Classicisms in the Black Atlantic (Classical Presences)

✍ Scribed by Ian Moyer (editor), Adam Lecznar (editor), Heidi Morse (editor)

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 353
• Edition: Illustrated
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The historical and cultural space of the Black Atlantic - a diasporic world of forced and voluntary migrations - has long provided fertile ground for the construction and reconstruction of new forms of classicism. From the aftermath of slavery up to the present day, black authors, intellectuals, and artists in the Atlantic world have shaped and reshaped the cultural legacies of classical antiquity in a rich variety of ways in order to represent their identities and experiences and reflect on modern conceptions of race, nation, and identity. The studies presented in this volume range across the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone worlds, including literary studies of authors such as Derek Walcott, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, and Junot Diaz, biographical and historical studies, and explorations of race and classicism in the visual arts. They offer reflections on the place of classicism in contemporary conflicts and debates over race and racism, and on the intersections between
classicism, race, gender, and social status, demonstrating how the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome have been used to buttress racial hierarchies, but also to challenge racism and Eurocentric reconstructions of antiquity.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Classicisms in the Black Atlantic
Copyright
Preface
Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Introduction
Race, Reception, and Classicisms
A Map of This Work
Charting New Courses
PART I: Wakes
1: Middle Passages: Mediating Classics and Radical Philology in Marlene NourbeSe Philip and Derek Walcott
Introduction
Disiecta membra and Radical Philology in Walcott and Philip
Speaking Bones in Walcott’s Omeros
Marlene NourbeSe Philip: Dismembering the Classics
Rereading the Aeneid: The Canon as Precedent
Conclusion
2: “Nero, the mustard!”: The Ironies of Classical Slave Names in the British Caribbean
3: Athens and Sparta of the New World: The Classical Passions of Santo Domingo
Voices in the Wilderness
The Fleeting Splendor of the Colony
The Dictator’s Classics
“Black to the future”
PART II: Journeys
4: In Search of Henry Alexander Saturnin Hartley, Black Classicist, Clergyman, and Physician
Conclusion
5: Roman Studios: The Black Woman Artist in the Eternal City, from Edmonia Lewis to Carrie Mae Weems
“When and Where I Enter”
Piazza del Popolo—4 Via Fontanella (1866–7)
Death of Cleopatra—8 Vicolo di San Nicolo da Tolentino (1867–c.1882)
Pyramids of Rome—4 Via Venti Settembre (1887)
6: Africana Andromeda: Contemporary Painting and the Classical Black Figure
Reimagining Andromeda
Appendix: Referenced Artworks (Not Illustrated)
PART III: Tales
7: The Tragedy of Aimé Césaire
Césaire’s Mythic Origins
The birth of tragedy in 1956
8: Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe: An Account of Roman London from the Black British Perspective
An Unlearning and Re-education of British History
Europe’s African Roots
The Myth of Persephone and the Politics of Gender
The Black Atlantic
Gender in the Ancient World
9: Myth and the Fantastic in the Work of Junot Díaz
The fukú
10: Classics for All?: Liberal Education and the Matter of Black Lives
Classics and an Ancient Blackness
The African, Classics for All, and the Current State of Play
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Veil and the Talented Tenth
#BlackLivesMatter: The Persistence of the Veil, the Problem of the Talented Tenth
Classics for All?
Works Cited
Index