7 Classical reception

Classical reception is an approach that you have been using throughout this course, without using its name. When you compared the painted pot with the Ovidian text in Activity 14, that was classical reception, and when you examined different artists’ versions of the Actaeon myth throughout the previous section, that was classical reception in action too! Now you will learn more about this approach, practise applying it with more precision to some modern poetry, and find out how it helps us to understand why Ovid is still relevant to the modern world.

Figure 21 ‘Yellow (Diana and Actaeon)’ by the contemporary Cuban-American artist Lino Bernabe. This painting was made to change under different colours of light. The image shows what it would look like under white light, but under different colours of light other details become more apparent. This reflects the variety of ways readers have interpreted the myth.

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This painting has an orange background, with abstract shapes picked out in contrasting colours. On the left, the bright blue silhouette of a figure holding a bow twists their body away from the centre of the painting, with their gaze looking back to the centre. A small crescent moon is visible on top of their head, as if worn on a head-dress. Their bow and gaze point towards a green stag figure, with human rear legs being bitten by a dog below it, both in a deep green silhouette. The shapes of other dogs, more abstract in design, stand out in different shades of pink from the orange background. Where the figures overlap the colour changes, giving the impression that the silhouettes are placed on top of each other. Over the top of the image hangs a large blue flat disk above the head of the stag and the figure carrying the bow.

Figure 21 ‘Yellow (Diana and Actaeon)’ by the contemporary Cuban-American artist Lino Bernabe. This painting was made to change under ...

Activity 15 What is classical reception?

Timing: This activity should take about 10 minutes

Watch the following video introducing you to classical reception. Then, write a single sentence summary of what you understand classical reception to be.

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Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PRESENTER

What do we mean by classical reception? In simple terms, it's how we describe what happens to things from antiquity. Texts, images, objects, myths, as they travel through time and take on new forms and meanings as they go. It's a process that starts in the ancient world. Watch Aphrodite as she heads from the heights of Mount Olympus in Greece and travels over to Rome.

The Romans adopted most of the Greek pantheon and adapted them to fit Roman culture, worshipping them and telling stories about them in distinctively Roman ways. In Rome, Aphrodite becomes Venus, and is honoured as the mother of the Roman people. Each culture, as it encounters a myth, interprets it and reshapes it to fit its own needs. And the myth keeps on evolving over time.

Even after antiquity, people don't stop being interested in Aphrodite, and the journey of the myth is far from over. Here we are in the mediaeval world, where classical myth takes on new flavours. While Venus was celebrated as a symbol of romantic love by some, she also had to be made suitable for a Christian culture. Her myths turned into moral allegories.

As Aphrodite moves through the centuries, she remains a favourite subject of painters and poets, framed as an icon of beauty in their stories of love and passion. Each new artist and storyteller, and each new audience, is free to shape the goddess and the myth however they want. But the earlier versions aren't forgotten and can keep on influencing each new reception.

As we move towards the present day, the myth still reverberates through popular culture. Aphrodite can be a star of the silver screen, or a platform for exploring feminism or confronting racism. And this isn't a straightforward, one-track journey through time. At every stage, our myth can proliferate and replicate, sending new versions off on a web of new paths.

Aphrodite as a character in a novel might be very different from Venus in a music video, say. And just as that web grows over time, it can extend through space too. Aphrodite travels around the globe, finding new meanings, encountering and blending with other myths in many different cultural settings.

So we see the process of reception as a journey in which there is no such thing as the original myth, but only an ever-changing version of it. Each new retelling or reimagining adds a new layer, building on and adapting what has gone before, while also reflecting the time and culture in which it is produced.

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Discussion

There are many different ways that you could sum up classical reception. For example: classical reception is an approach that tries to understand the way that ancient things (stories, artefacts, ideas) acquire their meaning as they travel through time and space.

Let’s dig into some specific versions – or receptions – of the Actaeon story, and put what you have learned about classical reception into practice. In the next two activities you will study two paintings by the Italian painter Titian, who died in 1576 CE, and a poem that responds to these paintings by the British-Nigerian poet Patience Agbabi. Now that you know Ovid’s version of the story of Actaeon quite well, you can focus on how Titian and Agbabi adapt it and provide new interpretations.

Between 1551 and 1562 CE, Titian painted six large paintings which he called his ‘poesie’ (poems) for Philip II, who was then King of Spain. The story of Diana and Actaeon takes up not one but two paintings in this series. Look at the paintings carefully now, and see whether you can identify which moments in the story of Actaeon they represent.

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On the left hand side of this richly detailed Renaissance painting, a man dressed in hunting clothes (short brown tunic and sandals, arrows in a quiver on his back) pushes back a red cloth hanging from a tree and enters into a grove where Diana and other women are bathing. A glittering pool of water lies between the man and the six naked women, who are trying to cover themselves with bits of fabric and clothing, looking shocked and horrified. These six women are all white women, and on the far right side of the image a Black woman, wearing an orange and white striped dress, is helping to cover up one of the white women. She stares directly back at the man, while the other women look away. The background shows a forest with thick trees and some architectural ruins and blue sky in the gaps between the trees. The colours are dark and dramatic and the scene is very detailed, with a small dog visible as well as other details like faces carved into the architectural ruins.

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The colours of this image are darker than the previous one. On the left Diana, a young female figure wearing a short red dress with light hair is running from left to right, holding out her bow towards the right hand side of the image. On the right hand side we see a male figure, which still has human legs but has the head of a stag, being attacked by two hunting dogs. The image is densely packed with trees and leaves and swirling dark clouds which gives the painting a dramatic feel.

In 2012, a series of poems was commissioned in response to these two paintings by Titian. These poems showcase something important about classical reception. They make clear that reception is not just a conversation between something ancient and something modern. It is a dynamic process that can involve multiple webs of texts, art and ideas and it can make loops in time that connect up multiple historical moments.

One of the poems that was commissioned in 2012 was a poem called ‘About Face’ by Patience Agbabi. It takes as its subject one of the figures in Titian’s painting – the Black woman who is on the right of the ‘Diana and Actaeon’ painting. In this next activity you will engage with Agbabi’s poem and the way it transforms Ovid’s myth of transformation by responding to Titian’s painting.

This poem could be read as Agbabi re-imagining Ovid’s myth through Titian’s re-imagining of it. Classical reception is constantly being influenced by these kinds of choices, which are themselves shaped by the choices of earlier writers and creatives as well as broader societal contexts. The meaning of ancient texts and artefacts is constantly changing in response to new kinds of interpretations and re-imaginings. Here we see another of Ovid’s big questions: why do myths continue to matter in the modern world? And classical reception provides us with as many different answers as there are different re-imaginings of these stories. If you have found studying this poem interesting, you might want to return to it in the ‘Taking it further’ section, where you will find more resources to explore it.