II. Reception within Antiquity

Abstract

This chapter is in three sections. The first sets out the proposition that movements in ancient oral, written and material culture themselves involved reception and refiguration of material from inside and outside the Hellenic and Roman world. The second section looks at some aspects of these receptions and at the scholarly and critical tools which were developed in association with them and which have often set the parameters for subsequent investigation and evaluation. The third section identifies some important examples of how different aspects of reception within antiquity have contributed to the patterns of reception with which scholars and practitioners have engaged in subsequent periods. Overall, the model used is one which will be taken forward in later chapters of the book. It consists of an axis between reception as activity, as ‘doing’, ‘making’, ‘responding’ and ‘creating’ and reception as selecting, analysing and evaluating. The points of intersection are many but the more divergent areas of the model are also significant and may also contribute to dialogue between ancient and modern. Many critical terms and categories set out in the ancient world have fed into modern systems and in turn many aspects of modern practice, of reception ‘activity’, have prompted further analysis of cultural practices in the ancient world.