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Tony Harrison has been widely regarded as an interventionist poet and playwright in the sense that his work holds up a critical lens to modernity, brutally revealing the injustices and oppressions perpetrated by rulers, imperialists, and warmongers. The use of Greek and Roman material as means of exposing and challenging dominant political and cultural practices has been a central aspect of his project. This key feature of Harrison’s work also draws attention to the ironies in Harrison’s own situation. It was the privileged education he received, including being one of the last generation of writers to be schooled in the languages and histories of antiquity, plus his subsequent assimilation into the intelligentsia of creative practitioners, which put him in a position to become such an effective gadfly and to adapt a whole range of literary and theatrical forms and traditions for the purposes of political and social consciousness-raising. This chapter uses Harrison’s recusatio of modern politics and culture as a launching pad for examination of the reverse side of the coin. In using Greek and Roman texts, mythological narratives and figures, and poetic and theatrical forms and conventions in radical contexts, Harrison is involved in creative code-switching, that is, he recasts ideas and narratives in linguistic registers, idioms, and situations that enable modern readers and spectators to become part of the windows he opens on both ancient and modern.

I propose to examine the potential of the play for the identification, interrogation and transformation of fissures in national, cultural and moral senses of identity in relation to post-colonial situations. Because each post-colonial history is different I have chosen to focus in some detail on the formal, linguistic and contextual aspects of one example, the Oedipus written by David Greig and staged by theatre babel in Scotland in 2000, directed by Graham McLaren. The theme of this conference in Gent invites us to read Oedipus as a way into discussion of cultural differential thinking. This theme suggests reflection on differential thinking within cultures as well as between them. It opens the way to questioning monolithic notions of culture and to the identification of points of stress and starting points for realignment. An understanding of this kind of cultural differentiation, of sensitivity to uncertainties and dilemmas and to the masking of the past in the present may perhaps lead to communication across cultural groupings as well as within them.

This article aims to inform and sharpen debate about the status of poetry and art in providing evidence about the First World War and in influencing attitudes to the War, then and subsequently. It is constructed around five cruxes, all of which relate to each other as well as to the overall topic. I start by considering visual evidence. This is important both because of its content and because war artists were ‘approved’ by the authorities at the time, in the expectation that war art would shape public perspectives on the War, as well as providing some kind of record from the field. Literary sources were not accorded the same public status (crux 1). I outline a basis for comparison and understanding of the overlaps between the images and aesthetic of visual and literary material, both of which offer a record of the lived experience of participants as well as underlying affective judgements made about the War (crux 2). I then describe arguments from revisionist historians who exclude literary sources from their construction of narratives of the War. I argue for the recognition of a plurality of narratives including those that are informed by visual and literary sources. No narrative can be totalizing and each needs refining. This approach can best be illustrated by tightening the lens on one key aspect and I have selected refractions of peace. Once the value of literary sources is recognized, the way is open to challenge simplistic polarization between notions of war and peace and to refine distinctions between different conceptions of peace that were important in antiquity and were both embedded and challenged in the poetry of WWI (crux 3). Reception of classical texts and ideas and the ways that they can be read in relation both to antiquity and to World War I poetry has a crucial role to play in nuancing these relationships between notions of war and peace (crux 4). I test that hypothesis against close readings of the dialogue between classical texts and WWI poetry in their explorations of what peace entails (crux 5). Finally, in the Coda I return to the bigger picture and suggest how the case studies and the constellations of heightened classical receptivity that they reveal can also contribute to future analysis of the formation of public imagination and the overlapping layers of cultural memory. [the First World War] continues to cast its long, cold shadow from the past to the present. […] Ten million [of the sixty-five million soldiers] died and nearly twenty million were wounded; seven million civilian lives were lost: gross statistics which can only, perhaps, be comprehended, in simply human terms, through the poetry of the time. Carol Ann Duffy (2013) Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride ‘Their name liveth for ever’, the Gateway claims. […] Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and deride this Siegfried Sassoon, ‘On Passing the New Menin Gate’ (1927–28)1

This essay compares the forms, tone, and content of Heaney’s handling of Hellenic and Roman material and argues that the ambivalences and conflicts within and between these are at their most acute in displacing Heaney’s ‘middle voice’ from its moderating role in holding the balance between, on the one hand, anger and violence and, on the other hand, catharsis and resolution. The Antaeus/Heracles struggle is often read as a metaphor for the challenge presented to Heaney by the competing forces of his rural Irish roots and his elevated global status as a learned and feted poet. I argue here that the metaphor also signals profound conflicts in his handling of classical material. These can be read at a number of levels both within Heaney’s work and in and through the light it sheds on wider questions that are at the hub of aesthetic and political interaction. ‘Deep’ analysis of the differing trajectories of Heaney’s Greek and Roman voices reveals conflicted inscriptions of poetic, religious, and cultural memory and throws open windows into the poetics of repression and the study of trauma.

This essay discusses diverse modes and contexts in recent performances of translations and adaptations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, with special emphasis on the interplay between audience experiences, aesthetics, and contexts that generate moments of heightened receptivity. Radio is a key medium because of its creation of interplay between the aural and visual imaginations and its potential for transferring these to the stage. Analysis of the physical aspects of speech enhances comparisons between radio and different types of live theatre, including the rhapsode or solo performer, the ensemble performance with minimalist staging, and the ‘epic’ staging with full cast and scenery. The versatility of epic in performance demonstrates its capacity to accommodate and sustain changes in poetics, performance styles, and media and to involve spectators and listeners in responding to and transforming perceptions of differing artistic, social, and political environments.

Portrayals of Antigone in Portugal offers an analysis of nine 20th and 21st century Portuguese literary and cinematic versions of this Theban myth.

This essay discusses the relationship between form, language, rewriting and performance in the contemporary staging of ancient Greek drama, with special attention to the range of working practices of the translators, rewriters and theatre practitioners that are involved in the performance creation process. The discussion is framed by questions about the reciprocal influences of research in translation studies and in classics and about how both can best engage with the insights offered by performance praxis.

This article offers reflections arising from a recent colloquium at the Open University on the implications of the development of digital humanities for research in arts disciplines, and also for their interactions with computing and technology. Particular issues explored include the ways in which the digital turn in humanities research is also a spatial/visual one; the tension between analysis based on the extensive ‘hard’ data generated by digital methodologies and the more subtle evaluations of traditional humanities research; the advantages and disadvantages of online resources that distance the researcher from the actual archive, book, artefact or archaeological site under investigation; and the unrealized potential for applying to the humanities software tools designed for science and technology. Constructive responses to such challenges and opportunities require the full rigour of the critical thinking that is the essence of arts and humanities research.

This article examines the ambivalent relationships between classical texts and post-colonial literatures in English, with special reference to the work of Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney. It is argued that analysis of the formal, discursive and contextual relationships between ancient and modern in poetry and drama reveals significant correspondences as well as important differences between the literary and political role of the Classical Tradition in Caribbean and Irish writing. These can be revealed and explained by the writers' balance between ideas of consolation, redress and new beginnings. This in turn opens the way to re-assessment of some of the models of appropriation, creativity and dialogue which have been used in recent research into both Reception Studies and Post-Colonial Literatures.

The article offers a case study of the relationshipbetween current developments in Classical Studies andthe impact of computing and IT. The first sectionsummarises the main features of the Classical Studiesenvironment, especially the deep seated changes whichhave been taking place. These changes are then relatedto specific initiatives in Research, Teaching andLearning. The discussion is framed by a statement ofmicro-criteria for the evaluation of new developmentsand by reference to the macro-climate of debate aboutthe nature of cyberspace, especially the dichotomybetween conceptions of post-modern diversity and ofEnlightenment images of rational structures. It issuggested that these debates mirror those with whichthe discipline itself engages.

Formal, discursive and contextuals elements all play a part in the reception of ancient texts in modern poetry and drama. This article examines the simile as a formal technique which also generates and transmits intertextual relationships. It is argued that the simile also provides a model which illuminates the nexus between Walcott’s technique and the ways in which audiences read and experience his work. The first section identifies ways in which the Homeric simile operates structurally within the epics and suggests that it acts as an agent of perspective transformation, changing the audience’s perception both of the internal dynamics of the poem and of how the audience itself relates to the work. The second part of the paper explores this approach in relation to Walcott’sOmeros, with particular emphasis on the relationship between Philoctetes/Philoctete and the anonymous narrator of the poem. The third section examines a broader application of the simile model in relation to performance of a modern work closely linked with a single ancient text, Walcott’sStage Version of the Odyssey.