classical tradition

{{Short description|Reception of classical Greco-Roman antiquity by the post-classical Western world}}

File:La Barque de Dante (Delacroix 3820).jpg leading Dante on his journey in the Inferno, an image that dramatizes the continuity of the classical traditionAnthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis, preface to The Classical Tradition (Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. viii–ix. (Dante and Vergil in Hell by Delacroix, 1823)]]

The Western classical tradition is the reception of classical Greco-Roman antiquity by later cultures, especially the post-classical West,Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis, preface to The Classical Tradition (Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. vii–viii. involving texts, imagery, objects, ideas, institutions, monuments, architecture, cultural artifacts, rituals, practices, and sayings.Grafton, Most, and Settis, preface to The Classical Tradition, p. viii. Philosophy, political thought, and mythology are three major examples of how classical culture survives and continues to have influence.Grafton, Most, and Settis, entry on "mythology", in The Classical Tradition, p. 614 et passim. The West is one of a number of world cultures regarded as having a classical tradition, including the Indian, Chinese, and Islamic traditions.Grafton, Most, and Settis, preface to The Classical Tradition, p. x.

The study of the classical tradition differs from classical philology, which seeks to recover "the meanings that ancient texts had in their original contexts."Craig W. Kallendorf, introduction to A Companion to the Classical Tradition (Blackwell, 2007), p. 2. It examines both later efforts to uncover the realities of the Greco-Roman world and "creative misunderstandings" that reinterpret ancient values, ideas and aesthetic models for contemporary use.Grafton, Most, and Settis, preface to The Classical Tradition, p. vii; Kallendorf, introduction to Companion, p. 2. The classicist and translator Charles Martindale has defined the reception of classical antiquity as "a two-way process ... in which the present and the past are in dialogue with each other."Charles Martindale, "Reception", in A Companion to the Classical Tradition (2007), p. 298.

History

The beginning of a self-conscious classical tradition is usually located in the Renaissance, with the work of Petrarch in 14th-century Italy.Kallendorf, introduction to Companion, p. 1. Although Petrarch believed that he was recovering an unobstructed view of a classical past that had been obscured for centuries, the classical tradition in fact had continued uninterrupted during the Middle Ages.Kallendorf, introduction to Companion, p. 2. There was no single moment of rupture when the inhabitants of what was formerly the Roman Empire went to bed in antiquity and awoke in the medieval world; rather, the cultural transformation occurred over centuries. The use and meaning of the classical tradition may seem, however, to change dramatically with the emergence of humanism.Kallendorf, introduction to Companion, pp. 1–2.

File:Aeneas' Flight from Troy by Federico Barocci.jpg carrying his father and leading his son from fallen Troy, a popular image in the Renaissance for the retrieval of the past as a way to make possible the future; the figure of his wife, Creusa, who did not survive, represents that which was lostPeter Gillgren, Siting Federico Barocci and the Renaissance Aesthetic (Ashgate, 2011), pp. 165–167. (Federico Barocci, 1598)]]

The phrase "classical tradition" is itself a modern label, articulated most notably in the post-World War II era with The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature of Gilbert Highet (1949) and The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries of R. R. Bolgar (1954). The English word "tradition", and with it the concept of "handing down" classical culture, derives from the Latin verb {{Lang|la|trado, tradere, traditus}}, in the sense of "hand over, hand down."Kallendorf, introduction to Companion, p. 1.

Writers and artists influenced by the classical tradition may name their ancient models, or allude to their works. Often scholars infer classical influence through comparative methods that reveal patterns of thought. Sometimes authors' copies of Greek and Latin texts will contain handwritten annotations that offer direct evidence of how they read and understood their classical models; for instance, in the late 20th century the discovery of Montaigne's copy of Lucretius enabled scholars to document an influence that had long been recognized.Kallendorf, introduction to Companion, p. 2.

classical tradition

History

See also

References

Further reading