VII Receptions of Horace

Abstract

The study of classical reception, the influence of classical texts and culture in later times and works, has been one of the biggest growth areas in classical scholarship in the twenty-first century. There has been considerable discussion of how classical reception is to be defined: for some orientation see Hardwick 2003, Martindale and Thomas 2006, and Hardwick and Stray 2008. Most would now view it as a kind of dialogue between classical original(s) and later work(s) which use, appropriate, or modify the original(s), and emphasize the need to understand both cultural contexts as well as remembering our own situatedness. When we look at, say, Ben Jonson's reception of Horace there are three contexts involved: ourselves in our own period and culture, Jonson in his, and Horace in his, and we are in effect reading Jonson reading Horace. In a sense, all that classical scholars do is a form of reception, as they are always inevitably receiving classical texts in the particular light of their own culture and characteristics, whether or not they articulate this explicitly. One strand of classical reception is connected with translation: a translation is never a neutral rendering of a text but is always necessarily coloured by the culture and ideology of the translator. Another is connected with literary imitation or adaptation: classical works can be very effectively recast in a new cultural context. As we shall see, Horace has been richly received in both these ways, and in others.