Modernist Hellenism argues that engagement with Greek was central to the evolution of modernist poetics throughout the first half of the twentieth century. It shows that Eliot, Pound, and H.D. all turn to Greek literature, and increasingly Greek tragedy, as they attempt to grapple not only with their own evolving poetics but also with changing sociocultural circumstances at large. Revisiting major modernist works from the perspective of each poet's translations and adaptations from Greek, and drawing on archival materials, the book distinguishes Pound and H.D.'s work from Eliot's and argues for the existence of a specifically modernist hellenism (rather than, say, classicizing or idealizing, decadent or heretical), which is personal, politicized, and unconstrained by institutional standards, but also profoundly textual, language-based, and engaged with classical scholarship. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

This Element surveys transmissions of ancient Greek and Latin texts into anglophone literatures, often straddling boundaries between translational responsibility and adaptive, re-creative textual practices. Attention to manifestations of and reasons for versioning, retranslation, hybridity, and translation as experiment, compels an introductory discussion of evolving tendencies of classical reception; with particular dispositions relating to a sociocultural context such as that of the United States observed in Section 3. The role paratexts play in the dialogue between scholarship, literary art, and performance, is the focus of Section 4, while Section 2 presents readers with a range of English responses to Homer. Creativity through sites and positions of translation is a defining feature of the workings of literary traditions; and of antiquity and modernity, in constant dialogue. This Element explores numerous textual manifestations and reasons for invention, along with integrations of thinking on classical translation over the centuries, helping shape present-day translation studies.