Classics and National Cultures

The texts, ideas, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome have always been crucial to attempts to appropriate the past in order to authenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of change and the assertion and challenging of values and identities, old and new. Classical Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past.

This book seeks to understand the ways in which national cultures have engaged with classical Greece and Rome, and how classical cultures have contributed to the idea of nations and nationalisms. What impact does the classical past have on ideas of the nation, nationhood, nationality, and what effect does the national space have on classical culture? How has classical culture been imagined in various national traditions, what importance has it had within them, and for whom? In this volume of essays an international team of scholars investigate these vexed relationships. A key feature of the collection is the expanded range of national cultures, old and new, that are considered in relation to Classics--not just those of Germany, Greece, and Italy, but also China, India, Mexico, Japan, and South Africa, among other regions. Classics and National Cultures poses new questions for the study of antiquity and for the history of nations and nationalisms. --Book Jacket.