No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
V. Film and Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
The growth of film criticism in modern reception studies presents in a particularly acute form many of the issues of method with which other areas of reception are also grappling. In addition, it brings together under the umbrella of one art form the sometimes uneasy relationship between ‘high’ cultures and popular forms of entertainment. ‘Spectacle’ has to be analysed alongside that of the most nuanced ‘avant-garde’ production techniques. Film has been closely related to drama in terms of analytic approaches, not just because of its links with the subject matter of ancient texts but because it is, like theatre, a performative medium – although unlike a staged performance the conditions in which it is created both assume and facilitate its preservation. Yet some aspects of film also move close to poetry. Furthermore, film poems based on ancient texts and paradigms have encouraged a more self-referential approach, reflecting on the relationship between words and images in both public and private contexts of reception. It will become clear from the discussion which follows that film receptions have some significant overlaps with those in drama and poetry.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Classical Association 2003
References
1 (New York and London, 1997).
2 Wyke (1997), 188.
3 Jorgens, Jack J., Shakespeare on Film (Bloomington, 1977)Google Scholar.
4 MacKinnon, K., Greek Tragedy into Film (London, 1986)Google Scholar.
5 For further discussion of critical reaction to these films and their relationship with the ancient texts see MacKinnon, Kenneth, ‘Film Adaptation on the Myth of Textual Fidelity’ in Hardwick, L. (ed.), Tony Harrison’s Poetry, Drama and Film: the Classical Dimension, The Open Colloquium 1999 (Milton Keynes, 2000), 16–28 and electronically at http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/Colq99/MacFinal.htm.Google Scholar
6 Sobchack, Thomas, ‘Genre Film: a Classical Experience’, first published in Literature I Film Quarterly 3 (1975), 196–204 Google Scholar and reprinted in Grant, Barry Keith (ed.), Film Genre Reader (Austin, 1986)Google Scholar; quoted and discussed by Gamel, Mary-Kay, ‘American Tragedy: Chinatown ’ in Winkler, Martin M. (ed.), Classics and Cinema, Bucknell Review (1991), 209-31Google Scholar.
7 Gamel (1991).
8 Gamel (1991), 226–7.
9 Christie, I., ‘Between Magic and Realism: Medea on Film’, in Hall, E., Macintosh, F. and Taplin, O. (edd.), Medea in Performance (Oxford, 2000), 144–65 Google Scholar.
10 Variety, 27th May, 1996.
11 See Hartigan, Karelissa, Greek Tragedy on the American Stage: Ancient Drama in the Commercial Theater, 1882–1994 (Westport, CT and London, 1995), 148 Google Scholar.
12 Macintosh, F., ‘Under the Blue Pencil: Greek Tragedy and the British Censor’, Dialogos 2 (1995), 54–70.Google Scholar
13 This play is currently being researched by Barbara Goff as part of a wider study, B. Goff and M. Simpson, Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy in African and African-American Literary Cultures. I am grateful to her for allowing me access to her work in advance of its publication.
14 The other plays were Tom McGrath’s Electra and Liz Lochhead’s Medea.
15 Source: interview by Steve Cramer, Programme Notes (2000).
16 Michelakis, P., ‘The Past as a Foreign Country? Greek Tragedy, Cinema and the Politics of Space’ in Budelmann, F. and Michelakis, P. (edd.), Homer, Tragedy and Beyond: Essays in honour of P.E. Easterling (London, 2001), 241–57, including filmographyGoogle Scholar.
17 Turner, G., Film as Social Practice (London, 1993)Google Scholar.
18 Quoted and discussed in Michelakis (2001), 244.
19 Michelakis (2001), 248.
20 Published text, Harrison, T., The Gaze of the Gorgon (Newcastle upon Tyne), 1992 Google Scholar.
21 Published text, Harrison, T., Prometheus (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1998), 23 Google Scholar.
22 For a discussion of this approach in relation to Harrison’s film poems in general, see Robinson, Peter, ‘Facing up to the Unbearable: The Mythical Method in Tony Harrison’s Film/Poems’ in Hardwick, L. (ed.), Tony Hamson’s Poetry, Drama and Film: the Classical Dimension, Proceedings of the Open Colloquium 1999 (Milton Keynes, 2000), 29–43 and electronically at http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/Colq99/robinson.htm Google Scholar.
23 See further Hardwick, L., Translating Words, Translating Cultures (London, 2000), ch.8Google Scholar.
24 Harrison (1998), vi-vii.
25 Hall, E., ‘Tony Harrison’s Prometheus: a View from the Left’, Anon third series, vol. 10, no. 1 (spring/summer 2002).Google Scholar
26 Robinson (2000), 40.
27 The Penguin Classics series on ancient poetry in English, for example, contains volumes on all these poets. For an historical overview, see Smith, E., A Dictionary of Classical Reference in English Poetry (Cambridge and Totawa, NJ, 1984)Google Scholar. For a comprehensive anthology see Poole, A. and Maule, J. (edd.), Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar.
28 For current debates on Douglas’s work, see Canitz, A.E. Christa, ‘In our Awyn Language: the Nationalist Agenda of Gavin Douglas “Eneados”‘, Vergilius (1996), 25–37 Google Scholar and Tudeau-Clayton, M., ‘Richard Carew, William Shakespeare, and the Politics of Translating Virgil in Early Modern England and Scotland’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, vol. 5 no. 4 (Spring 1999), 507-27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 For further discussion of the reception of Chapman, see Underwood, Simeon, English Translators of Homer from George Chapman to Christopher Logue (London, 1998)Google Scholar. Underwood usefully points out that the terms of Swinburne’s criticism reveal more of Swinburne’s Hellenism than of Chapman’s.
30 J Dryden, Preface to translation of Ovid’s Epistles (1680).
31 See especially Burrow, C., ‘Virgils from Dante to Milton’ in Martindale, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge, 1997), 79–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Harrison, S.J., ‘Some Views of the Aeneid in the Twentieth Century’ in Harrison, S.J. (ed.)., Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid (Oxford, 1990), 1–20 Google Scholar.
32 For a summary, see Underwood (1998), 33–7.
33 Walcott, D., Omeros (London, 1990)Google Scholar.
34 For detailed discussion see Hardwick, L. (2000), ch. 6 ‘Walcott’s Philoctetes: Imaging the Post-colonial tradition’ and ‘Reception as simile: the Poetics of Reversal in Homer and Derek Walcott’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition vol. 3 (Winter 1997), 326-38Google Scholar.
35 For detailed discussion of how poets treated such paradigms, see March, Jennifer R., The Creative Poet, ICS Bulletin Supplement 49 (London, 1987)Google Scholar.
36 Published text, Walcott, D., The Odyssey: a Stage Version (London, 1993)Google Scholar.
37 Reading, P., Collected Poems 2 (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1996)Google Scholar.
38 Longley, M., Gorse Fires (London, 1991)Google Scholar.
39 Longley, M., The Ghost Orchid (London, 1995)Google Scholar.
40 For further discussion of Longley’s receptions of Homer, see Hardwick, L. ‘Contemporary Receptions of Homer’ in Fowler, R. (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook to Homer (Cambridge, forthcoming, 2003)Google Scholar.
41 Heaney, S., Electric Light (London, 2001)Google Scholar.
42 Quoted by W.B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (Dublin 1976), 76. For further discussion of hedge-schools see L. Hardwick (2000), ch. 5 ‘Translation and Cultural Politics: the Irish Dimension’ and for analysis of Heaney’s engagement with classical poetry see L. Hardwick, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Classical Ground’, forthcoming article.
43 Duffy, Carol Ann, The World’s Wife (Basingstoke and Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.
44 Rosenberg, I., The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg: Poetry, Prose, Letters, Paintings and Drawings, ed. Parsons, I. (London, 1979)Google Scholar.
45 For further discussion of the poetic traditions drawn on, see Hardwick (2000), ch. 3.
46 Owen’s poem may also have drawn on his own experiences. In World War Two a Russian platoon commander recalled, ‘When I killed a German with a knife for the first time, I saw him in my dreams for three weeks afterwards’. Personal testimony, quoted in Beevor, A., Stalingrad (London, 1998 and 1999), 288.Google Scholar
47 Logue, C., Introduction to War Music (London, 1981), vii Google Scholar.
48 For detailed discussion of Logue’s techniques, see Hardwick (2000), 56–61.
49 See further Hardwick (2000), 134–5.
50 The play was performed in 1995. Published text, Harrison, T., Plays 3: including The Labourers of Herakles (London, 1996)Google Scholar.