The collected essays in this volume focus on the presentation, representation and interpretation of ancient violence – from war to slavery, rape and murder – in the modern visual and performing arts, with special attention to videogames and dance as well as the more usual media of film, literature and theatre. Violence, fury and the dread that they provoke are factors that appear frequently in the ancient sources. The dark side of antiquity, so distant from the ideal of purity and harmony that the classical heritage until recently usually called forth, has repeatedly struck the imagination of artists, writers and scholars across ages and cultures.
A global assembly of contributors, from Europe to Brazil and from the US to New Zealand, consider historical and mythical violence in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and the 2010 TV series of the same name, in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, in the work of Lars von Trier, and in Soviet ballet and the choreography of Martha Graham and Anita Berber. Representations of Roman warfare appear in videogames such as Ryse: Son of Rome and Total War, as well as recent comics, and examples from both these media are analysed in the volume. Finally, interviews with two artists offer insight into the ways in which practitioners understand and engage with the complex reception of these themes.
List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Note on the Text 1 The Thrill of Ancient Violence: An Introduction (Irene Berti, Pädagogische Hochschule, Germany) Part I: Ancient Violence in Modern and Contemporary Painting 2 Ancient War and Modern Art: Some Remarks on Historical Painting from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Antonio Duplá, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain) 3 Violence to Valour: Visualizing Thais of Athens (Alex McAuley, Cardiff University, UK) Part II: Embodying Ancient and Modern Violence in Cinema and in Theatre 4 Screening the Face of Roman Battle: Violence Through the Eyes of Soldiers in Film (Oskar Aguado, Cantabrana, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain) 5 Performing Violence and War Trauma: Ajax on the Silver Screen (Anastasia Bakogianni, Massey University of New Zealand) 6 External and Internal Violence Within the Myth of Iphigenia: Staging Myth Today (Malgorzata Budzowska, University of Lodz, Poland) 7 Kseni, the Foreigner: A Brazilian Medea in Action (Maria Cecilia de Miranda Nogueira Coelho, UFMG, Minas Gerais, Brazil) Part III: Dancing Violence on the Ballet Stage 8 Choreographies of Violence: Spartacus from the Soviet Ballet to the Global Stage (Zoa Alonso Fernández, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain) 9 Iocaste’s Daughters in Modernity: Anita Berber and Valeska Gert (Nicole Haitzinger, University of Salzburg, Austria) 10 Dark Territories of Soul: Martha Graham’s Clytemnestra (Ainize González García, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) Part IV: Violent Antiquity in Video Games and Comics 11 Si vis ludum para bellum: Violence and War as the Predominant Language of Antiquity in Video Games (David Serrano Lozano, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) 12 Waging TOTAL WAR Playing ATTILA: A Video Game’s Take on the Migration Period (Fabian Schulz, University of Tübingen, Germany) 13 Sexy Gory Rome: Juxtapositions of Sex and Violence in Comic Book Representations of Ancient Rome (Luis Unceta Gómez, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain) 14 Archimedes and the War in Hitoshi Iwaki’s Eureka (Giuseppe Galeani, Università degli Studi di Macerata, Italy) Part V: Making Reception: Ancient Violence and Living History 15 From Ancient Violence to Modern Celebration: Complex Receptions of an Ancient Conquest Wars in Las Guerras Cántabras Festival (Jonatan Pérez Mostazo, Independent Scholar, Spain) 16 Drawing Reception (Maria Goretti Castello, University of Turin, Italy and Fabio Ruotolo, International School of Comics, Torino, Italy) 17 Re-enacting Soldiers and Dressing Roman Women: An Interview with Danielle Fiore (Carla Scilabra, University of Turin, Italy and Danielle Fiore, University of Turin, Italy) Notes Bibliography Index
Irene Berti is a Teaching Fellow at the Pädagogische Hochschule, Heidelberg, Germany. Maria G. Castello is Associate Professor in the Dipartimento di Studi Storici at the Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy. Carla Scilabra is an independent scholar, Italy.
Reviews for Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination: The Fear and the Fury
A challenge to all readers to review their own assumptions. * Greece and Rome * The volume deals with complex and current issues in an innovative way. Among its merits we ascribe the strongly interdisciplinary slant, the variety of fields of investigation and case studies, ... the rigorous methods that characterize the volume, like the rest of the series, and add a fundamental piece to the ever-expanding mosaic of studies on the subject. * Lexis (Bloomsbury Translation) * This book's topic is an urgent one: how contemporary art links violence to antiquity as a way of legitimizing the portrayal - and sometimes celebration - of physical force. -- Thomas E. Jenkins, Professor of Classical Studies, Trinity University, USA
