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Troy, Carthage and the Victorians

The Drama of Classical Ruins in the Nineteenth-Century Imagination

Rachel Bryant Davies author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:15th Mar '18

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Troy, Carthage and the Victorians cover

Playful, popular visions of ruined cities demonstrate antiquity's starring role in nineteenth-century culture, developing new models for understanding classical reception.

This highly illustrated volume recreates dramatic debates over archaeological discoveries at Troy and Carthage, explaining how the ruined cities inspired irreverent reconstructions of classical epic and imaginative improvisations on the canonical narratives about both cities. It will appeal to anyone interested in classical reception and nineteenth-century culture.Playful, popular visions of Troy and Carthage, backdrops to the Iliad and Aeneid's epic narratives, shine the spotlight on antiquity's starring role in nineteenth-century culture. This is the story of how these ruined cities inspired bold reconstructions of the Trojan War and its aftermath, how archaeological discoveries in the Troad and North Africa sparked dramatic debates, and how their ruins were exploited to conceptualise problematic relationships between past, present and future. Rachel Bryant Davies breaks new ground in the afterlife of classical antiquity by revealing more complex and less constrained interaction with classical knowledge across a broader social spectrum than yet understood, drawing upon methodological developments from disciplines such as history of science and theatre history in order to do so. She also develops a thorough critical framework for understanding classical burlesque and engages in in-depth analysis of a toy-theatre production.

'The book is learned and insightful, filled with archival discoveries and analysis of overlooked source material … makes a strong contribution to reception studies, analysis of cultural discourse in nineteenth-century Britain, and the history of popular culture …' Elena N. Boeck, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

ISBN: 9781107192669

Dimensions: 253mm x 180mm x 22mm

Weight: 980g

402 pages