Classics and Class

Thursday 1 to Friday 2 July 2010

Convenor: Professor Edith Hall, Royal Holloway, University of London

Programme

Conference
The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1

The study of ancient Greece and Rome is often seen as a preserve of the elite, available only to the privileged, bolstering class divisions and social exclusion. While access to the Classical world has in the last two decades widened, through courses taught in translation, museum exhibitions, films set in antiquity and productions of ancient drama, it is incontrovertible that training in the Greek and Latin languages during the previous two centuries played an important role in defining and maintaining class hierarchies. Yet the intense relationship between Classics and class (reflected in the semantic similarity of the words) remains obstinately under­documented, under­analysed, and under­theorised. The aim of this two­day interdisciplinary conference is to explore this challenge and ask what kind of access working­class people historically had to ancient Greek and Roman culture, whether through education and self­education, leisure activities or political activism, and whether the picture that emerges corresponds or conflicts with traditional perceptions of Classics.

About the Speakers

Professor Edith Hall is Director of the Centre for the Reception of Greece & Rome at Royal Holloway, University of London. The Keynote Speaker is Jonathan Rose (Drew University), and author of The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes.  Other speakers include Chris Stray (Swansea), Ed Richardson (Princeton), Paula James (Open University), Katya Basargina (St Petersburg) and John Holford (Nottingham).

Conference: Places are limited, attendance is free but registration is required for this conference. Please note that lunch will not be provided, but time will be allowed for attendees to obtain lunch in the surrounding area.
THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED

Performance Event: Literature, Classics and Class
5.00pm - 7.30pm
The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1

On the evening of 1 July Peggy Reynolds, Reader in English Literature at Queen Mary University of London and presenter of Radio 4's 'Adventures in Poetry' will chair a special event featuring an unprecedented programme of poetry and prose which vividly brings to life the role of the Greek and Roman Classics in the history of class consciousness.

Tony Harrison, last year awarded the inaugural Pen/Pinter prize for his 'unmistakable and passionate voice', is a classically educated poet who has never forgotten his working-class roots adn has used classical authors to forge an inclusive public poetry. He will read selected poems from The School of Eloquence, Loiners, Under the Clock, and The Gaze of the Gorgon and extracts from his translations, plays and films, including the Oresteia, The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus and Prometheus.

In part two ('Class-conscious Voices on the Classics'), actors Alice Barclay and Matthew Wilson from 'Live Canon', a touring ensemble which performs poetry in the English language, along with storyteller and blogger Stephe Harrop, will perform extracts from works by 'The Chartist Rhymer' Ernest Jones, the Abolitionish Poet Edward Rushton, the 'milkmaid of Bristol' Anne Yearsley, Robert Burns, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley, Thomas Hardy, Siegfried Sassoon, Kenneth Burke, Bertolt Brecht, Anne Stevenson, Louis MacNeice, W.H. Auden and Iain Crichton Smith.

Performance Event: 5.00 to 7.30pm, followed by a reception.
THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED

Audio recordings

Introduction by Peggy Reynolds

Tony Harrison - poetry, classics and class

Introduction to readings

Readings - further poetry