Classical Association II

Legions of Toasters Cylon Centurions?

Other papers I attended included Tony Keen’s T Stands for Tiberius models and methodologies of classical reception in science fiction. I struggle to get excited by classical reception. I know intellectually that classics has traditionally been an upper class pursuit and that the experience of the Grand Tour laid the foundations for many of the fundamental assumptions of the discipline. Yet it’s hard to feel any passion for the jaunts of toffs when my own ancestors were running from the bailiffs, scrabbling to find a potato or doing something stereotypically Welsh. At school classics was definitely the preserve of the posh schools. Since taking ancient history at university I’ve found that it is an accessible subject and that a polo pony really isn’t necessary to study the Iliad.

Nevertheless it troubles me when people say that posh people really are terribly important after all and they’re far more interesting than the unwashed masses. I think that’s a justifiable accusation to make. Tony Keen started his talk with:

I am aware that in looking at science fiction, I am in danger of being perceived to be engaged in the study of the ‘banal and quotidian’ that Charles Martindale condemned in the Reception debate at the 2005 Classical Association Conference in Reading. …Martindale’s objection, in my view, confuses aesthetic value with cultural significance. I have no objection to people making aesthetic judgements, and make plenty of my own. But any such judgement I or others might make is unrelated to whether the piece of work judged is worthy of study in terms of its reception of Classical ideas. Put simply, one can say that Gladiator is a poor film, but it doesn’t follow from such an opinion that Gladiator is not important. If most people are getting their experience of the ancient world through the banal and quotidian, then it is the banal and quotidian that must be studied.

Alas there is a small but surprisingly resilient minority of people who cannot grasp that not everyone has lived in London. I hadn’t visited the British Museum until after my completing my BA. I haven’t visited the Tate Museums nor am I likely to for the foreseeable future. This is probably true for most people north of Watford Gap. So SF is a perfectly reasonable subject to study in classical reception. Of course with it sounding slightly wacky it has to be done well. Thanks to Tony you can judge for yourself as his talk’s up on his website. Which is how I remembered the quotation above so well. I thought both he and Amanda Potter were tackling a subject that would be easy to knock and difficult to do well. The intelligent and thoughtful discussion at the end was an indication of how well they did.

I’m not saying that the Grand Tour shouldn’t be studied. However, rejecting the study of classical reception in popular culture because it’s banal suggests you’re adopting 19th century attitudes as well as studying them.