Review of Goldhill (S.) 'Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity. Art, Opera, Fiction, and the Proclamation of Modernity' Pp. viii + 352, ills, colour pls. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011. Cased, £30.95, US$45. ISBN: 978-0-691-14984-4

Abstract

This is a book with a broad scope and ambition. G. examines the Victorian reception of classical antiquity in the fields of art, music and literature. He focusses on the 'revolutionary' uses (artistic and political) to which classical material is put, arguing against a mainstream understanding of classical reception as essentially conservative; for G., Victorian culture uses classical material as much to challenge as to bolster establishment and power structures. To make this argument, G. draws on a wide range of texts and contexts, to show the breadth of the nineteenth-century engagement with classical antiquity, and the continual shifts in reception studies - of classical and Victorian material. In his introduction he explains his approach. Those engaged in the field of classical reception studies must continually be aware of its complexity, a complexity made up of multiple contexts, periods and disciplines. A scholar of the Victorian engagement with classical antiquity, for instance, must not only understand the intricacies of classical culture, but also Victorian culture and, of course, be willing and able to employ contemporary critical approaches. In other words, the field requires of practitioners an enormous range and flexibility. It requires rigour too, which I define here as the ability to draw a clear line of argument through this mass of material - to resist the temptation of arranging the material to suit a particular thesis, and to present an interpretation that is valid and useful. Although the difficulties are apparent throughout, and despite errors pointed out by other reviewers, G. achieves this task in a book that is invigorating in its unusual take on the field, and will provide much food for thought for scholars and students alike. The book is organised into three main sections on art, opera and fiction.