Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage ed. by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloustos

Abstract

Reviewed by: Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage ed. by Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloustos Edmund P. Cueva Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage. Edited By Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloustos. Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception. London, UK and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Pp. xii + 296. Hardback, £95.00. ISBN: 978-1-350-12561-2. Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage is the product of a 2014 international conference held at University College London and sponsored by the Institute of Classical Studies, the Institue for Latin American Studies, the A. G. Leventis Foundation, the Gilbert Murray Trust and the [End Page 488] Hellenic Society and Classical Association. The conference aimed to shift the examination of the reception of classical drama to Latin America, which, although the subject of a handful of scholarly reception studies, continues to be comparatively unknown and a relatively neglected scholarly area. The meeting in London included presentations on works from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Martinique, Mexico and Puerto Rico. In addition to an introduction to the topic, notes, bibliography and index, Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos supply fourteen essays grouped by geographical area: the Southern Cone of South America, Brazil and the Caribbean and North America. Thirteen of these essays had been delivered at the conference. From the very start, the editors make clear the varied difficulties that scholars face in this area. For example, a vast number of these Latin American texts and their creators are mainly unknown and, indeed, even the term “Latin American” is challenging because it masks “a series of particular problems unique to the region” (1) in which these texts arose and its connection to European colonial and imperial history—the use of this term privileges Europe. Another complicating factor is the paradox that arises from the manifest increase in “Latin American” engagement with European and classical literary models in the 19th century, which is the very time when wars of independence from European powers were being fought. Moreover, in Latin America, the Greek and Roman classics were not part of the “colonial curriculum or experience” (3), as found, for example, in the former British colonies in other parts of the world. In other words, it would be wrong to consider Latin America as being in the same postcolonial mode as it would require “a new framework which would need to account for multiple and varied transmitters of the classical, which crucially include religion as well as encounters with foreign ideas”—this results in having “sub-regional and local histories matter enormously” (3). Additionally, the approaches to classical reception taken in this book differ because, in Spanish-speaking Latin America, colonial classics tend to be overwhelmingly Latin and taught and transmitted by such religious orders as the Jesuits and Franciscans. In Brazil, which the Portuguese had colonized, there is no real break in the transmittal of classical culture because the Portuguese royal court had only moved to Brazil in the 19th century, and any university education that took place among Brazilians before that transference involved studying in European universities. Lastly, regarding the Graeco-Roman classics and the Caribbean, the challenge of a unified approach is even more daunting. As the editors note, there “have been recent attempts to conceptualize the Caribbean as a single region, [End Page 489] but when it comes to classical reception, we must still rely on a fragmented view of this intensely diverse region: it matters by whom you were colonized, as classical receptions in Cuba have far more in common with other countries formerly colonized by Spain than its immediate neighbor Jamaica” (5). Due to the space limitations, I cannot review each of the fourteen essays. However, it must be said that the quality of all of the essays is quite good, but as often happens in volumes of collected essays, some essays are better than others. Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos’ “From Epic to Tragedy: The Theatre and Politics in Juan Cruz Varela’s Dido” is the first essay in Part I, the Southern Cone. Nikoloutsos explores the historical circumstances and cultural...