South Africa, Greece, Rome: Classical Confrontations

Cambridge University Press, 8/31/2017
EAN 9781107100817, ISBN10: 110710081X

Hardcover, 566 pages, 26 x 18.4 x 3.1 cm
Language: English

How have ancient Greece and Rome intersected with South African histories? This book canvasses architecture, literature, visual arts and historical memory. Some of the most telling manifestations of classical reception in South Africa have been indirect, for example neo-classical architecture or retellings of mythical stories. Far from being the mere handmaiden of colonialism (and later apartheid), classical antiquity has enabled challenges to the South African establishment, and provided a template for making sense of cross-cultural encounters. Though access to classical education has been limited, many South Africans, black and white, have used classical frames of reference and drawn inspiration from the ancient Greeks and Romans. While classical antiquity may seem antithetical to post-apartheid notions of heritage, it deserves to be seen in this light. Museums, historical sites and artworks, up to the present day, reveal juxtapositions in which classical themes are integrated into South African pasts.

1. The Azanian Muse
classicism in unexpected places Grant Parker
Part I. Conceiving Empire
2. 'Poetry in pidgin'
notes on the persistence of classicism in the architecture of Johannesburg Federico Freschi
3. Cecil John Rhodes, the classics, and imperialism John Hilton
4. The 'Mediterranean' Cape
reconstructing an ethos Peter Merrington
Part II. Conceiving the Nation
5. 'Copy nothing'
classical ideals and Afrikaner ideologies at the Voortrekker Monument Elizabeth Rankin and Rolf Michael Schneider
6. Greeks, Romans, and Volks-education in the Afrikaner Kinderensiklopedie Philip R. Bosman
Part III. Law, Virtue and Truth-Telling
7. A competing discourse on empire Jonathan Allen
8. After Cicero
legal thought from antiquity to the New Constitution Deon H. van Zyl
Part IV. Cultures of Collecting
9. Museum space and displacement
collecting classical antiquities in South Africa Samantha Masters
10. Antique casts for a colonial gallery
the Beit bequest of classical statuary to Cape Town Anna Tietze
11. Cecil Rhodes as a reader of the classics
the Groote Schuur collection David Wardle
Part V. Boundary Crossers
12. 'You are people like these Romans were!'
D. D. T. Jabavu of Fort Hare Jo-Marie Claassen
13. Benjamin Farrington and the science of the swerve John Atkinson
14. Athens and apartheid
Mary Renault and classics in South Africa Nikolai Endres
15. Antiquity's undertone
classical resonances in the poetry of Douglas Livingstone Kathleen M. Coleman
Part VI. After Apartheid
16. Bacchus at Kirstenbosch
reflections of a play director Roy Sargeant
17. The reception of the Electra myth in Yaël Farber's Molora Elke Steinmeyer
18. Classical heritage? By the way of an afterword Grant Parker.