turbulence: Reception Studies(') Now
16. Hannah Parry (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Classical Epic in Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth Trilogies
17. Leanne Glass (University of Newcastle, Australia): Shifting Paradigms in Ben Ferris' Penelope
Notes
Bibliography
Index
“This is a timely book, given current debates about teaching 'western civilisation' in our universities. It represents a coming-of-age particularly in Australian classical reception studies, and it will surely be a stimulus to bring less descriptive and more theoretically innovative approaches to bear on the myriad forms of classical reception that saturate Australasia.” – The Classical Review
“A well-rounded study highlighting the importance of Greco-Roman history and culture for many Australians and New Zealanders, from convicts to colonisers, ranging from novelists to poets to painters and film-makers. This is exemplary Classical Reception practice.” – Maxine Lewis, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Auckland, New Zealand,
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INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON MYTHOLOGY ULUSLARARASI MİTOLOJİ SEMPOZYUMU PROCEEDINGS BOOK, 2019
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Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition. Edited by Sheila Murnaghan and Ralph M. Rosen
“Hip Sublime will begin a number of new conversations that can only be healthy for both classicis... more “Hip Sublime will begin a number of new conversations that can only be healthy for both classicists and twentieth-century specialists. . . . This book throws a bridge across one divide that, as the volume itself makes abundantly clear, should have been spanned long ago.” —Dennis Trout, University of Missouri
“Well-written, well-organized, well-researched, and, most importantly, truly informative, wide-ranging, and groundbreaking in its revisionary understanding of Beat-oriented writings.” —Daniel Morris, Purdue University
Despite their self-presentation as iconoclasts, the writers of the Beat Generation were deeply engaged with the classical tradition. Many of them were university-trained and highly conscious of their literary forebears, and they frequently incorporated their knowledge of Greco-Roman literature into their own subversive, experimental practice. Seeking to transcend the superficiality, commercialism, and precariousness of life in post–World War II America, the Beat writers found in their classical models both a venerable literary heritage and a discourse of sublimity through which to articulate their desire for purity.
In this volume, a diverse group of contributors explore for the first time the fascinating tensions and paradoxes that arose from interactions between these avant-garde writers and a literary tradition often seen as conservative and culturally hegemonic. With essays that cover the canonical Beat authors—such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs—along with less well-known figures—including Kenneth Rexroth, Ed Sanders, and Diane di Prima—Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition brings long overdue attention to the Beat movement’s formative appropriation of the Greek and Latin classics.
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AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW DECEMBER 2017
INAUGURAL GENDER FELLOWSHIP
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This special issue of Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies comprises of three con... more This special issue of Practitioners’ Voices in Classical Reception Studies comprises of three conversations with Australasian practitioners conducted during 2016.
Editor’s Introduction, by Marguerite Johnson
Although there is extensive scholarship on Australian and New Zealand literature, film, theatre and art, there is little on Australasian Classical Reception. Two notable publications, both edited by Elizabeth Hale, on the productions of classical texts by the Sydney Theatre Company, marked an important milestone in the discipline. The collections, on Barrie Kosky’s The Lost Echo (2006) and The Women of Troy (2008), were published in major journals (Australasian Drama Studies and Didaskalia) and established an international readership of, and interest in the field. Additionally, artists such as Marian Maguire (1962-), whose lithographs and etchings merge Greek vase paintings with New Zealand colonial history, have been the subject of Classical Reception scholarship, as has the work of poets such as Anna Jackson (featured herein), James K. Baxter (1926-1972) and C. K. Stead (1932-), and novelists such as David Malouf (1934-).
The momentum in Australasian Classical Reception Studies during the first decades of the twenty-first century is indicative of a much longer history of engagements with the ancient Mediterranean. Since the colonialisation of Australia and New Zealand, there have been discernible, significant and multifarious markers of ancient Greece and Rome inscribed on Australasian landscapes. Many British and Europeans were familiar with Classically-inspired imperial philosophies, the ancient canon, and the tenets behind an education system that privileged Greek and Latin. Colonial newspapers reviewed Greek tragedies and comedies, artists depicted the landscapes with deference to bucolic countrysides, and poets eulogised the scenery with songs overburdened with Classical imagery. The debt to Classicism was endemic as colonists sought to ‘civilise’ the newly ‘discovered’ lands through established, conservative, imperial models.
As modernity infiltrated Australasia, the twentieth century saw the reinvention of Classicism, as artists turned to interpretation, hybridisation, foreignisation and refiguration as a response to the conventional nature of Classical acculturation. This was a symbolically important gesture in the colonies in view of the perceived imperative to establish national identities separate from those imposed by imperialism. White Australasians began to challenge British hegemony in the wake of the Great War, and their poets began to mourn campaigns such as Gallipoli through recourse to more sombre expressions of Classicism. White Australians sought to shed their convict past in order to present new icons of nationhood that celebrated healthy, suntanned and athletic bodies, which found expression in Classical Realism. During the end of the inter-war period, for example, Charles Meere’s ‘Australian Beach Pattern’ (1940) modernised classical artistic precepts by recasting ancient statues as egalitarian ‘Aussies’ at play. While there remained a strong element of traditional Classicism in the works of artists such as Australian Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) and photographers such as New Zealand-born Harold Cazneaux (1878-1953), external artistic and political movements that championed experimentation and radicalism, transformed Antipodean ways of seeing ancient Greece and Rome. Artists such as Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) and Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) captured elements of the abject and even the banal in myths such as Leda and the Swan, while Baxter constantly sought to write and rewrite Classical narratives in New Zealand contexts.
The experimentations continue and as each era is marked by new politics, new cultures and new values, so too is the practitioner who engages with the Classical Tradition. One of the most significant developments in creative reworkings of antiquity is the melding of the conservativism of Classicism with the principles of feminism and post-colonialism. As colonial outposts, sometimes viewed as being at the end of the earth, and most definitely lacking the markers of ‘civilisation’ of the old country, New Zealand and Australia may be regarded as particularly fertile grounds for the birth of reactionary artistic movements, or at least intensive creative meditations on, and responses to oppression. While, of course, neither country is really unique in this respect, Classicism has been claimed and acculturated to express objections and shed light on alienation, racism and misogyny, particularly in post-colonial settings. New voices have consequently emerged, such as playwright Wesley Enoch, whose Black Medea (2005) refigured a revered example of Greek tragic theatre from the perspective of Indigenous Australians’ cultural and spiritual disenfranchisement. Previously, Louis Nowra’s play The Golden Age (1985) interwove urban legends of lost Tasmanian settlers with allegories of First Nation Tasmanians mixed with references to Iphigenia in Tauris.
In these three interviews, each practitioner discusses their use of ancient Greece and Rome in the creative process, both as sources of personal expression and broader, more intellectual and social endeavours. Phillip Mann, like many scholars and artists of his generation, emigrated to New Zealand from the motherland. As Professor of Drama Studies at Victoria University, Wellington until his academic retirement in 1998, Mann directed reinterpretations of Greek plays for New Zealand audiences. In the interview, John Davidson comments on Mann’s introduction of the Māori waiata into the choral element of Greek tragedy as “trailblazing” (although Mann rightly cautions against the temptation of the heavy overlaying of cultural comparisons). Mann is wonderfully honest about his passion for Classical references, particularly ones inspired by Roman culture, as evident in his Science Fiction tetralogy, A Land Fit for Heroes – a series Davidson extols, but Mann reminds him was very much overlooked by both readers and reviewers. What perhaps is most compelling about the interview is Mann’s discussion of his childhood, particularly his life as the sole child of a sole parent, which was marked by poverty but enriched by stories. While many reception scholars and scholars of the Classics per se often attribute their introduction to antiquity to formal education, Mann remembers a working-class mother’s role in instilling a love for the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.
In conversation with Maxine Lewis, New Zealand poet Anna Jackson discusses her introduction to Catullus through the translations of other scholars and poets, and the particular appeal of Stevie Smith’s ‘Catullus.’ Jackson explains her creative revisioning of Catullus’ poetry in Catullus for Children (2003), which was not as a Classicist working from the Latin but as someone “with an interest in reception and translation” who wanted to explore the element of game-playing underlying the poetry. Jackson also discusses the different imperatives that motivated her second Catullus collection, I, Clodia (2014), namely the appeal of exploring “narrative and dialogue” in creative praxis. Lewis’ interest in Jackson’s Catullus poetry in the context of New Zealand poets opens a dialogue on contemporary poets’ debt to, but more significantly, independence from references to Classical antiquity by established members of their own cultural canon.
Leanne Glass talks with Australian filmmaker Ben Ferris about his award-winning feature film, Penelope and the role of actual dreams in its creation (as well as in the film per se). The complexities behind the making of a film such as Penelope are at the centre of the conversation, with Ferris discussing issues around filming in Croatia, from audience response to the inclusion of a rape scene. The fascination at the heart of this interview may be seen to lie with the conversations around artistic allusions – what the viewer regards as strong intertextual references – and the corresponding responses of the writer/director. This culminates in showing the multi-layered use of sources, beginning with the ancient idea or image, which characterises the work of artists in the aftermath of post-modernism.
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While much of the debate as to the origins of crime fiction focuses on whether or not Edgar Allan... more While much of the debate as to the origins of crime fiction focuses on whether or not Edgar Allan Poe can be considered the first exponent of the genre, Sophocles’s Theban plays, and especially those in which Oedipus is cast as the eponymous detective-murderer, are also often singled out as a powerful Ur-text (Knight 2015).[1] In studies of analytic detective fiction, the critical school of choice for those interested in the study of Poe’s Dupin stories, Freudian and Lacanian psychology and twentieth-century theories of textual analysis intensify this focus on Oedipus’s tale (Irwin 1994; Bayard 1998).[2] Arguably always absent-present in crime fiction, as the unconscious other to the diegesis consciously recounted to the reader, the ancient world is too powerful a source (of stories and mythology) to be overlooked by the contemporary reader, author or scholar of crime fiction. It is precisely the interconnection of ancient myth and contemporary crime fiction that is the focus of this article. For its part, Classical Reception Studies has substantially challenged, subverted and (perhaps) partially demolished the once seemingly entrenched philological fetishes and class-bound exclusivity that have traditionally characterised the study of antiquity. From the tentative steps in the 1940s that paved the way to the Classical Tradition, to the embryonic forays into Classical Reception Studies in the 60s and 70s and its blossoming in the 80s and 90s, scholars engaged in this somewhat renegade (‘sub’)-discipline have pushed, and continue to challenge, the boundaries of what is acceptable areas of engagement with the ancient world.
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Books by Marguerite Johnson
Gay Conversion Practices in Memoir, Film and Fiction provides an in-depth exploration of the disturbing phenomenon of gay conversion 'therapy' and its fictional and autobiographical representations across a broad range of films and books such as But I'm a Cheerleader! (1999), This is What Love in Action Looks Like (2011) and Boy Erased (2018). In doing so, the volume emphasizes the powerful role the arts and media play in communicating stories around conversion practices. Approaching the timely and urgent subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, contributors utilize film theory, queer theory, literary theory, mental health and social movement theory to discuss the medicalization and pathologizing of queer people, the power of institutions ranging from church, psychiatry and family (sometimes in alliance), and the real and fictional voices of survivors.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I: Memoirs and Memoirists
1. 'A Life of Unlearning': The Author Reflects - Anthony Venn-Brown (author and co-founder of Freedom 2b, Australia)
2. 'Being Gay, Being Christian': The Professional Reflects - Stuart Edser (Counselling Psychologist, Australia)
II: Stories of Repentance and Defiance in Documentaries and Biopics
3. 'I remember Feeling Like I was Sitting on the Wrong Side of the Circle': Documentary Film and the Exposition of Conversion Practices - James E. Bennett (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
4. Three Films, Conversion Practices and the Paratext: I am Michael, Michael Lost and Found, and Once Gay – Matthew and Friends - Marguerite Johnson (University of Queensland, Australia)
III: Memoir, Film and Fiction
5. But I'm A Cheerleader: Awkward and Flippant, Accurate and Ground-breaking - Tom Sharples (University of Newcastle, Australia)
6. Save Me: Reconciling Queerness and Christianity - David R. Coon (University of Washington Tacoma, USA)
7. The Quiet Violence of Denying Queerness in the Novel and Film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Jessica Ford (University of Adelaide, Australia) and Annika Herb (University of Newcastle, Australia)
8. Defined by their Abjection: Boy Erased and the Limits of Queer Victimhood in Activist Cinema - Scott McKinnon (La Trobe University, Australia)
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index
Experiencing urban space conjures visions of the past alongside contemplation of the present. This edited volume investigates this feeling of seeing double by investigating Paris—a city that has come to embody the tension of this sensation—through a dual lens of nostalgia and modernity.
Contributors survey Paris in film, poetry, and prose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, presenting the city as both a concrete reality and as a collection of the myths associated with it. Interdisciplinary and deeply researched, the essays distill complex concepts of the urban, the textual, and the modern for a wide readership.
This book provides readers with detailed information, notes, and original translated passages on the fascinating and multi-faceted theme of ancient sexuality. The sources range from the era of Homer and Hesiod through to the Graeco-Roman world of the Fourth Century CE and explore the diversitiy of approaches to sexuality and sexual expression, as well as how these issues relate to the rest of ancient society and culture.
Sexuality in Greek And Roman Society and Literature is an invaluable resource to students and academics alike, providing a detailed series of chapters on all major facets of sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome. It will particularly appeal to those interested in sexuality and gender in antiquity, as well as ancient literature and social studies.
CONTENTS:
Index of passages
List of figures
Preface
Note to the second edition
Acknowledgements from the first edition
List of abbreviations
Introduction: a socio-sexual background to Greece and Rome
I The divine sphere
II Beauty
III Marriage
IV Sexual labour
V Same-sex attraction
VI Sex aids, didactic literature and handbooks
VII Sex and violence
VIII Repulsion and anxiety
IX Taboos, alterity and marginal activities
X Celebrity sex
A Final Word
Glossary of authors, inscriptions and papyri
Glossary of terms
Alphabetical index of authors, inscriptions and papyri
Bibliography
Index
Boudicca (Boadicea), Leader of the Iceni, is synonymous with rebellion and feminine strength, yet what we know of her is often far removed from the time in which she lived and the early authors who first wrote about her.
In this new study, Marguerite Johnson returns to the original sources and interrogates them in order to unearth what the ancients thought of this most enigmatic heroine of British freedom. After a concise overview of Boudicca and the British rebellion against Rome, she turns to the writings of Tacitus and Dio and provides an in-depth analysis of their views on Boudicca and her people.
These readings, which form the centrepiece of the book, are followed by an insightful series of readings of Boudicca post-antiquity, including the scant references to her in the writings that emerged after the fall of the Roman Empire to the most modern re-workings of this most fascinating of historical icons.
Introduction
Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia and Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia
The role of Eros in Improving the Pupil, or What Socrates Learned from Sappho
Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia
Socrates and Models of Platonic Love
Dougal Blyth, University of Auckland, New Zealand
The Eye of the Beloved: Opsis and Eros in Socratic Pedagogy
Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto, Canada
Plato's Oblique Response to Issues of Socrates' Influence on Alcibiades: An Examination of the Protagoras and the Gorgias
Reuben Ramsey, University of Newcastle, Australia
Socratic Ignorance, or the Place of the Alcibiades I in Plato's Early Works
Yuji Kurihara, Gakugei University, Tokyo
Did Alcibiades Learn Justice from the Many?
Joe Mintoff, University of Newcastle, Australia
The Dual-Role Philosophers: An Exploration of a Failed Relationship
Anthony Hooper, University of Sydney, Australia
Authenticity, Experiment or Development: The Alcibiades I on Virtue and Courage
Eugenio Benitez, University of Sydney, Australia
Revaluing Megalopsuchia: Reflections on the Alcibiades II
Matthew Sharpe, University of Melbourne, Australia
Improvement by Love: From Aeschines to the Old Academy
Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia
Ice-Cold in Alex: Philo's Treatment of the Divine Lover in Hellenist Pedagogy
Fergus King, University of Newcastle, Australia
Proclus' Reading of Plato's Sôkratikoi Logoi: Proclus' Observations on Dialectic at Alcibiades 112d-114e and Elsewhere
Akitsugu Taki, Josai International University, Japan
Socrates' Divine Sign: From the Alcibiades to Olympiodorus
François Renaud, Université de Moncton, Canada
'The Individual' in History and History 'in General': Alcibiades, Philosophical History and Ideas in Contest
Neil Morpeth, University of Newcastle, Australia
Appendix 1. Fourth-Century Politics and the Date of the Alcibiades I
Appendix 2. Report on the Working Vocabulary in the Doubtful Dialogues
a. The Working Vocabulary of the Alcibiades
b. The Working Vocabulary of the Theages
Bibliography
Index
This series of short incisive books introduces major figures of the ancient world to the modern general reader, including the essentials of each subject's life, works, and significance for later western civilisation. In the newly created tradition of the "Ancients in Action" series, Marguerite Johnson has written a fascinating and accessible account of what remains of the life and works of the Greek poet, Sappho. Sappho's ancient biography is covered in addition to the post-classical accounts of her life, which continue to appear, in a variety of creative and non-creative contexts, in contemporary literature and art. Sappho's poetry, essentially preserved in tantalising fragments, is discussed in a series of thematic chapters that include her religious writings, particularly directed to the goddess of love, Aphrodite; personal interpretations of mythological themes; marriage hymns; and love songs to female companions.
Classical Reception by Marguerite Johnson
This chapter examines the illustrations in two publications and two artists’ field illustrations with a methodological eye to Classical Reception Studies to consider the representations of First Australians and Māori with recourse to ancient Mediterranean sculpture. This use of classicism is evident in two engravings from the monograph of John Hunter published in 1793: the watercolour, ‘A Native Wounded while asleep’ (c. 1788–97) by the ‘Port Jackson Painter’; and a pen and wash, ‘New Zealand War Canoe bidding defiance to the Ship’ (1770) by Sydney Parkinson, reproduced in the monograph by John Hawkesworth (1773).
Of interest to scholars across the globe who research the influence of antiquity on modern literature, film, theatre and fine art, this volume fills a decisive gap in the literature by bringing antipodean research into the spotlight. Following a contextual introduction to the field, the six parts of the volume explore the latest research on subjects that range from the Lord of the Rings and Xena: Warrior Princess franchises to important artists such as Sidney Nolan and local authors whose work offers opportunities for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis with well-known Western authors and artists.
Introduction (Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia)
Part 1: The Colonial Past – Classical Influences in White Australasia
1. Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, Australia): Black Out: Classicizing Indigeneity in Australia and New Zealand
2. Rachael White (University of Oxford, UK): Australia as Underworld: Convict Classics in the Nineteenth Century
Part 2: Theatre – Then and Now
3. Laura Ginters (University of Sydney, Australia): Agamemnon comes to the Antipodes: The Origins of Student Drama at the University of Sydney
4. John Davidson (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Salamis and Gallipoli: The Campaigns of Phillip Mann
5. Michael Ewans (University of Newcastle, Australia) and Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, Australia): Wesley Enoch's Black Medea
6. Jane Montgomery Griffiths (Monash University, Australia): What Women Critics Know that Men Don't
Part 3: Poetry and Classical Echoes in New Zealand
7. Geoffrey Miles (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): James K. Baxter and the Gorgon Moon
8. Anna Jackson (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Clodia Through the Looking Glass
Part 4: Fictionalizing Antipodean Antiquities
9. Nicolas Liney (University of Oxford, UK): Parilia Poscor - David Malouf Remembers the Parilia (Fasti 4.721)
10. Elizabeth Hale (University of New England, Australia): Imaginative Displacement: Classical Reception in the Young Adult Fiction of Margaret Mahy
11. Babette Pütz (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Classical Influences in Bernard Beckett's Genesis, August, and Lullaby
12. Anne Rogerson (University of Sydney, Australia): Displaced Persons and Displaced Narratives in S. D. Gentill's Hero Trilogy
Part 5: Australasia, Greece and Rome - Paper and Canvas
13. Sarah Midford (La Trobe University, Australia): Painting Anzacs in an Epic Landscape: Greek Myth, the Trojan War and Sidney Nolan's Gallipoli Series
14. Melinda Johnston (independent scholar) and Thomas Köntges (University of Leipzig, Germany): Of Heroes and Humans: Marian Maguire's Colonization of Herakles' Mythical World
Part 6: Antiquity on the Australasian Screen
15. Ika Willis (University of Wollongong, Australia): Temporal Turbulence: Reception Studies(') Now
16. Hannah Parry (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Classical Epic in Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth Trilogies
17. Leanne Glass (University of Newcastle, Australia): Shifting Paradigms in Ben Ferris' Penelope
Notes
Bibliography
Index
“This is a timely book, given current debates about teaching 'western civilisation' in our universities. It represents a coming-of-age particularly in Australian classical reception studies, and it will surely be a stimulus to bring less descriptive and more theoretically innovative approaches to bear on the myriad forms of classical reception that saturate Australasia.” – The Classical Review
“A well-rounded study highlighting the importance of Greco-Roman history and culture for many Australians and New Zealanders, from convicts to colonisers, ranging from novelists to poets to painters and film-makers. This is exemplary Classical Reception practice.” – Maxine Lewis, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Auckland, New Zealand,
“Well-written, well-organized, well-researched, and, most importantly, truly informative, wide-ranging, and groundbreaking in its revisionary understanding of Beat-oriented writings.” —Daniel Morris, Purdue University
Despite their self-presentation as iconoclasts, the writers of the Beat Generation were deeply engaged with the classical tradition. Many of them were university-trained and highly conscious of their literary forebears, and they frequently incorporated their knowledge of Greco-Roman literature into their own subversive, experimental practice. Seeking to transcend the superficiality, commercialism, and precariousness of life in post–World War II America, the Beat writers found in their classical models both a venerable literary heritage and a discourse of sublimity through which to articulate their desire for purity.
In this volume, a diverse group of contributors explore for the first time the fascinating tensions and paradoxes that arose from interactions between these avant-garde writers and a literary tradition often seen as conservative and culturally hegemonic. With essays that cover the canonical Beat authors—such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs—along with less well-known figures—including Kenneth Rexroth, Ed Sanders, and Diane di Prima—Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition brings long overdue attention to the Beat movement’s formative appropriation of the Greek and Latin classics.
Editor’s Introduction, by Marguerite Johnson
Although there is extensive scholarship on Australian and New Zealand literature, film, theatre and art, there is little on Australasian Classical Reception. Two notable publications, both edited by Elizabeth Hale, on the productions of classical texts by the Sydney Theatre Company, marked an important milestone in the discipline. The collections, on Barrie Kosky’s The Lost Echo (2006) and The Women of Troy (2008), were published in major journals (Australasian Drama Studies and Didaskalia) and established an international readership of, and interest in the field. Additionally, artists such as Marian Maguire (1962-), whose lithographs and etchings merge Greek vase paintings with New Zealand colonial history, have been the subject of Classical Reception scholarship, as has the work of poets such as Anna Jackson (featured herein), James K. Baxter (1926-1972) and C. K. Stead (1932-), and novelists such as David Malouf (1934-).
The momentum in Australasian Classical Reception Studies during the first decades of the twenty-first century is indicative of a much longer history of engagements with the ancient Mediterranean. Since the colonialisation of Australia and New Zealand, there have been discernible, significant and multifarious markers of ancient Greece and Rome inscribed on Australasian landscapes. Many British and Europeans were familiar with Classically-inspired imperial philosophies, the ancient canon, and the tenets behind an education system that privileged Greek and Latin. Colonial newspapers reviewed Greek tragedies and comedies, artists depicted the landscapes with deference to bucolic countrysides, and poets eulogised the scenery with songs overburdened with Classical imagery. The debt to Classicism was endemic as colonists sought to ‘civilise’ the newly ‘discovered’ lands through established, conservative, imperial models.
As modernity infiltrated Australasia, the twentieth century saw the reinvention of Classicism, as artists turned to interpretation, hybridisation, foreignisation and refiguration as a response to the conventional nature of Classical acculturation. This was a symbolically important gesture in the colonies in view of the perceived imperative to establish national identities separate from those imposed by imperialism. White Australasians began to challenge British hegemony in the wake of the Great War, and their poets began to mourn campaigns such as Gallipoli through recourse to more sombre expressions of Classicism. White Australians sought to shed their convict past in order to present new icons of nationhood that celebrated healthy, suntanned and athletic bodies, which found expression in Classical Realism. During the end of the inter-war period, for example, Charles Meere’s ‘Australian Beach Pattern’ (1940) modernised classical artistic precepts by recasting ancient statues as egalitarian ‘Aussies’ at play. While there remained a strong element of traditional Classicism in the works of artists such as Australian Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) and photographers such as New Zealand-born Harold Cazneaux (1878-1953), external artistic and political movements that championed experimentation and radicalism, transformed Antipodean ways of seeing ancient Greece and Rome. Artists such as Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) and Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) captured elements of the abject and even the banal in myths such as Leda and the Swan, while Baxter constantly sought to write and rewrite Classical narratives in New Zealand contexts.
The experimentations continue and as each era is marked by new politics, new cultures and new values, so too is the practitioner who engages with the Classical Tradition. One of the most significant developments in creative reworkings of antiquity is the melding of the conservativism of Classicism with the principles of feminism and post-colonialism. As colonial outposts, sometimes viewed as being at the end of the earth, and most definitely lacking the markers of ‘civilisation’ of the old country, New Zealand and Australia may be regarded as particularly fertile grounds for the birth of reactionary artistic movements, or at least intensive creative meditations on, and responses to oppression. While, of course, neither country is really unique in this respect, Classicism has been claimed and acculturated to express objections and shed light on alienation, racism and misogyny, particularly in post-colonial settings. New voices have consequently emerged, such as playwright Wesley Enoch, whose Black Medea (2005) refigured a revered example of Greek tragic theatre from the perspective of Indigenous Australians’ cultural and spiritual disenfranchisement. Previously, Louis Nowra’s play The Golden Age (1985) interwove urban legends of lost Tasmanian settlers with allegories of First Nation Tasmanians mixed with references to Iphigenia in Tauris.
In these three interviews, each practitioner discusses their use of ancient Greece and Rome in the creative process, both as sources of personal expression and broader, more intellectual and social endeavours. Phillip Mann, like many scholars and artists of his generation, emigrated to New Zealand from the motherland. As Professor of Drama Studies at Victoria University, Wellington until his academic retirement in 1998, Mann directed reinterpretations of Greek plays for New Zealand audiences. In the interview, John Davidson comments on Mann’s introduction of the Māori waiata into the choral element of Greek tragedy as “trailblazing” (although Mann rightly cautions against the temptation of the heavy overlaying of cultural comparisons). Mann is wonderfully honest about his passion for Classical references, particularly ones inspired by Roman culture, as evident in his Science Fiction tetralogy, A Land Fit for Heroes – a series Davidson extols, but Mann reminds him was very much overlooked by both readers and reviewers. What perhaps is most compelling about the interview is Mann’s discussion of his childhood, particularly his life as the sole child of a sole parent, which was marked by poverty but enriched by stories. While many reception scholars and scholars of the Classics per se often attribute their introduction to antiquity to formal education, Mann remembers a working-class mother’s role in instilling a love for the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.
In conversation with Maxine Lewis, New Zealand poet Anna Jackson discusses her introduction to Catullus through the translations of other scholars and poets, and the particular appeal of Stevie Smith’s ‘Catullus.’ Jackson explains her creative revisioning of Catullus’ poetry in Catullus for Children (2003), which was not as a Classicist working from the Latin but as someone “with an interest in reception and translation” who wanted to explore the element of game-playing underlying the poetry. Jackson also discusses the different imperatives that motivated her second Catullus collection, I, Clodia (2014), namely the appeal of exploring “narrative and dialogue” in creative praxis. Lewis’ interest in Jackson’s Catullus poetry in the context of New Zealand poets opens a dialogue on contemporary poets’ debt to, but more significantly, independence from references to Classical antiquity by established members of their own cultural canon.
Leanne Glass talks with Australian filmmaker Ben Ferris about his award-winning feature film, Penelope and the role of actual dreams in its creation (as well as in the film per se). The complexities behind the making of a film such as Penelope are at the centre of the conversation, with Ferris discussing issues around filming in Croatia, from audience response to the inclusion of a rape scene. The fascination at the heart of this interview may be seen to lie with the conversations around artistic allusions – what the viewer regards as strong intertextual references – and the corresponding responses of the writer/director. This culminates in showing the multi-layered use of sources, beginning with the ancient idea or image, which characterises the work of artists in the aftermath of post-modernism.
Gay Conversion Practices in Memoir, Film and Fiction provides an in-depth exploration of the disturbing phenomenon of gay conversion 'therapy' and its fictional and autobiographical representations across a broad range of films and books such as But I'm a Cheerleader! (1999), This is What Love in Action Looks Like (2011) and Boy Erased (2018). In doing so, the volume emphasizes the powerful role the arts and media play in communicating stories around conversion practices. Approaching the timely and urgent subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, contributors utilize film theory, queer theory, literary theory, mental health and social movement theory to discuss the medicalization and pathologizing of queer people, the power of institutions ranging from church, psychiatry and family (sometimes in alliance), and the real and fictional voices of survivors.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I: Memoirs and Memoirists
1. 'A Life of Unlearning': The Author Reflects - Anthony Venn-Brown (author and co-founder of Freedom 2b, Australia)
2. 'Being Gay, Being Christian': The Professional Reflects - Stuart Edser (Counselling Psychologist, Australia)
II: Stories of Repentance and Defiance in Documentaries and Biopics
3. 'I remember Feeling Like I was Sitting on the Wrong Side of the Circle': Documentary Film and the Exposition of Conversion Practices - James E. Bennett (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
4. Three Films, Conversion Practices and the Paratext: I am Michael, Michael Lost and Found, and Once Gay – Matthew and Friends - Marguerite Johnson (University of Queensland, Australia)
III: Memoir, Film and Fiction
5. But I'm A Cheerleader: Awkward and Flippant, Accurate and Ground-breaking - Tom Sharples (University of Newcastle, Australia)
6. Save Me: Reconciling Queerness and Christianity - David R. Coon (University of Washington Tacoma, USA)
7. The Quiet Violence of Denying Queerness in the Novel and Film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Jessica Ford (University of Adelaide, Australia) and Annika Herb (University of Newcastle, Australia)
8. Defined by their Abjection: Boy Erased and the Limits of Queer Victimhood in Activist Cinema - Scott McKinnon (La Trobe University, Australia)
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index
Experiencing urban space conjures visions of the past alongside contemplation of the present. This edited volume investigates this feeling of seeing double by investigating Paris—a city that has come to embody the tension of this sensation—through a dual lens of nostalgia and modernity.
Contributors survey Paris in film, poetry, and prose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, presenting the city as both a concrete reality and as a collection of the myths associated with it. Interdisciplinary and deeply researched, the essays distill complex concepts of the urban, the textual, and the modern for a wide readership.
This book provides readers with detailed information, notes, and original translated passages on the fascinating and multi-faceted theme of ancient sexuality. The sources range from the era of Homer and Hesiod through to the Graeco-Roman world of the Fourth Century CE and explore the diversitiy of approaches to sexuality and sexual expression, as well as how these issues relate to the rest of ancient society and culture.
Sexuality in Greek And Roman Society and Literature is an invaluable resource to students and academics alike, providing a detailed series of chapters on all major facets of sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome. It will particularly appeal to those interested in sexuality and gender in antiquity, as well as ancient literature and social studies.
CONTENTS:
Index of passages
List of figures
Preface
Note to the second edition
Acknowledgements from the first edition
List of abbreviations
Introduction: a socio-sexual background to Greece and Rome
I The divine sphere
II Beauty
III Marriage
IV Sexual labour
V Same-sex attraction
VI Sex aids, didactic literature and handbooks
VII Sex and violence
VIII Repulsion and anxiety
IX Taboos, alterity and marginal activities
X Celebrity sex
A Final Word
Glossary of authors, inscriptions and papyri
Glossary of terms
Alphabetical index of authors, inscriptions and papyri
Bibliography
Index
Boudicca (Boadicea), Leader of the Iceni, is synonymous with rebellion and feminine strength, yet what we know of her is often far removed from the time in which she lived and the early authors who first wrote about her.
In this new study, Marguerite Johnson returns to the original sources and interrogates them in order to unearth what the ancients thought of this most enigmatic heroine of British freedom. After a concise overview of Boudicca and the British rebellion against Rome, she turns to the writings of Tacitus and Dio and provides an in-depth analysis of their views on Boudicca and her people.
These readings, which form the centrepiece of the book, are followed by an insightful series of readings of Boudicca post-antiquity, including the scant references to her in the writings that emerged after the fall of the Roman Empire to the most modern re-workings of this most fascinating of historical icons.
Introduction
Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia and Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia
The role of Eros in Improving the Pupil, or What Socrates Learned from Sappho
Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia
Socrates and Models of Platonic Love
Dougal Blyth, University of Auckland, New Zealand
The Eye of the Beloved: Opsis and Eros in Socratic Pedagogy
Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto, Canada
Plato's Oblique Response to Issues of Socrates' Influence on Alcibiades: An Examination of the Protagoras and the Gorgias
Reuben Ramsey, University of Newcastle, Australia
Socratic Ignorance, or the Place of the Alcibiades I in Plato's Early Works
Yuji Kurihara, Gakugei University, Tokyo
Did Alcibiades Learn Justice from the Many?
Joe Mintoff, University of Newcastle, Australia
The Dual-Role Philosophers: An Exploration of a Failed Relationship
Anthony Hooper, University of Sydney, Australia
Authenticity, Experiment or Development: The Alcibiades I on Virtue and Courage
Eugenio Benitez, University of Sydney, Australia
Revaluing Megalopsuchia: Reflections on the Alcibiades II
Matthew Sharpe, University of Melbourne, Australia
Improvement by Love: From Aeschines to the Old Academy
Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia
Ice-Cold in Alex: Philo's Treatment of the Divine Lover in Hellenist Pedagogy
Fergus King, University of Newcastle, Australia
Proclus' Reading of Plato's Sôkratikoi Logoi: Proclus' Observations on Dialectic at Alcibiades 112d-114e and Elsewhere
Akitsugu Taki, Josai International University, Japan
Socrates' Divine Sign: From the Alcibiades to Olympiodorus
François Renaud, Université de Moncton, Canada
'The Individual' in History and History 'in General': Alcibiades, Philosophical History and Ideas in Contest
Neil Morpeth, University of Newcastle, Australia
Appendix 1. Fourth-Century Politics and the Date of the Alcibiades I
Appendix 2. Report on the Working Vocabulary in the Doubtful Dialogues
a. The Working Vocabulary of the Alcibiades
b. The Working Vocabulary of the Theages
Bibliography
Index
This series of short incisive books introduces major figures of the ancient world to the modern general reader, including the essentials of each subject's life, works, and significance for later western civilisation. In the newly created tradition of the "Ancients in Action" series, Marguerite Johnson has written a fascinating and accessible account of what remains of the life and works of the Greek poet, Sappho. Sappho's ancient biography is covered in addition to the post-classical accounts of her life, which continue to appear, in a variety of creative and non-creative contexts, in contemporary literature and art. Sappho's poetry, essentially preserved in tantalising fragments, is discussed in a series of thematic chapters that include her religious writings, particularly directed to the goddess of love, Aphrodite; personal interpretations of mythological themes; marriage hymns; and love songs to female companions.
This chapter examines the illustrations in two publications and two artists’ field illustrations with a methodological eye to Classical Reception Studies to consider the representations of First Australians and Māori with recourse to ancient Mediterranean sculpture. This use of classicism is evident in two engravings from the monograph of John Hunter published in 1793: the watercolour, ‘A Native Wounded while asleep’ (c. 1788–97) by the ‘Port Jackson Painter’; and a pen and wash, ‘New Zealand War Canoe bidding defiance to the Ship’ (1770) by Sydney Parkinson, reproduced in the monograph by John Hawkesworth (1773).
Of interest to scholars across the globe who research the influence of antiquity on modern literature, film, theatre and fine art, this volume fills a decisive gap in the literature by bringing antipodean research into the spotlight. Following a contextual introduction to the field, the six parts of the volume explore the latest research on subjects that range from the Lord of the Rings and Xena: Warrior Princess franchises to important artists such as Sidney Nolan and local authors whose work offers opportunities for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis with well-known Western authors and artists.
Introduction (Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia)
Part 1: The Colonial Past – Classical Influences in White Australasia
1. Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, Australia): Black Out: Classicizing Indigeneity in Australia and New Zealand
2. Rachael White (University of Oxford, UK): Australia as Underworld: Convict Classics in the Nineteenth Century
Part 2: Theatre – Then and Now
3. Laura Ginters (University of Sydney, Australia): Agamemnon comes to the Antipodes: The Origins of Student Drama at the University of Sydney
4. John Davidson (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Salamis and Gallipoli: The Campaigns of Phillip Mann
5. Michael Ewans (University of Newcastle, Australia) and Marguerite Johnson (University of Newcastle, Australia): Wesley Enoch's Black Medea
6. Jane Montgomery Griffiths (Monash University, Australia): What Women Critics Know that Men Don't
Part 3: Poetry and Classical Echoes in New Zealand
7. Geoffrey Miles (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): James K. Baxter and the Gorgon Moon
8. Anna Jackson (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Clodia Through the Looking Glass
Part 4: Fictionalizing Antipodean Antiquities
9. Nicolas Liney (University of Oxford, UK): Parilia Poscor - David Malouf Remembers the Parilia (Fasti 4.721)
10. Elizabeth Hale (University of New England, Australia): Imaginative Displacement: Classical Reception in the Young Adult Fiction of Margaret Mahy
11. Babette Pütz (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Classical Influences in Bernard Beckett's Genesis, August, and Lullaby
12. Anne Rogerson (University of Sydney, Australia): Displaced Persons and Displaced Narratives in S. D. Gentill's Hero Trilogy
Part 5: Australasia, Greece and Rome - Paper and Canvas
13. Sarah Midford (La Trobe University, Australia): Painting Anzacs in an Epic Landscape: Greek Myth, the Trojan War and Sidney Nolan's Gallipoli Series
14. Melinda Johnston (independent scholar) and Thomas Köntges (University of Leipzig, Germany): Of Heroes and Humans: Marian Maguire's Colonization of Herakles' Mythical World
Part 6: Antiquity on the Australasian Screen
15. Ika Willis (University of Wollongong, Australia): Temporal Turbulence: Reception Studies(') Now
16. Hannah Parry (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): Classical Epic in Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth Trilogies
17. Leanne Glass (University of Newcastle, Australia): Shifting Paradigms in Ben Ferris' Penelope
Notes
Bibliography
Index
“This is a timely book, given current debates about teaching 'western civilisation' in our universities. It represents a coming-of-age particularly in Australian classical reception studies, and it will surely be a stimulus to bring less descriptive and more theoretically innovative approaches to bear on the myriad forms of classical reception that saturate Australasia.” – The Classical Review
“A well-rounded study highlighting the importance of Greco-Roman history and culture for many Australians and New Zealanders, from convicts to colonisers, ranging from novelists to poets to painters and film-makers. This is exemplary Classical Reception practice.” – Maxine Lewis, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Auckland, New Zealand,
“Well-written, well-organized, well-researched, and, most importantly, truly informative, wide-ranging, and groundbreaking in its revisionary understanding of Beat-oriented writings.” —Daniel Morris, Purdue University
Despite their self-presentation as iconoclasts, the writers of the Beat Generation were deeply engaged with the classical tradition. Many of them were university-trained and highly conscious of their literary forebears, and they frequently incorporated their knowledge of Greco-Roman literature into their own subversive, experimental practice. Seeking to transcend the superficiality, commercialism, and precariousness of life in post–World War II America, the Beat writers found in their classical models both a venerable literary heritage and a discourse of sublimity through which to articulate their desire for purity.
In this volume, a diverse group of contributors explore for the first time the fascinating tensions and paradoxes that arose from interactions between these avant-garde writers and a literary tradition often seen as conservative and culturally hegemonic. With essays that cover the canonical Beat authors—such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs—along with less well-known figures—including Kenneth Rexroth, Ed Sanders, and Diane di Prima—Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition brings long overdue attention to the Beat movement’s formative appropriation of the Greek and Latin classics.
Editor’s Introduction, by Marguerite Johnson
Although there is extensive scholarship on Australian and New Zealand literature, film, theatre and art, there is little on Australasian Classical Reception. Two notable publications, both edited by Elizabeth Hale, on the productions of classical texts by the Sydney Theatre Company, marked an important milestone in the discipline. The collections, on Barrie Kosky’s The Lost Echo (2006) and The Women of Troy (2008), were published in major journals (Australasian Drama Studies and Didaskalia) and established an international readership of, and interest in the field. Additionally, artists such as Marian Maguire (1962-), whose lithographs and etchings merge Greek vase paintings with New Zealand colonial history, have been the subject of Classical Reception scholarship, as has the work of poets such as Anna Jackson (featured herein), James K. Baxter (1926-1972) and C. K. Stead (1932-), and novelists such as David Malouf (1934-).
The momentum in Australasian Classical Reception Studies during the first decades of the twenty-first century is indicative of a much longer history of engagements with the ancient Mediterranean. Since the colonialisation of Australia and New Zealand, there have been discernible, significant and multifarious markers of ancient Greece and Rome inscribed on Australasian landscapes. Many British and Europeans were familiar with Classically-inspired imperial philosophies, the ancient canon, and the tenets behind an education system that privileged Greek and Latin. Colonial newspapers reviewed Greek tragedies and comedies, artists depicted the landscapes with deference to bucolic countrysides, and poets eulogised the scenery with songs overburdened with Classical imagery. The debt to Classicism was endemic as colonists sought to ‘civilise’ the newly ‘discovered’ lands through established, conservative, imperial models.
As modernity infiltrated Australasia, the twentieth century saw the reinvention of Classicism, as artists turned to interpretation, hybridisation, foreignisation and refiguration as a response to the conventional nature of Classical acculturation. This was a symbolically important gesture in the colonies in view of the perceived imperative to establish national identities separate from those imposed by imperialism. White Australasians began to challenge British hegemony in the wake of the Great War, and their poets began to mourn campaigns such as Gallipoli through recourse to more sombre expressions of Classicism. White Australians sought to shed their convict past in order to present new icons of nationhood that celebrated healthy, suntanned and athletic bodies, which found expression in Classical Realism. During the end of the inter-war period, for example, Charles Meere’s ‘Australian Beach Pattern’ (1940) modernised classical artistic precepts by recasting ancient statues as egalitarian ‘Aussies’ at play. While there remained a strong element of traditional Classicism in the works of artists such as Australian Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) and photographers such as New Zealand-born Harold Cazneaux (1878-1953), external artistic and political movements that championed experimentation and radicalism, transformed Antipodean ways of seeing ancient Greece and Rome. Artists such as Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) and Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) captured elements of the abject and even the banal in myths such as Leda and the Swan, while Baxter constantly sought to write and rewrite Classical narratives in New Zealand contexts.
The experimentations continue and as each era is marked by new politics, new cultures and new values, so too is the practitioner who engages with the Classical Tradition. One of the most significant developments in creative reworkings of antiquity is the melding of the conservativism of Classicism with the principles of feminism and post-colonialism. As colonial outposts, sometimes viewed as being at the end of the earth, and most definitely lacking the markers of ‘civilisation’ of the old country, New Zealand and Australia may be regarded as particularly fertile grounds for the birth of reactionary artistic movements, or at least intensive creative meditations on, and responses to oppression. While, of course, neither country is really unique in this respect, Classicism has been claimed and acculturated to express objections and shed light on alienation, racism and misogyny, particularly in post-colonial settings. New voices have consequently emerged, such as playwright Wesley Enoch, whose Black Medea (2005) refigured a revered example of Greek tragic theatre from the perspective of Indigenous Australians’ cultural and spiritual disenfranchisement. Previously, Louis Nowra’s play The Golden Age (1985) interwove urban legends of lost Tasmanian settlers with allegories of First Nation Tasmanians mixed with references to Iphigenia in Tauris.
In these three interviews, each practitioner discusses their use of ancient Greece and Rome in the creative process, both as sources of personal expression and broader, more intellectual and social endeavours. Phillip Mann, like many scholars and artists of his generation, emigrated to New Zealand from the motherland. As Professor of Drama Studies at Victoria University, Wellington until his academic retirement in 1998, Mann directed reinterpretations of Greek plays for New Zealand audiences. In the interview, John Davidson comments on Mann’s introduction of the Māori waiata into the choral element of Greek tragedy as “trailblazing” (although Mann rightly cautions against the temptation of the heavy overlaying of cultural comparisons). Mann is wonderfully honest about his passion for Classical references, particularly ones inspired by Roman culture, as evident in his Science Fiction tetralogy, A Land Fit for Heroes – a series Davidson extols, but Mann reminds him was very much overlooked by both readers and reviewers. What perhaps is most compelling about the interview is Mann’s discussion of his childhood, particularly his life as the sole child of a sole parent, which was marked by poverty but enriched by stories. While many reception scholars and scholars of the Classics per se often attribute their introduction to antiquity to formal education, Mann remembers a working-class mother’s role in instilling a love for the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.
In conversation with Maxine Lewis, New Zealand poet Anna Jackson discusses her introduction to Catullus through the translations of other scholars and poets, and the particular appeal of Stevie Smith’s ‘Catullus.’ Jackson explains her creative revisioning of Catullus’ poetry in Catullus for Children (2003), which was not as a Classicist working from the Latin but as someone “with an interest in reception and translation” who wanted to explore the element of game-playing underlying the poetry. Jackson also discusses the different imperatives that motivated her second Catullus collection, I, Clodia (2014), namely the appeal of exploring “narrative and dialogue” in creative praxis. Lewis’ interest in Jackson’s Catullus poetry in the context of New Zealand poets opens a dialogue on contemporary poets’ debt to, but more significantly, independence from references to Classical antiquity by established members of their own cultural canon.
Leanne Glass talks with Australian filmmaker Ben Ferris about his award-winning feature film, Penelope and the role of actual dreams in its creation (as well as in the film per se). The complexities behind the making of a film such as Penelope are at the centre of the conversation, with Ferris discussing issues around filming in Croatia, from audience response to the inclusion of a rape scene. The fascination at the heart of this interview may be seen to lie with the conversations around artistic allusions – what the viewer regards as strong intertextual references – and the corresponding responses of the writer/director. This culminates in showing the multi-layered use of sources, beginning with the ancient idea or image, which characterises the work of artists in the aftermath of post-modernism.
The Sappho of the Enlightenment and Victorian age was manifest in many forms to express multifarious needs. Her plasticity exerted a significant influence on the representations that emerged in the century that followed. The Sappho manufacturers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries demonstrated how appropriation and misappropriation of an ancient icon could suit almost any need. References to Sappho in poetry, satire, moral tracts, fine art, academia, medical texts, and pornography demonstrate her flexibility as a subject and provide information on contemporaneous aesthetic trends and ideals. These receptions also function as a societal magnifying glass, enlarging snapshots of life to reveal more than the wider discourse of these eras. While Sappho was the subject of celebrated male poets and artists, she also appealed to those outside the canon. It is from these less familiar case studies that alternative but no less compelling histories emerge. An example of an unconventional, even unexpected nineteenth-century Sappho is the creation of the Sapphonian Society in 1892 at Illinois State Normal University. While perhaps outside expected academic enquiries into the reception of Sappho, scholarship on this women's literary society demonstrates the rhetorical strategy behind the group, as symbolised by its eponym. It sought to prepare female students to challenge the contemporary polemic of the 'woman peril in education' that allegedly posed a threat to the male dominance of scholarship. 1 Suffragettes included Sappho in their historical collectives of important women, illustrated by her inclusion in Cicely Hamilton's A Pageant of Great Women, published at the end of the 'long' nineteenth century in 1910. 2 Classicism also appeared in broader, more egalitarian contexts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sarah Hale's Ladies' Magazine
In the Platonic work Alcibiades I, a divinely guided Socrates adopts the guise of a lover in order to divert Alcibiades from an unthinking political career. The contributors to this carefully focussed volume cover aspects of the background to the work; its arguments and the philosophical issues it raises; its relationship to other Platonic texts, and its subsequent history up to the time of the Neoplatonists. Despite its ancient prominence, the authorship of Alcibiades I is still unsettled; the essays and two appendices, one historical and one stylometric, come together to suggest answers to this tantalising question.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia and Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia
The role of Eros in Improving the Pupil, or What Socrates Learned from Sappho
Marguerite Johnson, University of Newcastle, Australia
Socrates and Models of Platonic Love
Dougal Blyth, University of Auckland, New Zealand
The Eye of the Beloved: Opsis and Eros in Socratic Pedagogy
Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto, Canada
Plato's Oblique Response to Issues of Socrates' Influence on Alcibiades: An Examination of the Protagoras and the Gorgias
Reuben Ramsey, University of Newcastle, Australia
Socratic Ignorance, or the Place of the Alcibiades I in Plato's Early Works
Yuji Kurihara, Gakugei University, Tokyo
Did Alcibiades Learn Justice from the Many?
Joe Mintoff, University of Newcastle, Australia
The Dual-Role Philosophers: An Exploration of a Failed Relationship
Anthony Hooper, University of Sydney, Australia
Authenticity, Experiment or Development: The Alcibiades I on Virtue and Courage
Eugenio Benitez, University of Sydney, Australia
Revaluing Megalopsuchia: Reflections on the Alcibiades II
Matthew Sharpe, University of Melbourne, Australia
Improvement by Love: From Aeschines to the Old Academy
Harold Tarrant, University of Newcastle, Australia
Ice-Cold in Alex: Philo's Treatment of the Divine Lover in Hellenist Pedagogy
Fergus King, University of Newcastle, Australia
Proclus' Reading of Plato's Sôkratikoi Logoi: Proclus' Observations on Dialectic at Alcibiades 112d-114e and Elsewhere
Akitsugu Taki, Josai International University, Japan
Socrates' Divine Sign: From the Alcibiades to Olympiodorus
François Renaud, Université de Moncton, Canada
'The Individual' in History and History 'in General': Alcibiades, Philosophical History and Ideas in Contest
Neil Morpeth, University of Newcastle, Australia
Appendix 1. Fourth-Century Politics and the Date of the Alcibiades I
Appendix 2. Report on the Working Vocabulary in the Doubtful Dialogues
a. The Working Vocabulary of the Alcibiades
b. The Working Vocabulary of the Theages
Bibliography
Index
Dans la recherche historique sur Sara Baartman, surtout connue comme la « Vénus Hottentot », les références au rapport de son autopsie par Georges Cuvier, aussi bien que les discussions là-dessus, sont basées sur le texte français original, « Extrait d’observations faites sur le cadavre d’une femme connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentotte », publié en 1817. Pour les érudits, les étudiants, et le public général qui s’intéressent à la vie de Baartman, une traduction en anglais du rapport d’autopsie, avec une introduction et un commentaire, font une contribution importante à la biographie de Baartman. De plus, le projet contribue à l’histoire de la médecine et, explicitement, à celle de l’autopsie dans l’âge post-Lumières du Premier Empire.
En la investigación histórica sobre Sara Baartman, más conocida como la “Venus hotentote,” las referencias a y discusiones sobre el informe de su autopsia por parte de Georges Cuvier se han basado en el texto original en francés, “Extrait d’observations faites sur le cadavre d’une femme connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentotte,” publicado en 1817. Para los académicos, estudiantes y público anglófono en general interesados en la vida de Baartman, una traducción al inglés del informe de la autopsia, con una introducción y un comentario, aporta una contribución importante a la biografía de Baartman. Además, el proyecto contribuye a la historia de la medicina y, expresamente, a la de la autopsia en la época post-Ilustración del Primer Imperio Francés.
[1] All Greek and Latin translations are my own. Latin and Greeks texts consulted are as follows: Tacitus Annals book 14 (Jackson 1937; 1989); Agricola (Ogilvie and Winterbottom 1975); Ovid Metamorphoses (Anderson 1972) with a few edits; Cassius Dio Roman History (Cary 1924; 1982).
Marguerite Johnson is Professor of Classics at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her academic interests encompass gender, sexuality in the body in the ancient Mediterranean, as well as ancient magic and classical reception studies. Among her publications are Sexuality in Greek and Roman Literature and Society: A Sourcebook (with Terry Ryan; 2004), now in its second edition (2022), and the edited volume Antipodean Antiquities: Classical Reception Down Under (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Boudicca, the Icenian Queen who led her people against the Roman invasion of Britain in 60/61 ce, is an integral symbol in the collective English psyche. Her story, taught to children in schools and inscribed on the Norfolk landscape, is imparted via the interpretive lens of humiliation, exploitation and colonization. Themes of freedom and resistance are also promoted when telling her story. Boudicca is filmed, sculpted, painted and sung. She is even a gaming star. Forever colonized in most representations, first by Rome, then by artists and geeks, she is often badly acted and badly ‘executed’. But not by Jane Holland. Under Holland’s poetic spell, she is truly repellent; a sexual brute who has been brutalized sexually; a flawed, violent, psychopathic, recalcitrant victim-of-war; and one of war’s great victimizers....
Editor-in-chief: Julia O'Brien
Published: 05 February 2015
1152 Pages
279x216mm
ISBN: 9780199836994
Love Magic is a dramatic monologue written by the ancient Greek poet Theocritus around 280-260 BCE featuring a young woman scorned by her lover. The performance is a research project funded by the Centre for 21st Century Humanities led by Professor Marguerite Johnson, a researcher of Classics, magic and gender. Conjoint Professor Michael Ewans has translated the play directed the performance.
Wiley, $29.95 pb, 582 pp, 9780393089059
THE ILIAD: A NEW TRANSLATION by Homer, translated by Peter Green University of California Press (Footprint), $44.99 pb, 592 pp, 9780520281431
Epic tales of life and death, and heroic struggles fill our imagination
Why do we tell them and do we need them?
Shocking as it may be, such an incident is nothing new. Scholars have long encountered skeletons in the academic closets of peers and intellectual heroes. Personal misdemeanors or crimes range from longstanding mistreatment of family and friends to offensive political beliefs and obscene acts.
Bruneau was among a group of photographers invited to promote the sculptures abroad. In view of the media attention, even critics would have to admit, he achieved his brief.
On Valentine’s Day, 1900 a group of young ladies and their teachers from Appleyard College, Victoria head into the Australian bush, to Hanging Rock, to enjoy a picnic. What happened on that day was to become the stuff of legend. Based on the novel by Joan Lindsay and made famous by Peter Weir’s 1975 film, now a cult classic, Picnic at Hanging Rock, the story of the ethereal schoolgirl, Miranda, and some of her companions, has sometimes been insisted upon as fact – a strange case of fiction taking on a life of its own. This was not helped by Joan Lindsay’s cryptic and ambiguous comments in interviews following the publication of her novel in 1967. In this talk, Marguerite Johnson shares an alternative Valentine story – a story far removed from cupids and love hearts – but one of deep-seated fears of the Australian bush, legends and realities of missing children, sentient landscapes, and the gothic uncanny.
Rosaleen Norton, dubbed ‘The Witch of Kings Cross’ was a witch, artist, writer and philosopher from the 1930s until her death in 1979. Possessed of an acute intellect, Rosaleen studied and affected a personal and complex system of polytheism, trance magic, and sex magick, which was characterised and caricatured as ‘witchcraft’ and, sometimes, as ‘satanism’ by the Australian popular press.
Let Marguerite Johnson take you on a magical, witchy (broomstick) ride as she discusses Rosaleen – or Roie – and her wonderful legacy on popular and esoteric cultures through her occult and trance-induced art and her enduring dedication to an occult life. Marguerite will also discuss some of the scandals surrounding Roie, and the intense police and media scrutiny, which sometimes led to arrests, court cases and prosecutions.
In this lavishly illustrated talk, Marguerite not only shares the story of her own fascination with Roie, which began in childhood, but also some lesser-known archival material from her personal collection.
This special talk coincides with the exhibition – Four Witches & a Warlock: Magickal Art by Rosaleen Norton, Ithell Colquhoun, Madge Gill, Leonora Carrington & Austin Osman Spare – at The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History (Oct 01st 2024 – March 9, 2025)