Five lies told about AV

1. "It's too confusing."

No it isn't. It's no more confusing than going into a restaurant, asking for steak pie, being told it's off, and choosing something else from the menu. Eating out would collapse if the British people couldn't handle this level of complexity.

2. "It's ridiculous that the person who came second could win."

The sporting analogies deployed to support this argument are rather simplistic, and take no account of qualifying rounds. What essentially this argument is saying is that it is ridiculous that Lewis Hamilton won the Chinese Grand Prix at the weekend, because Sebastian Vettel had won pole position in the Qualifying.

In any case, it is rank hypocrisy for this argument to be deployed by a man who became leader of the Conservative Party after coming second in the intial round of the leadership election.

3. "Nobody uses AV."

Many more people use AV in some form or other than those against admit, including, as noted, the Conservative Party in its leadership elections.

4. "A vote for a mainstream party gets counted only once, but one for a minority party like the BNP could be counted two or three times."

Nonsense. All individuals' votes are counted an equal number of times, until a result is achieved. If anything, the opposite is true - a vote for the Conservative Party will be counted two or three times, whilst a vote for the BNP may be counted only once, before they are eliminated from the contest.

Minority parties like the BNP in fact have a much better chance of getting in under FPTP than under AV. Under FPTP, an MP could be elected with 20% of the vote, if no-one else polled more. But if that 20% were the only people who would vote for this party under AV, then the MP would be elected on the basis of second place votes.

5. "It breaks the link between MP and consituency."

No it doesn't. If anything, it strengthens that, as an MP has to be responsive to more of their consituency than just the 30% who voted for them as first preference, and constituencies end up with MPs who are at least acceptable to more than 50% of the electorate, as opposed to being preferred by 30% and despised by 70%, as can happen under FPTP.

What it does weaken (and why I think some in the political establishment are so hostile to it) is the link between MP and party. More and more MPs would have to put their constituency's interests ahead of their party's (q.v. Boris Johnson, who regularly puts what he perceives of as Londoners' interests ahead of what the government wants him to do). I'm all for that.

Notes from the world of me

It's been quite a good month for me, what with one thing or another. First, the Doctor Who story The Ark was released on DVD. Back in November 2008, I was interviewed for one of the the special features, "All's Wells that ends Wells". A lot of other people were interviewed for it, so there isn't much of me, but I'm happy to say that I haven't been misrepresented, though I'm pretty sure my comment about Brian Aldiss was linked to my saying that his novel Non-Stop was a major influence on The Ark, rather than to Aldiss' being consulted when Doctor Who was being devised. And I'm sorry that there wasn't space for my argument that isn't as firmly in the Wells via Wyndham and Quatermass tradition as it is sometimes thought - more Wells via Asimov and Aldiss. (Though Matthew Sweet does rightly say that it takes a long time for the Quatermass influence to assert itself in Who - I'd argue that there is in the early stages of conception a deliberate distancing from Quatermass). And irritatingly, 2Entertain have misspelt my name ('Antony', not 'Anthony'), though it's only a minor complaint.

The end of February saw publication of the volume I've co-edited, The Unsilent Library: Essays on the Russell T. Davies Era of the new Doctor Who. I'm very proud of this - it's about a year later than originally planned (but only six months later than what our original plan ought, in retrospect, to have been), but there's a lot of work went in at the editing stage, and there are some good articles, in particular those by Graham Sleight and Clare Parody. One of the better Who collections to have come out in the last couple of years, though I says so as shouldn't.

Then a week ago Vector 265 came out. This is Niall Harrison's last issue as editor, and is a special on Stephen Baxter. I've contributed "Putting the Past into the Future: The Time’s Tapestry sequence". There is also an edited version of my review of Ian McDonald's The Dervish House. And I also contributed a short introduction to an interview with Robert Holdstock that is in the tribute booklet to Holdstock that was sent out to BSFA members.

Coming up, I have my talk at Eight Years In Babylon. I also have a chapter I'm writing for a volume on cinematic receptions of ancient Egypt, a chapter in a volume on Neil Gaiman, and a paper at the Cinema and Antiquity conference in July. So I'll be busy for the next few months! And someone wants to use a photo of mine as the cover of a book.

Make cakes, not war

I've been remiss in blogging the annual UCL and King's Classics Plays this year. Both were enjoyable.

UCL put on Aristophanes' Lysistrata, for the third time in twelve years. Well, it's a good play, with much to laugh at. I saw it on the first performance, and there was clearly a degree of nervousness in the cast. This was particularly apparent in the actress playing Lysistrata (admittedly, a big, tough role to play). But it clearly was just nerves, and the cast was noticeably more confident after the interval. I'm sure they got better as the run progressed. The Cinesias/Myrrhine scene was well done, always a touchstone of the quality of a production. Setting the whole thing in the Peninsular War was interesting, though the idea wasn't taken much further than as a source for costume design. And whilst I am in principle against retaining the references to Aristophanes' contemporaries that mean nothing to a modern audience, this cast did at least manage to convey the impression that such references meant something to them.

I've been quite lukewarm about recent King's productions, feeling that they often looked under-rehearsed. Last year, I was picked up on this, with a commenter arguing that I was expecting too much of the productions. Well, there's probably some truth, but I do think it's important to say when one thought things could have been better. And they can, as this year's play showed. Because it was clear in the performance I saw that King's have considerably upped their game. Georgia Crick Collins as Helen, Ben Donaldson as Menelaus and Anna Perfitt as Theonoe were particularly good, all managing to act rather than just recite. Donaldson in particular gave the audience a Menelaus who retains his nobility, and is not just an idiot, as can sometimes be the case in this play. And the idea of using the Chorus to enact scenes being recounted, tried out last year in Persians, worked really well this year. The best King's Play I've seen since Rhesus in 2005.

But this isn't the production I want to praise most in this entry. Last night I went to see a production of Lysistrata, given by students of Kidbrooke School. I confess that I hadn't gone expecting much, but it was stunningly good, and I laughed more than I have at an Aristophanes production for a few years; it's certainly the best of the three Lysistratas I've seen in the last twelve months (the other being an Actors of Dionysus production). The whole thing was done as a cross-dressing romp, with most of the female parts played by boys, and the male ones by girls. It's actually quite encouraging that a bunch of teenage boys are willing to dress up in women's clothing and camp it up in front of their mates.

The text used was Laurence Houseman's 1911 version (Houseman was the brother of A.E. Houseman, a gay man when that was very illegal, and a supporter of the Suffragette movement). That might not seem to be the best idea to get the humour of the original out, and indeed, there are few actual laughs in the text, which, unsurprisingly, eliminates a lot of the filth from Aristophanes's text. But the humour and some of the filth are put back by the production, costumes and performances of the cast, as well as a fair bit of political engagement.

What I think makes this production work is an understanding that Lysistrata is not a play about sex, or women's rights, but about war. This is underlined at the beginning, in the introduction of a bloodied figure of Peace (in place of Reconciliation), and in an end which ought to be hackneyed, but is in fact astonishing.

As far as I know, this production has not come out of Classical outreach initiatives, and it is extremely heartening that people still turn unprompted to Greek drama. I would be pleased by this production just for that reason. The bonus on the cake is how good it is. I often find myself feeling that I have become an old cynic, and am far too difficult to impress these days. And then something like this comes along, and just blows me away with what can be achieved.

It's still on this evening and tomorrow. If you have a chance, I urge you to see it.

What I am doing next month

Burns night and Martial

The 25th of January is the birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet. Since the early nineteenth century this has been celebrated by Burns suppers, at which Haggis is eaten (which is almost certainly much nicer than you imagine), whisky is drunk, and Burns' poetry is read. I am taking students through an older poet tonight, Ovid, so I shan't be partaking of haggis (though a single malt in the pub afterwards will be had). But I went to a Burns supper hosted by friends on Saturday night, and took to read the poems discussed in the following.

In 1782, James Elphinstone, described in the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen of 1856 as "a miscellaneous writer", published a poetic translation of the Roman epigrammatist and satirist Marcus Valerius Martialis, better-known in English as "Martial". Five years later, Burns published his response to The Epigrams of M. Val. Martial in Twelve Volumes. It's safe to say that he wasn't impressed.

On Elphinstone’s Translation of Martial’s Epigrams (1787)

O Thou whom Poetry abhors,
Whom Prose has turned out of doors,
Heard’st thou yon groan? – proceed no further,
’Twas laurel’d Martial calling murther.

(The last word may have more impact if you pronounce it after the fashion of STV's long-running crime drama series, Taggart.)

Not many people were impressed by Elphinstone. According to the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, the work was widely ridiculed. Fortunately, through the magic of Google Books, the work is available online, so we can find out what the fuss was about.

Elphinstone has messed around with his materials. His arrangement of Martial into twelve books doesn't match that commonly employed today, which has fifteen books plus On the Spectacles, Martial's collection of epigrams on the opening of the Colosseum. It appears as if Elphinstone has rearranged Martial's work on thematic grounds. This, of course, makes it hard to find the epigram one is looking for, as Elphinstone has only provided a one-way concordance. But it is possible to find what one is looking for with patience.

And so (partly because I'm familiar with it as it gets used for teaching), I lit on Epigram 3.51 (Elphinstone's 6.38) as a means of looking at what Elphinstone did. First, here is the Latin.

Cum faciem laudo, cum miror crura manusque,
dicere, Galla, soles "Nuda placebo magis",
et semper uitas communia balnea nobis.
Numquid, Galla, times ne tibi non placeam?

Galla is a name Martial uses a lot - she appears as an object of desire, as someone who is going through a string of intellectual husbands who turn out to be latent homosexuals and crap in bed, and as a prostitute. But the likelihood is that this is a generic name, and the various Gallas are not meant to be the same person.

And now, Elphinstone:

When, Galla, thy face, hands and legs I admire,
Thou say’st; I, when naked, more pleasing shall be.
Yet, one common bath, I full vainly require:
Dost fear that I shall not be pleasing to thee?

This is about as racy as Elphinstone gets. (Martial gets racier, but Elphinstone sanitizes him.) And, reading this aloud, I can understand why everyone objected so much to Elphinstone's translation.

Here, for something more prosaic (in the literal sense, but perhaps also taking some of the fun out of Martial), is D.R. Shackleton Bailey's 1993 Loeb translation):

When I praise your face and admire your legs and hands, Galla, you are apt to say: "You’ll like me better naked." And yet you always avoid taking a bath with me. Can it be, Galla, that you are afraid you may not like me?

And finally, here is a translation of it by me. Inspired by Roz Kaveney's recent translations of Catullus as Shakespearian sonnets (a few of which I published in the latest issue of CA News), I thought I would see if Martial could be adapted into limericks. I think it works quite well. It's a bit more vulgar than martial is in this poem, but given how vulgar he is elsewhere, I think he'd approve. (Since the etymological derivation of 'Galla' is 'a female Gaul', I have changed the addressee accordingly.)

To Frenchie

When I praise all your visible parts
You say "Nude, I’m a real work of art".
Share a bath to unwind?
That you always decline.
Are you scared that you won’t like my arse?

I have more Martialian limericks. You have been warned.

Placeholding

In lieu of proper academic content, here is a link to a review written by me that went online today:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2010/12/the_mammoth_boo.shtml

I hope to get back to proper blogging here in the New Year.

A Letter to my MP

Dear Sir John Stanley,

I am writing to you to express my concerns about the Government's plans for Higher Education. The Government wishes to shift the burden of cost from teaching grants to fees paid by students. The increased fees are likely to deter students from poorer backgrounds, and many institutions may not be able to make up the lost grant money through fees.

Every government since the Robbins report has accepted the need to fund Higher Education for the national good. The Government is now turning away from this, and leaving the universities to operate as private sector organizations. The effects of this radical change to the way universities are financed have not been properly considered, but are being rushed into.

Many arts, humanities and social science courses will be entirely dependent upon fees income. The Government's lack of support for such courses suggests that they do not consider them important. This is a serious mistake, which will leave the country lacking in many of the skills it needs, and culturally impoverished.

The Government claims that it wishes to maintain the status of the country's universities as among the best in the world, and that it wishes to widen access, and improve social mobility. Their reforms will achieve none of this. I therefore urge you to vote against the Government on Thursday.

Yours sincerely,

Antony Keen

Marches, riots, and Remembrance

I went on the NUS/UCU march yesterday. I could only appear in my lunch hour, so I missed the end where people 'rioted' across London. Well, across one street in London. Well, actually in one building in one street in London. As riots go, this is not really up there with the likes of Brixton, Notting Hill or the Bogside.

I do not, for a moment, condone the violence. But if you make people angry, and then make clear that you've no intention of listening to their grievances, then people will get violent. And students are angry. And not just selfishly - a lot of the people on yesterday's demonstration will have graduated by the time increased fees come in. But they care about education for all. They will not be the last to get angry, as the government introduces new methods of treating the unemployed as workshy. I doubt they will be the last to riot.

Tory MP's aide Simon Renwick apparently twittered that students should "Remember what tomorrow is and put it in context!" All right, I will. People fought and died in the First and Second World War for a lot of reasons, but a very prevalent one was that the world after the war should be a better one. This came up at my grandmother's funeral on Monday, how proud she and her husband were of here children going to University, and how keen they were that the children should take advantage of opportunities they never had. The Coalition government is set on a course that will reduce those opportunities. They are working on an assumption that money cut from teaching budgets is bound to be made up through fees. This assumption is naive. Debt-averse students will not apply for places. I am not convinced that the government will put enough money into the Student Loans Company to support the increased fees - after all, if all they are doing is moving money from teaching grants to the Student Loans Company, where will the short-term savings to government come from? Students will find that courses they want to do get marginalised out of existence by market forces, because that's what market forces do. Institutions will find they cannot survive, and other institutions will not be able to take up the additional burden.

So, I find that there is no contradiction in going on yesterday's march, and going to a Remembrance service today. Yesterday, I marched to defend a better world. Today I honoured those who fought for it.

excitusque hilari die

I got married on the May Day weekend. I'm not sure that this is necessarily something that I'd discuss on this academic blog for its own sake. But I thought I would reproduce one of the readings, as it is relevant to the sort of material I have here. We decided on a couple of Classical-themed readings. My wife chose an excerpt from Ursula Le Guin's rewriting of Virgil, Lavinia, about which I've written before. I chose a poem of Catullus - not the wedding epithalamium from which I quote the title of this entry (Poem 61), but Poem 5. Being the sort of person that I am, I wasn't going to be satisfied with using any translation that I could find on my bookshelves or on the 'net (the poem has been much translated and imitated, by the likes of Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh, among others).

Instead, I decided to translate it myself. But I also decided not to do a plain prose translation, but to try to render the Latin verse into English verse. This was quite a challenge. I decided any sort of rhyming structure would be beyond me, but I wanted some sort of structure, rather than just free verse, which would make my translation little different from prose. In the end, the iambic tetrameter seemed the correct metre - a pentameter, more typical in English poetry, would make the lines too long to match the content of each Latin line, and so I would not have the line-for-line translation I wanted. So each thirteen-syllable Latin line is rendered, as best I can, into eight English syllables. Technically, not every line is strictly iambic - the third line certainly opens with a trochee (I evidently remember some Latin scansion!). But a pure iambic rendition would be very difficult, and I am told that part of the effect of English poetry comes from the clash between the stresses of the metrical feet and the natural stresses of the English lines.

There remain some bits, especially towards the end, that I'm not entirely happy with (indeed, I've changed the penultimate line from what was read on the day). But I showed it to my OU colleague Paula James, who knows Catullus far better than I do, and it passed muster with her. And some guests recognised the poem from past experience of it, and at least one thanked me for rescuing it from associations with dreadful school experiences.

So here it is, as read on the day by my dear friend Alison Freebairn, who, in the words of another guest, "gilded [the poem] with a gentle Scottish burr".

Catullus, Poems 5, ad Lesbiam

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

Let’s live, my darling, and let’s love.
And let’s not give a monkey’s for
Gossip of mis’rable old men.
The sun sets but can rise again.
But when our brief light fades from view,
We must sleep through an endless night.
Kiss a thousand times, a hundred,
Another thousand, a hundred,
Then yet more thousands, more hundreds.
Then when we’ve kissed many thousands
Of times, let’s lose count, so we won’t
Know how often we’ve kissed, and no
One can harm us with that knowledge.

General Election

Tomorrow, the UK goes to the polls to elect a new government. Whichever of the main parties wins, the prospects for education, and especially in the Classics, are not good. Both parties are agreed that universities must bear their share of the cuts necessary to take the country out of a recession which was not of the universities' making (nor of the making of most of the sectors of the country that seem to be bearing the brunt of the pain). I did catch Gordon Brown saying how he was dedicated to ensuring that everyone's potential and ambitions in education be fulfilled, but it's pretty clear from the statements of Labour education minister after education minister that if your potential and ambitions lie in the arts or humanities, that doesn't really apply. Nor are the Conservatives likely to be any better, as that sort of narrow-minded utilitarianism is part of Margaret Thatcher's legacy, and too many Conservatives still revere that. I might feel differently were Boris Johnson still Shadow spokesman for Higher Education - for all his buffoonery, he believes in education for its own sake, and the value of the humanities and the necessity for them to be supported. But he isn't.

On a wider scale, I don't really want either of these parties to win. Labour have sunk into the sort of excessive authoritarianism that has ruined many a socialist revolution, whilst the Conservatives remain, under the skin of 'caring Conservatism', dedicated to the self-interest of the rich and powerful. A Labour government will be slightly better than a Tory one, but it is a bit like havoing to decide whether you'd rather have Nero or Caligula as emperor.

The only encouraging thought is that we might be heading towards a hung parliament, and that the Liberal Democrat vote might be sufficient to make the argument for electoral reform unassailable. There is much talk of the danger of a hung parliament, and how it will prevent 'strong government'. Good. Strong government brought us the Poll Tax and the Iraq War. A hung parliament will get us closer to consensus government, rather than the 'elective dictatorship' (Lord Hailsham's phrase, I believe) we have at present. 'Strong government' really only means that a minority of the population can impose its will upon an unwilling majority. If you're wondering why so many people feel disenfranchised, that's why.

In the constituency I live in, only the Liberal Democrat candidate has a hope of displacing the incumbent Tory (who actually is quite a decent bloke). In a proper proportional system, I would probably vote Green (as I do in the Euro elections). As it is, I will vote LibDem, in the hope that this will initiate a change that will allow me to vote Green next time. And I encourage you to do so too.

Classics at Leeds under threat

The UK government recently imposed cuts on the overall grants given out to universities, making education shoulder its part of the UK government's need to cut costs. In a time of such cuts, arts and humanities subjects are vulnerable, as short-sighted utilitarians (wrongly) see them as economically unproductive. In that context, Classics is particularly vulnerable, as it is seen as elitist, old-fashioned, irrelevant and boring (all of which are wholly untrue).

We're already seeing the effects of the recession on Classics, even before this latest round of cuts was announced. The Open University has cut its intermediate Greek course, the University of Glasgow advertised for a post in Classics and then cancelled the search, and proposals were made at King's College London that included the loss of the Chair in Palaeography and two posts in Classical Art/Archaeology.

But the biggest threat so far is at Leeds, where one of the proposals being considered is to abolish the department altogether. I am absolutely flabbergasted that a long-standing institution such as Leeds could consider such a closure. On a personal note, when I was a postgraduate in Manchester, I used to visit Leeds regularly for seminars. I found the staff there to be amongst the most welcoming of departments I've ever encountered; I still enjoy catching up with them at conferences.

Members of staff at Leeds have set up a blog that explains the current situation, and there's a petition. If you care at all about Classics in the UK, and tertiary education in general, I urge you to sign it.

An open letter to Ed Balls

Rt Hon Ed Balls MP
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
Sanctuary Buildings
Great Smith Street
London
sw1p 3bt

Dear Mr Balls

I am writing concerning your comments on BBC Radio concerning the teaching of Latin. Unfortunately I did not hear these when broadcast, and am only able to judge them as reported in the media. But I gather that you stated that few businesses are asking for Latin, and that you have never been shown an inspiring Latin class, whereas you have been shown inspiring classes in dance, technology or sport.

I am not surprised that businesses are not asking for Latin, but I doubt many are asking for sport or dance either. In any case, our educational needs should not be geared solely to the needs of business. To do so would reduce our educational establishment to business schools and technology colleges, with only English and foreign languages surviving from the humanities (and even then clearly only for commercial use, and not for reading Voltaire or Tolstoy in the original). Of course we need business schools and technology colleges, but a nation that had nothing else would be intellectually and culturally impoverished.

It does not surprise me that you have never been shown an inspirational Latin lesson. But it is illogical to assume that, because you have not seen any, they do not exist. There is no subject so inherently dull that it cannot be presented to a class in an inspiring fashion by an enthusiastic and motivated teacher. Many, if not most, students able to study Latin will recognise that inspirational Latin lessons certainly exist.

I would suggest two reasons why you have not been shown any. First, the vast majority of state schools, due a number of factors, of which lack of government support is one of the more important, have dropped Latin from the syllabus. So they are not in a positio0n to show you an inspiring Latin lesson, even if they wanted to.

The second reason is that when a government minister comes to visit, a school wants to make a good impression, and so will gear what they present around what they think will contribute to that. For at least twenty years, education ministers from both parties have given the impression, explicitly or implicitly, that they do not look with favour upon Latin as a subject. Hence the school will show the minister a lesson in a subject (such as dance, technology or sport) that the minister does look upon with favour. In other words, you are not shown inspirational Latin lessons because you and most of your predecessors have given the impression that you do not want to be shown inspirational Latin lessons.

So, Mr Balls, I offer you a challenge. Next time you are in a school where Latin is taught, ask to see a Latin lesson. I think you may be surprised.

KCL and UCL Greek Plays 2010

Aeschylus, Persians
2010 King’s Greek Play, Greenwood Theatre
Performance seen: 11 February 2010

It is, as the programme notes, quite surprising that the King's Greek Play has never tackled Aeschylus' Persians before. It's a regularly studied text, because of its uniqueness as the only surviving tragedy based on historical events (indeed, events within the lifetime of the audience, featuring onstage depiction of at least one person who was still alive when the play premiered in 472 BCE). So this year, King's took on the challenge of that work.

As is often the case with King's productions, it was okay, though nothing that enormously impressed me. One potential problem with Persians is that it can end up looking very static, and in fairness, this was well-dealt with. The Chorus was used to add movement, and to underline the dialogue through their actions. There are some nods towards tradition, notably in the half-masks worn by the cast.

Other aspects were less successful. Breaking the Messenger down into two roles was innovative, but I thought they were rather aggressive towards Atossa, who is, after all, supposed to be their Queen. And having Xerxes come on stage dressed a bloodied armed soldier misses Aeschylus' point, which is made pretty explicitly in the text: Xerxes has run away from the fight before actually seeing combat, has torn his own rich oriental dress, as a woman would do, and has nothing manly about him at all.

The best performer was Petros Boutros-Vallinatos as Darius, who confidently delivered his dialogue. Charlotte Maskell as Atossa, the Persian Queen, was rather more muted, though hers is the largest part, and therefore the hardest to learn in Greek.

As with last year's Lysistrata one felt that a little more rehearsal was needed. Atossa forgot some of her lines, the Chorus were not always in unison, and the surtitles were often badly out of sync with what was actually being said. But, as ever, one must make allowances for student productions - these are not professionals, and delivering a play in a language that is not your own is difficult.

Aeschylus' Oresteia Parts II and III: Choephori and Eumenides
2010 UCL Greek and Latin Classical Play, UCL Bloomsbury Theatre
Performance seen: 12 February 2010

I would extend the same allowances to the UCL Classical Play, if they ever showed any sign of needing them. Not every UCL production is first-rate - Acharnians in 2007 was a bit weak - but it's been a long time since there was a terrible production, and more often than not, the UCL productions get it right. Of course, they do have some advantages. The need to deliver the text in Greek restricts the pool of performers from which King's can draw - UCL, in contrast, can throw a wider net, which brings in people with considerable experience of the amateur, and in some cases professional, stage. And the benefits show. (Tonight I'm off to see a performance by King's students in English, which may be a fairer comparison.)

Following on from the successful Agamemnon of 2008, in 2010 UCL decided to stage the remaining two plays from the Oresteia trilogy. The burden was eased by giving the two plays to different directors.* This ambitious scheme pays off.

Despite featuring the killing of Clytemnestra, Choephori can easily get slightly lost as the middle play, between Agamemnon and Eumenides. This production brings it into focus. Where Lisa Gosbee's Agamemnon had used masks, here she takes a more naturalistic approach (though still not entirely naturalistic). Highlights of this were the opening entrance of the Chorus, to the sound of a single clear, beautiful voice, and a strong Electra. (Though unfortunately there were a couple of times when members of the Chorus forgot their lines.)

Eumenides was done very differently, in a far more stylized approach. The ghost of Clytemnestra is projected on a screen. The Furies are whiteface goths in tutus. But it works, and doesn't jar with the approach in Choephori. I might have hoped for a more menacing Athena when she speaks to the Furies (underneath Athena's consoling words, I always feel, is an implicit message that in any fight, Athena will not be the loser), but that's a personal bee in my bonnet.

Overall then, two different, complementary and both well-done plays from UCL. I look forward to next year's performance.

* Unfortunately, I have mislaid my programme, so can give no names. I will rectify this as soon as I can.

K.J. Dover, RIP

News reaches me of the death of Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the great Hellenists of the latter part of the twentieth century. Coincidentally, I was reading one of his books, Aristophanic Comedy, a couple of days ago, as part of my own work on Aristophanes' Frogs (yes, it's a link to Wikipedia), and wondering if he was still alive. I only met him once, very briefly, and he was quite old then.

Dover is, unfortunately, perhaps best known for some slightly silly remarks he wrote in his autobiography, Marginal Comment, about driving his Oxford colleague Trevor Aston to suicide, comments that got blown further out of proportion by the media. Within the Classics community, it is his writings that will be remembered. Greek Homosexuality was a - erm - seminal work, that set the terms of the debate on the subject, projecting a view in which male-male sexual relations were power relations between older and younger men, and not ones of mutual desire. In recent years people have been deconstructing his model of same-sex relations in the Greek world, notably James Davidson in The Greeks and Greek Love. But Dover cannot be discarded.

I've probably in recent years made most use of his work on Aristophanes - the aforementioned Aristophanic Comedy, commentaries on Frogs and Clouds, and the section on Clouds from a companion to the Penguin translation of Acharnians, Lysistrata and Clouds (the writing on Clouds, okay, I haven't used, but may well in the future). I don't always agree with Dover - like many Aristophanic scholars, I sometimes feel he gives more attention to strict philological interpretations of the text, and not enough to what actually works as comic theatre (this is why one of my academic heroes is Gilbert Murray, who knew not just how to go through a text with a fine-toothed comb, but also how to write for the stage, and allowed the latter practice to inform the former). But, again, his contributions remain of major significance. With the death earlier this year of Douglas MacDowell, another scholar whose work I respected but did not always agree with (though I think I have amended some of my opinions since I wrote that review), it's been a bad few months for Aristophanic scholarship.

Dover also made major contributions to scholarship on Thucydides. He wrote school/undergraduate commentaries on Books VI and VII, and, with Anthony Andrewes (not the Brideshead Revisited actor, who doesn't spell his name like that), completed Gomme's classic historical commentary on Thucydides. It was in these works that I first encountered Dover, as a young schoolboy setting out on what would turn out to be an erratic career in the Classics. (Inevitably, the wags at school referred to him as 'Ben' Dover. I suspect this happened in many schools.)

It was also about this time that I saw Dover on television, as part of a BBC series on the Greeks. Dover was sat talking to the documentary maker, Christopher Burstall, in a small boat off the Piraeus. I never quite understood the reason for this seemingly unnecessarily dangerous activity, but a scholar off this importance is allowed his eccentricities. And, though it's sad that he's died, at 89 he had a good and fulfilled life.

How to do your paper ...

My friend Liz Gloyn from Rutgers has written a piece on presenting a paper at a conference. It's well worth reading, even if you're not a graduate student (the intended audience). I particularly like the emphasis on the conference paper as a performance. This is something that gets forgotten about by many, but something I try to remember; these days I think of the papers I give as first and foremost entertainments.

Orpheus Down Under

So much for my resolution to post to this more regularly ...

Jacques Offenbach's operetta Orphée aux enfers, the source of the most famous music for the Can-Can, has always lent itself to adaptation. I remember seeing some sequences from the 1977 television Orpheus in the Underground, though I don't think I've ever seen it all the way through.

In Unexpected Opera's version, Orpheus Down Under, the action for the second half is relocated to Australia (as the new title rather implies). This had its premiere last night in the Tunbridge Wells Opera House. This building has passed through being a cinema and a bingo hall, and is now, most of the time, a pub. But the interior has been preserved, and it is still capable of putting on shows.

The production itself is rather good. It takes a bit to get going, and the first half is only patchily amusing (though there is a good joke about Venus' husband training for the Paralympics). It's not helped by the fact that the first Act is a bit on the overlong side (which is Offenbach's fault).

But the second half makes up for any problems with the first - funny all the way through, and well-performed. Go and see it - it's on in various venues across the south-east of England until June.

As for the portrayal of the gods and classical mythology - sometimes, there doesn't have to be a deep significance to the way in which a reception is presented. Sometimes it's just fun, and silly, and done for its own sake. And, you know, that's all right.

Some CFPs, etc.

It's my intention to be more active on this blog this year. But at the moment, I'm a bit short of content. So in the meantime, here are some notices.

Science Fiction Foundation: SF Criticism Masterclass for 2010

Class Leaders:
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay
Roz Kaveney
Justina Robson

The Science Fiction Foundation (SFF) will be holding the fourth annual Masterclass in sf criticism in 2010.

Dates: 11th June to 13th June 2010

Location: Middlesex University, London (the Hendon Campus, nearest underground, Hendon).

Delegate costs will be £180 per person, excluding accommodation.
Accommodation: students are asked to find their own accommodation, but help is available from the administrator (farah.sf@gmail.com)

Applicants should write to Farah Mendlesohn at farah.sf@gmail.com. Applicants will be asked to provide a CV and writing sample; these will be assessed by an Applications Committee consisting of Farah Mendlesohn, Paul Kincaid, Adam Roberts.

Completed applications must be received by 28th February 2010.


Democratic Inflections: Modern Performance of Ancient Drama

The Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance announces a call for papers for APA 2011 (San Antonio) exploring the relationship between democratic ideology and classical tradition in modern performance.

We invite papers that would explore the question of a 'Democratic Turn' in modern reception of classical drama. The word democratic is highly contested, but in our conception it seeks to draw attention the ways in which classical texts have been appropriated by diverse cultural groups and sections of society, both those in dominant positions but more particularly those that define themselves as disenfranchised.

The panel aims to engage in the international debate on the notion of a 'Democratic Turn' in classical reception, initiated by The Reception of Classical Texts Research Project at the Open University (UK). Papers may pertain to all aspects of the history of performance of ancient drama, as well as to performances of modern works drawing upon the classical tradition (e.g., Gide, Sartre, O’Neill), but should make clear how democratic discourse is central to their analysis. The element of performance heightens the challenge to the use of drama for political ends because in performance a director must decide to how to represent issues and acts that can be deliberately left ambiguous in the interpretation of texts (e.g. rape). Therefore, we especially welcome papers that explore how modern performances deal with the social inequalities inscribed in classical plays; we are interested in the question of how modern directors represent ancient phenomena that cannot be reconciled with modern democratic ideologies (such as slavery).

Papers could offer case studies of politically- or socially-engaged performances of classical drama (e.g. the Lysistrata project), analyze the implications of the transmission of classical drama (including translation and the place of classics in school and university curricula), or consider whether staging ancient plays can still raise those questions essential to modern democracies.

For the 2011 meeting, abstracts must be submitted electronically by February 1, 2010 to Nancy S. Rabinowitz (nrabinow@hamilton.edu) or Dorota Dutsch (ddutsch@classics.ucsb.edu).

Presentations will normally be limited to 20 minutes. Please follow the guidelines for abstracts in the Program Guide (one page in 11-point type; 1.25 to 1.5 line spacing; top and right margins 0.8", bottom 1", left 1.2"; title in upper right-hand corner in 12-point, Times New Roman font). Your name should not be on the abstract, which should be an attachment in Word. Also indicate whether you expect to need audio-visual equipment. Acceptance for the program requires that one be a paid-up member of the APA. Anonymous referees for the Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance will review the abstracts.


Call for Papers: 2011 APA Outreach panel on classical reception and musical texts

The Children of Orpheus: How Composers Receive Ancient Texts

The musical qualities of classical poetry, from the epic and lyric of Homer and Sappho to the hymns of Venantius Fortunatus, and the affective power of music described by ancient theorists, have inspired adaptations and innovations since the Renaissance, In Florence, Caccini and Peri invented operas with the poetry of Rinuccini on the subject of Orpheus. Monteverdi wrote madrigals on sonnets adapted from Ovidian elegy, and Henry Purcell composed incidental music for Dryden's Amphitryon.

Art songs such as Brahms' Sapphische Ode and Schubert's Lied des Orpheus set texts inspired by ancient literature and mythology, Orff's cantatas Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Aphrodite set the texts of Catullus and Sappho, and Xenakis' Oresteia employs Aeschylus' Greek. Stephen Sondheim composed the scores for adaptations of Aristophanes and Plautus. In popular music, Led Zeppelin's "Achilles' Last Stand" and Bob Dylan's "Temporary Like Achilles" reference the heroes of epic.

The American Philological Association's Outreach Panel for the 2011 Annual Meeting in San Antonio invites papers that discuss texts set to music from 1400 to the presnt that are based on, or influenced by, ancient Greek or Latin literature, and analyze how their creators engaged with these texts through direct setting, adaptation, translation, or alteration. Subjects might include, but are not limited to, song-cycles, operas, oratorios, cantatas, hymns, film scores, or popular music.

This panel, organized by Professor Robert Ketterer of the University of Iowa and Professor Andres Simpson of the Catholic University of America, particularly encourages papers that discuss the structure or style of musical scores and texts in relation to their ancient sources, with the social, historical, or political conditions surrounding the creation of these works as secondary considerations.

Papers might productively ask such questions as:

To what extent--and with what significance--has the adaptation of the ancient work been altered to meet the requirements of its contemporary audience?

How do contemporary motivations--artistic, political, or otherwise--influence the musical works' structure and content as they interpret the ancient work?

Has the translation of a classical text into modern language and music impacted our interpretation of the ancient source?

Papers are to be no more than 20 minutes in length; presentations with strong aural and visual components are encouraged.

Anonymous abstracts of 500 words or less, should be submitted, by no later than January 26, 2010 to Judith P.Hallett, jeph@umd.edu. Please do not indicate your name on the abstract itself.

NOTE: the panel on Phi Beta Kappa and Classics originally announced as the 2011 APA Outreach panel will be taking place later in 2011, at another academic venue. If you are interested in taking part, please contact Professor Hallett at jeph@umd.edu before February 1, 2010.

Robert Holdstock, 1948-2009

After a day visiting various relatives, I came home to the news that Rob Holdstock had died.

I didn't really know Rob, having only met him a couple of times. And I haven't read all his novels - I've read neither Mythago Wood or Lavondyss, though the latter has sat on my shelves for a long time.

But Rob was my first guest when I officially took over as London Meetings Officer of the British Science Fiction Association. He was an excellent guest, interviewed by Paul Kincaid. We had a packed room, and everyone enjoyed it.

In preparation for this meeting, I had read Rob's then most recent series, The Merlin Codex. In this series, he mixes up two distinct legendary stories, those of Jason and Merlin. This brings a brilliant new twist to the often overly familiar Arthurian mythos, though Rob told me that this wasn't why he wrote the series - his original intention was to explore Jason and Medea, and Merlin was added later.

One should also mention Rob's non-fiction writing and his fan activity. Back in the 1970s he was a regular fixture at sf conventions. And one of my prize finds in my local bookshop was a copy of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, for the princely sum of 50p. Rob was consulting editor, which essentially meant he edited it. Overshadowed nowadays by the more famous Nicholls/Clute Encyclopedia, it's worth getting hold of, if you can. There's some excellent contributors, including Brian Stableford, Chris Priest, Harry Harrison and Malcolm Edwards.

I should have got Rob to sign it.

Nero's rotating room

I'm usually pretty cynical about the excessive PR associated with some archaeological finds, that sometimes bends over backwards to make a link between a discovery and some known historical figure. I am not convinced that a young girl's body is that of Cleopatra's sister, because the arguments that it is are thin, and the evidence that it can't be rather compelling. I don't buy the identification of a portrait bust as Julius Caesar merely on the grounds that it looks a bit like other ones we have (though sufficiently unlike that a reason for this unlikeness has to be found).

So my first reaction when I heard that the rotating dining room of Nero's Golden House (Domus Aurea), as described by Suetonius (Life of Nero 31.2), had been found, was that of Mary Beard, to wonder if everyone had got carried away again.

But, on studying more closely the Associated Press report (here reposted on CLASSICS-L), and some good photographs, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what the archaeologists say it is.

For a start, the location suggests that it's part of Nero's Domus Aurea. The bit of this that tourists visit (when it's safe to be opened, which has been rare in recent years) is on the Oppian Hill, north-east of the Colosseum, the amphitheatre that Vespasian built on the site of the lake that formed the centrepiece of Nero's park.* But it's clear that this is just one part of the complex, a self-standing pavilion above the lake. The Golden House as a whole was probably many inter-linked buildings, and from Suetonius' account ranged from the Palatine Hill, where Domitian later built his palace, which still survives, across to the Esquiline Hill, of which the Oppian is the southern cusp. This new discovery comes from the eastern slopes of the Palatine. It seems pretty likely that a buried high-status building in that area would be part of the Domus Aurea.

Then there's what has actually be found. The chief feature of the room excavated is an enormous round brick-faced pillar, from the top of which buttresses emerge like spokes of a wheel. The pillar has a row of holes, that look like sockets for wooden beams. If that's the case, then this could be an enormous capstan, similar, if much larger, to what the Museum of London has driving their reconstruction of a Roman water wheel. [But see Edit below.]

It's very odd. Why would one need a room with a pillar in like this? To be honest, I find it hard to imagine what this could be for, if not for supporting a rotating platform above. Unfortunately, the photos don't show whether the pillar is bonded in to the floor, but I presume not.

It's certainly a better candidate for Nero's dining room than that previously advanced, the Octagonal Room in the Oppian pavilion. Until now, that's been as good a suggestion as any. But the trouble is, nothing in that room rotates, and one has to assume that there was a rotating false ceiling in the room. That there was a false ceiling seems probable, but that it rotated is not supported in the archaeology. And Suetonius says that the whole of the main dining room rotated, not just the ceiling.

cenationes laqueatae tabulis eburneis versatilibus, ut flores, fistulatis, ut unguenta desuper spargerentur; praecipua cenationum rotunda, quae perpetuo diebus ac noctibus vice mundi circumageretur

The dining rooms had pannelled ceilings, with versatile ivory slats, so that flowers could be showered from above, and pipes, so that the same could be done with perfume. The principal dining room was round, so that it might revolve perpetually, day and night, like the world.

Suetonius seems to be contrasting the ceilings of the other dining rooms with the whole of the main dining room. This would suggest that identifying the Octagonal Room with the main dining room is wrong, as the whole room can't possibly rotate (though it may well have had the ceiling devices Suetonius says the other dining rooms had). This hasn't stopped generations of scholars writing notes correcting Suetonius, and saying that it was only the ceiling that rotated (Robert Graves in his Penguin translation even adds the word 'roof' into Suetonius' text). But, though it is true that, by the time Suetonius wrote, all of the Golden House had been demolished or buried, he was much nearer the events, and in this case I think scholarship is wrong and the ancient source right.

So yes, I believe this one. And it's a fantastic piece of technology.

A final anecdote: a few years back, I was lucky enough to get in the Domus Aurea in the brief period between its reopening and its closing again. My partner and I were looking away from the remains of the building, out towards what once would have been the view down to the lake, but is now the under-vault of the Baths of Trajan. My partner asked me where the earth had come from that now filled Trajan's substructures. To my surprise, I realized that I was able to answer her. For the Baths of Trajan were built at the same time as the Forum of Trajan was being built a few hundred yards away. And for the latter, a hill was removed, the height of which is indicated by the height of Trajan's column. That earth had to go somewhere, and I think a lot of it must have ended up on top of the Oppian pavilion.

* As an aside, I've always been partial to the suggestion, made I think by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, that the part of Nero's Golden House was like the Royal Parks of London; owned by the monarch, but an area to which public access was granted by the grace of that monarch, rather than shut off from all public use.

Edit: I should say that I thinking aloud here. And also I am not an engineer. So I may not 100% know what I'm talking about. And so the notion of the giant capstan probably doesn't work. Moreover, it's not what the archaeologists are saying, as quoted in a comment on Mary Beard's blog. They are suggesting the the pillar supported a wooden rotating floor, and are waiting to look inside the pillar (presumably hoping to find that it acted as a sheath for the mechanism). I still think they've found what they say they've found.

Lavinia

I've just this week finished and sent off to Vector, the British Science Fiction Association's critical journal, a review of Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin. Almost immediately, a large online discussion of the novel, conducted by Niall Harrison, Adam Roberts, Abigail Nussbaum, Nic Clarke and Jo Coleman, has appeared, in four parts spread across four separate blogs:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

There are a couple of other links that will be relevant: Adam Roberts' original review on Strange Horizons, and another interesting discussion of the book by Andries du Toit.

Rather than respond on the individual blogs, I've chosen to write my response up here. I'm not going to print my review here, though inevitably my response to the discussion will end up covering some of the same ground. (But I've left aside, largely, my comments about Lavinia being a feminist novel, in giving a voice to a character pretty much treated in Virgil - if not so much in Livy - as a piece of meat.)

The problem with coming late to a book that has garnered almost universal praise is that one's expectations are set very high, so high, in fact, that usually the actuality cannot possibly meet them. As with Geoff Ryman's Air I was prepared for a transformative book, and as with Air, I was slightly disappointed when it turned out merely to be very good. (And that then leaves me wondering if the problem isn't simply that I'm too dumb to pick up on why the novel is so great ...)

Lavinia has moments of brilliance. I love the function of the shield (something taken directly out of Virgil), and the way different people see different things in this, frankly impossible, object. I like the way Le Guin creates a Bronze Age Latium that has yet to fully anthropomorphize its gods, and how that interacts with the arrival of a Trojan culture that does (whether this actually represents how people in the Bronze Age thought about their gods is, I suspect, unknowable). But I agree with Abigail Nussbaum that the last third of the book isn't anything like as effective as the earlier bit. The earlier sections have a complex structure, akin to what Adam identifies as one of the strengths of the Aeneid. But then it becomes, as Abigail says, rather a straight narrative: 'this happened, then this happened ...'

There's some discussion about whether one needs to have read the Aeneid to appreciate Lavinia, and what is the effect if you haven't. Certainly, it's inescapable that this is a novel in dialogue with the Aeneid (or as Cheryl Morgan puts it, it's 'Virgil fanfic'), just as much as (so John Clute tells us) Greg Bear's City at the End of Time is in dialogue with William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land, or Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships is with Wells' The Time Machine. So yes, if one is not familiar with the Aeneid, part of the conversation will be missed. What interests me is that, where the source text lies within the sf canon, this is seen as less problematic than when the book lies outside science fiction. (Also, everybody should read the Aeneid anyway.) And one of the things I like about Lavinia is that Le Guin chooses to have that dialogue with the second part of the epic, rather than the better-known first half (escape from Troy, Dido, etc.).

Abigail comments that she finds the existential moments a bit heavy-handed. For me, those moments are one of the points of the novel. At its best, when Lavinia meets the spirit of Virgil in some timeless zone, this work seems to me to be a musing on the nature of fiction. Once our lives are written about, are they any longer our own? What is the nature of the relationship between the 'real person' and the person that exists in stories? Le Guin raises these questions, but doesn't answer them. Can anyone? It's this postmodernist metafiction that intrigues me most about the book. This doesn't get much coverage in the discussion, with Niall even suggesting that he thought Virgil could be removed. I think Virgil is what the novel is about (and du Toit seems to follow this line of thinking as well).

Is Lavinia a fantasy novel? Perhaps another question that can't be answered. What I note, however, is that it does not read like a typical heroic fantasy novel, translated into a Graeco-Roman (semi-)mythological context. There have been quite a few of these recently, such as David Gemmell's Troy trilogy, or Jo Graham's Black Ships. These are both, for the most part, historical novels, yet written in the idiom familiar from the quasi-mediaeval fantasy. This is not necessarily to knock these books - Gemmell's is quite an interesting treatment, Graham's less so. But Lavinia doesn't follow that road - in this it is perhaps more like Gene Wolfe's Soldier series, which works in a fantasy mode that owes little to the traditions of north-west Europe.

Cheryl makes an interesting comment about the gender roles portrayed, and the apparent hostility to gay men. There are several points to be made here: (1) To think of things in terms of 'gay men' is probably to impose twenty-first century categories on Bronze Age sexual behaviour; (2) a writer should never be held to the opinions of their characters; (3) Lavinia comes from a time when gender roles were different from how they are now, and in some ways quite rigid, and one shouldn't expect Le Guin to write her with more modern attitudes. That said, Le Guin's portrayal of Ascanius as a man who behaves in an unseemly fashion with his male lover, and grieves excessively after his death, whilst reflecting Roman attitudes to this sort of behaviour, does seem oddly hostile, and doesn't seem to be based on anything drawn from ancient sources (though I'm prepared to be proved wrong on this). I think Le Guin is turning on its head Roman legend that portrayed Lavinia as, in her later years, an evil crone that worked against her stepson, and is seeking a motivation for Ascanius.

All this discussion has made me think again about this novel, and want to reread it. Sadly, there are other things I must do.

A Hadrian's Wall shout-out

Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie, presenters of my favourite music radio programme, are walking Hadrian's Wall this week. You can go here to find their Twitter photos, and links to the programmes they've broadcast so far (going back to Thursday, the day before they set off).

It's a shame that they did a lot of the really interesting bits of the Wall over the weekend, when they don't broadcast - by Sunday night they'd already got to Twice Brewed. But this is a product of them wanting to finish in Newcastle for their Thursday night show. They're also only giving themselves a week. I took slightly over two when I did it in 2006, but I wanted to give myself more time to see stuff around the Wall. What they are doing, which I also did when I went, is go west to east. This supposedly means the wind is at your back, but all the guidebooks are written as if you're going east to west, so it can get a bit confusing at time.

For my 50th birthday I have a plan to walk the whole of the frontier, not just Hadrian's Wall, starting in South Shields and ending in Ravenglass. That should be fun.

Publications news from me

One of the side-effects of my prolonged hiatus from this blog is that I've been quite bad about blowing my own trumpet. So, I didn't mention when my review of Greg Bear's City at the End of Time appeared. Nor did I blog the publication of a revision of my piece on Claudius and Nero and the imperial succession.

In fact, 2009 has seemed more a year of abandoning, or at least postponing, projects rather than bringing them to fruition. So it's nice to be reminded that I have actually managed to finish some things this year. One such popped through the letterbox last week. The new issue of the British Science Fiction Association's critical journal, Vector, contains two pieces that at least partly came from me. One is a piece on the way fantasy author Hal Duncan intertwines Greek tragedy into his novels Vellum and Ink. I'm quite pleased with this piece, as is Niall Harrison, the editor, though it's probably not theoretical enough for some. There's also an interview with Duncan conducted by me. When I was transcribing this (which I will never do again - far too time-consuming), I thought that I had asked sensible questions, which rather decided me to choose myself to interview Ian McDonald when he comes to the BSFA London meeting in October.

This issue of Vector has other stuff, of course. Most interesting for the readers of this blog, perhaps, is a piece by Paul Kincaid on the novels of Robert Holdstock, including Holdstock's recent Merlin Codex series, in which Jason and Medea are central characters.

Now, off to finish a few more projects.

Blogging against racism

This week is International Blog Against Racism Week. I'd first like to point to a couple of sensible and interesting posts that I've seen. Mary Robinette Kowal makes some salient points about why we should all care. The History News Network has a post about how the Obama administration is overlooking issues of race, and pointing out that Obama's election does not mean, as some commentators said at the time, that Martin Luther King's dream has been fulfilled, and racism is a thing of the past (which I never believed in the first place). And there's an excellent post by Ika Willis at Now and Rome. I don't want to address Ika's post directly - you should go and read it instead - but it inspired the following.

In the early part of this year, there was a great debate in the science fiction fan/online community, which has gained the name of RaceFail 09. I didn't get involved, as I was busy with other things, and by the time I became aware of it, there was a great deal of discussion, and I felt unable to comment fairly. I'm not really going to engage with the core argument here either (there's a starting point with links here if you want to find out more). What I want to write about, at the risk of starting up an emotive debate that has gone quiet, is what I learnt from RaceFail, how I have changed my way of thinking as a result.

I was brought up in a liberal tradition, one of the core values of which is that one has to be fair to everyone. If one sees someone being attacked unfairly, especially if it is a friend, one wants to defend them - indeed, one can sometimes feel obliged to do so. What I now understand better is how that approach can look to someone from an oppressed minority (and whilst this post is about racism, much of what I say applies equally in terms of sexism). If I leap in to defend a white friend from what I perceive to be an attack made by a person of colour, untempered by any awareness of my own white (and male) privilege, it looks like the whites closing ranks. Suggesting that a polite and respectful tone be employed looks like white folks finding ways of shutting up uppity POCs. [Edit, 03/08/09: Ika Willis points out below that this looks like white folks finding ways of shutting up uppity POCs because it is white folks finding ways of shutting up uppity POCs.]

It's that lack of awareness of privilege which is the problem. A lot of the problem of RaceFail (and I may be wrong here, and if so, I apologize) seemed to be people getting very upset about having their behaviour described as racist. The response (and I may be caricaturing here, so again I apologize) was often "I am not and never have been a racist, and how dare you call me one!" What has happened here, I think, is the polarization of the term "racist", such that it is assumed to refer only to hooded KKK types with burning crosses and lynchings. Most white people reject that position, and are proud of dealing with people in a wholly colourblind fashion. Before RaceFail, this a view I'd have signed up to myself.

Which is all well and to the good, at least on the surface. But dig a little deeper, and I think that it's a bit naive and self-deluding. Sure, we may not go along with the British National Party's wearisome nonsense about English whites being discriminated against in their own country. But that doesn't mean that we're not capable of unthinking racism. Indeed, given that we whites (especially educated elite whites) are brought up in an implicitly racist society, whose wealth is at least partially based on profits made out of the eighteenth-century slave trade, it would be a miracle if any one of us were wholly devoid of some racist attitudes.

Here are three examples. When watching the 2006 television adaptation of Ruby in the Smoke, I remember being surprised that one role, apparently of a Victorian gentleman, was played by a black actor. My natural assumption was that Victorian gentlemen were white. I don't think that's based on exhaustive research into the period, but on the way the period has been portrayed in the culture to which I've been exposed. It is therefore a racist assumption.

Second example - my first reaction on hearing the rumour that Patterson Joseph would be the next Doctor was to think that there was something not right about that. Fortunately, I rapidly changed my mind, and realized that there was no good (i.e. non-racist) reason to object to this casting, and indeed that it was an idea whose time had more than come (and I now think it's a shame that this isn't what actually happened). But my first response was a racist one.

Finally, by coincidence, yesterday I read the section of Farah Mendlesohn & Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy, that deals with Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea novels, where the point is made that the central character, Ged, is a person of colour, but that readers hardly ever notice this. I am among those readers. Intellectually I know better, and have for some years, but this is not what I saw in my mind when I first read the novel (influenced by various covers, and illustrations for a reading of the story on Jackanory, none of which made Ged's skin colour clear), and even now it is hard for me to imagine Ged as non-white.

Now, I don't think it makes me an evil person that I have these responses. I think it just means that I'm a product of my environment. And I think it's a good thing that I recognize these responses for what they are, and reject them as guidance for my conscious actions. But it does mean that I cannot claim that I am entirely devoid of racism, and I would be a fool if I asserted that there are not responses that I do not recognize as such.

It is only through awareness, acknowledgment and addressing of our own failings in this respect that we can progress. Of course, behaving in a colourblind fashion is an ideal to which we should all aspire. But behaving in a colourblind fashion in a society which is not itself colourblind can contribute to the problem as much as to the solution. It encourages the notion that racism is in the past, and that we no longer need anti-racist legal measures (an argument often put forward by those who wish to reassert white privilege). But whilst Obama in the White House shows that things have improved, it does not demonstrate that there is no further room for improvement. This is a process that I don't expect to be completed in my lifetime, or for that matter, in the millennium.

So where does that leave the liberal concept of being fair to everyone? Still there, but slightly modified. I'm certainly not advocating placing POCs on a pedestal where their colour makes them immune from criticism. If anti-racism is about anything, it is about trying where possible to disregard race and treat someone as a human being.* (This is the mistake the Republicans made when appointing Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate - they assumed that feminists would support her because she was a woman, whereas what feminism is about, in my view at least, is disregarding the fact that someone is a woman, and assessing them as a person, on which assessment Palin came up short for many.) Human beings are sometimes wrong and sometimes unfair, and it is legitimate to call them out for it when they are. But if one is engaging as a privileged white with a POC on these grounds, one must be aware of one's own privilege. Because if one isn't, then the fairness one aspires to is spurious, because it doesn't take the full picture into account.

* And I know I've said that's not always possible, and sometimes counter-productive. Life is complicated. Get over it. [Edit, 03/08/09: an anonymous commentator rightly points out that talking about 'disregarding' race is not actually helpful. Given what I said about the colourblind approach, I should have seen this myself.]

Further things I've seen

Carnivalesque, the pre-modern history carnival, is searching for a host for August (ancient/mediaeval). Contact carnivalesque AT earlymodernweb DOT org DOT uk if you're interested. Now sorted.

Also, I saw another CFP on Wormtalk and Slugspeed:

We are issuing a call for papers for a proposed volume of scholarly essays on J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Papers should address any aspect of the work, but the editors are especially interested in works which make connections among disciplines, demonstrating the richness of the trilogy as well as its continuing widespread appeal.
Papers should be between 20 - 30 pages, note key words, and include a 250 word abstract.

The deadline for papers is 15 September 2009; decisions will be announced by 1 November 2009.

Papers should be submitted to
Prof. Kathleen Dubs
Angol Intézet
Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem
2087 Piliscsaba
Egyetem utca 1.
Hungary
kedubs AT axelero DOT hu

Dr. Janka Kaščáková
Katedra Anglického Jayzka A Literatury
Katolícka Univerzita v Ružomberku
Hrabovská cesta 1
023 01 Ružomberok
Slovakia
janka.kascakova AT fphil DOT ku DOT sk

CFP: Antiquity in Film – Gender on Screen

The following just popped into my inbox. Unfortunately, I'm trying to shed projects at the moment rather than add new ones, and I don't think I can afford the time or money to go to Berlin, so I shan't be doing an abstract myself; but it looks very interesting, and there might be people reading this who would want to be aware of it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Call for Papers

Conference: “Antiquity in Film – Gender on Screen”
December 10-12 2009 at the Freie Universitaet, Berlin, Germany

Contact: AntikfilmGender AT gmx DOT de

Prof. Dr. Almut-Barbara Renger
Department of History and Cultural Sciences
Institute for Religious Studies
Chair in Ancient Religion, Culture and the History of their Reception
Gosslerstr. 2-4, 14195 Berlin

This conference shall explore reception(s) of antiquity in film – from the silent era through to sound film and to present-day blockbusters. Film adaptations of ancient figures and material and what they have to say about the present, about culture and society will be examined in light of the specific significance of gender. Aside from the return of antiquity in cinema, we can also see an increasing interest in antiquity on television, in the form of miniseries or fantasy series.
“Gender” here is an analytic category that will serve as our methodological basis. This thus assumes that “femininity” and “masculinity” are not biologically determined, transhistorical constants. As this project is based primarily on the body and sexuality and their representations and reproductions in film, they will be examined as parts of gender constructs in the sense of nature as cultural text.
Approaches in recent film and gender theory look at the performance and negotiation not only of gender, but also of cultural background and national identities, using concepts such as “bricolage” to bring their various facets in contemporary film into sharper focus. The body’s boundaries and the transgression of these boundaries, e.g. in scenes of excessive violence, are often dominant motifs. In the last few years, the literature of antiquity has been adapted to film and turned into blockbuster Hollywood films, yet this has rarely been discussed. It is therefore all the more important to examine the significance of these films and their socio-political function, and thus develop interpretations that reach beyond what has been considered analytical common sense for the past several years.
To date, a few Classics scholars have written articles dealing with this topic area. These have touched on the historical figure of Cleopatra as film heroine and symbol of oriental culture, and the mythical figure of Helen in film history, as well as the connection between gender on one hand and domination, barbarism and slavery on the other. With this in mind, we will also look at gendered codes of representations of state sovereignty, (post-) colonial power relations and expressions of cultural superiority.
The goal of this conference is to attract papers that demonstrate to what degree the representations – constructions, destructions and reconstructions – of gender and gender roles have changed along with the changes in film (and societal structures).

We particularly welcome projects from the following fields:
– History, Classics and Modern Languages and Literature
– Cultural Studies, Religious Studies
– Theatre, Film and Media Studies, Art History
– Philosophy, Theology and Political Science

In addition to issues in gender theory, we also want to address:
– analyses of films based on media theories
– the Production Code, a mode of self-censorship current in film studios as a response to pressures from social and religious lobbyists
– the effects of the Cold War and the end of it on antiquity in film
– new approaches in Gender Studies such as Postcolonial Theory, Critical Orientalism and Critical Racism

We aim to publish representative results of the conference’s profile in an anthology.
Abstracts should not exceed 1 page and should be submitted together with a short biography of a few lines by 1 August 2009.


We are looking forward to an inspiring conference and lively discussion!

Predictive dreams, or why many historical novels are science fiction really

This is the first of a couple of planned blog posts that fall out of the Asterisks and Obelisks conference I went to earlier this month, and that got me all enthused for writing blog posts again (and maybe even, God help you all, fiction).

Anyway, one of the invited speakers at the conference was Caroline Lawrence, author of the Roman Mysteries series (I confess to being not too familiar with her books, though I've seen a couple of the tv adaptations). In her talk, she mentioned that in one of the later novels, a character dreams of his future. This got the interest of Juliette Harrisson*, as she's interested in dreams (I think it's her thesis topic, though I'm sure she'll put me straight on that). Which in turn led to a conversation about how prophetic dreams and other sorts of accurate prophecy still occur in historical novels set in the ancient world.

Dreams are, of course, an important feature in ancient literature. Zeus sends a lying dream to Agamemnon in Book 2 of the Iliad. In Aeschylus' Persians, Atossa, Queen of Persia, has a symbolic dream demonstrating that Asia and Greece can never be joined together in one empire. And, of course, Cassandra is the ultimate prophetess, always right, but never believed (I always wondered about that - you'd have thought that someone might notice her 100% accuracy rate ...). There are dreams to be found in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Accurate predictive dreams are also found in historiography. Herodotus has them (note the symbolic dreams in Book 1 predicting Cyrus the Great's conquest of Asia). This continues into Roman and Romano-Christian writings; in particular, Lactantius' account of a dream that instructs Constantine to fight under the sign of Jesus Christ (presumably promising victory, though Lactantius is not explicit). The Old and New Testaments also have prophetic and symbolic dreams (e.g. the vision of Jacob's ladder in Genesis, or Peter's dream encouraging him to preach to the Gentiles in Acts).

This, however, is not the place for a study of dreams in Graeco-Roman literature, of which there is at least one book-length study, and no doubt more. What I'm interested in here is the persistence of the prophetic dream, and other forms of accurate prophecy, in modern historical novels.

On one level, it seems slightly odd. Post-Enlightenment, 'realism' has become the dominant mode of the novel, and accurate prophetic dreams fall very much into the mode of the fantastic. Yet they are still to be found. Robert Graves' I, Claudius, for instance, begins with a sybilline prophecy, which not only predicts the length of the reign of Claudius, but also in which century his autobiography shall be rediscovered and published. This is picked up in the television version, where, in the final episode, Claudius has a turn in the Senate and allusively names both Graves and Jack Pullman, the adapter of the novel for the screen. A similarly prophetic Sybil is to be found in Sophia McDougall's alternate history novel Romanitas.

Why is this? It's one thing to have characters in a novel who, because of the religious and cultural background, believe in the power of prophecy and dreams. It would be perfectly within the parameters of a realist novel for Claudius to report a prophecy of events from a perspective of writing after the prophesied events have taken place (Claudius is, after all, not necessarily a wholly reliable narrator). It's quite another for the reported prophecy to relate to events that the novel's readership know, because they have happened, but which happen millennia after Claudius' death.

I wonder if it is because the notion of prophecy is hardwired into the ancient-set novel right from its origins in the Roman imperial period. Of course, the best-known of the Greek and Latin novels, Apuleius' Metamorphoses (also known as The Golden Ass), is very much in the fantastic mode. But prophecy is also found elsewhere in the ancient novel. The troubles ahead for the lead characters in the Ephesiaka of Xenophon are accurately predicted by a soothsayer, and predictive dreams feature in Achilles Tatius.

A special case for the modern ancient historical novel are those works dealing with the Trojan War. As has been observed by many, modern retellings of the matter of Troy tend to eliminate most elements of the fantastic, removing the gods from the field of play, and turning the mythological narrative of Homer into a historical novel. But one element of the fantastic often still survives; Cassandra's predictions of the fall of Troy, either through dreams or another method of prophecy. This is the case for David Gemmell's Troy trilogy. It is also the case for Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze, and also for the Doctor Who story The Myth Makers, where otherwise the only fantastic element is the TARDIS crew.

What I don't know about is prophetic dreams in other historical novels. I don't remember anything, for instance, in the mediaeval novels of Jean Plaidy, which I read a lot of in my youth. Are there, indeed, prophetic dreams in mediaeval historiography? Or what about the novels of Dickens, a man certainly open to the possibilities of the fantastic (e.g. A Christmas Carol)? Are there dreams in any of the other novels.

Please leave any further examples you can think of in comments, and I will add them in edits.

* Yes, that is how she spells her name. I've been misspelling more traditional Harrisons for the past couple of weeks.

The end of the school visit? Hardly.

Today there has been a lot of discussion in the papers about authors declaring that they will boycott school visits if new regulations are brought in. You can read it about it in The Times, The Guardian and The Independent. What the authors, who include the likes of Philip Pullman and Anthony Horowitz, say, is that the new Vetting and Barring Scheme will require them to pay £64 to register themselves on a database and undergo a check that they are not a danger to children, should they want to do any school visit. This is, apparently, demeaning, and why should authors have to prove that they are not paedophiles?

There's a lot of hyperbolic outrage here. One is tempted to suggest that some people should get over themselves. What, after all, is more important - protecting an author from being affronted that somebody might want to check that they are not a danger to children before allowing them to work closely with them, or protecting children from people who might be a threat? Pullman mentions authors who depend on the income from school visits, who would now lose that money - but if the income is that important, I'd expect them to stump up the £64. Anthony Browne's views seem rather less hysterical.

However, there are implications here, not just for writers, but for people like me. Last October I gave a talk to my niece's primary school about Romans. In November I gave a talk in a school in Oxford. I was scheduled to do another schools conference in May (though that fell through), and have an invitation to go to another school sometime in the autumn. At no point did anyone mention that I might need a Criminal Records Bureau check before doing that. Today's stories would suggest that this is no longer the case, which has implications not just for me, but for any university doing Outreach activities in schools.

The thing is, the story's broadly not true. Because I'm the sort of person who likes to back his opinions up with evidence, I went on to the website of the Independent Safeguard Authority. Several pages have interesting things to say. This page, for instance, says "In England and Wales, the requirement to refer and criteria for referrals remain the same from 20 January 2009. From 13 March 2009, the requirement to refer and the criteria for referral are unchanged in Northern Ireland." To me, that implies that no-one who didn't need registering before will need registering now. This page talks about what constitutes regulated or controlled activity, and talks a lot about frequent or intensive activity. I wouldn't immediately interpret that as applying to a single visit into a school supervised by a teacher.

Finally, the BBC story carries an official refutation of the authors' position. It's a bit buried, and the story gives more weight to the authors' point of view. But the Department of Children, Schools and Families say that the regulations have been misinterpreted. They only apply to someone who goes into schools more than once a month (the official definition of 'frequent'). Moreover, they say, "visitors to schools, even if they are supervised by a teacher at all times, are being placed in a unique position of trust where they can easily become deeply liked and trusted by pupils. We therefore need to be sure that this trust is well placed in case pupils bump into them out of school where a teacher is not present." From which I infer that the intention of the regulations is that only people who go more than once a month into the same school need register. That, to me, would eliminate most authors from needing to register, and it certainly means I don't need to worry. Some Outreach programmes may have to be careful, but even then, it is also the case that if someone isn't being paid for the visit, then, whilst they need to be registered, they don't have to pay for it.

So in the end, this story appears to be a bunch of authors getting the wrong end of the stick and then getting rather overly upset about it, exacerbated by journalism that could have been rather more through. None of the newspaper sites mention what is on the ISA's website. Instead, they chose to print what the authors said without question. Because that makes a better story ...

Random playing of the Classical Receptions card

Just watching the end of Fire Down Below (Robert Parrish, 1957), and I note that the ship that Jack Lemmon gets trapped in towards the end is called the Ulysses. Not sure that this is particularly significant ...

Readers (if there are any left) forgive me, for I have sinned ...

... it has been nearly four months since I last posted anything here. As ever, in the middle of the year, other things appear which are more urgent, like teaching, and trying to finish research papers, and my spare time for anything else decreases dramatically. So apologies if I have not given full coverage to everything I should have this year. In particular, I owe an apology to Hugh Viney, director of this year's UCL Classics Play, who was expecting a review to appear here sometime. A full review, I am afraid, is not going to happen now. Which I do feel bad about, as it was an excellent production, with exactly the right level of irreverence towards text and audience. In particular, the use of music meant that this was one of the most imaginative Frog choruses that I've seen. I really enjoyed it, and I should have said so before now.

However, my blog has now been mentioned in CA News, in relation to my taking over as editor of that publication. So I probably need to provide some content again.

Right now I'm taking advantage of the Internet facilities at the University of Wales, Lampeter, where I'm attending a convention of Classical receptions in Children's literature. It's been an interesting conference so far - I particularly enjoyed a session this morning on fiction set in Roman Britain, which will help me finesse my own views on the tensions inherent in writing about the Roman occupation (basically, which side is the reader on, the Britons or the Romans?). My own paper went okay. I was talking about the Roman empire in the boys' adventure comic. I hadn't had time to do all the research I wanted to, but when I came to write the piece I realized that anything more than a short introduction to the subject wasn't possible in twenty minutes anyway. I may report again after the end of the conference.