Overview

In the last few years, there has been a major and unmissable surge in women’s retellings and re-creations of ancient myths and texts that has put women’s re-creations of Classics centre-stage. Drawing together an interdisciplinary range of creative and scholarly voices, this volume asks why classical creative retellings by women are so popular now—and considers what creativity can do to foster new ways of thinking and writing about Classics, thus blurring the boundary between the creative and the critical. Contributors engage with debates on how to make Classics more accessible through the medium of creative works, so that it is not just a discipline for the select few. This second volume in a two-volume set brings together original creative work by some of the many women writers who are pushing forward changes in the landscape of re-creating Classics, from Madeline Miller to Jennifer Saint, Emily Hauser, Caroline Lawrence, Roz Kaveney, Nikita Gill, Fiona Benson, Anne Carson and many more. These are set alongside discussions and interviews between writers and academics, roundtable conversations among poets and critics, and reflections on creative and inclusive pedagogy—thus offering a cutting-edge collaboration between practitioners and researchers, and underlining the centrality of women’s re-creations of Classics to the contemporary shaping of the field.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dr Emily Hauser (University of Exeter, UK) ,  Helena Taylor (University of Exeter, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.520kg
ISBN:  

9781350445086

ISBN 10:   1350445088
Pages:   344
Publication Date:   10 July 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors Introduction (Emily Hauser and Helena Taylor, Exeter University, UK) Part One: Interviews and Collaborations 1. Homer’s Women: Why Now? (Emily Hauser, Exeter University, UK) 2. Paths of Survival: Excavating the Past Through Poetry (Josephine Balmer, Independent Scholar, UK; Fiona Cox, Exeter University, UK; Elena Theodorakopoulos, Birmingham University, UK) 3. Discussion and Presentation of a New Play on Dido (Edith Hall, Durham University, UK) 4. Retelling Traumatic Tragedies (Christine Plastow, Open University, UK; Wendy Haines, Exeter University, UK) 5. On Not Translating Homer (Yopie Prins, Michigan University, USA) 6. Gwyneth Lewis, interviewed by Fiona Cox (Exeter University, UK) 7. Ronni Kern, interviewed by Ruby Blondell (University of Washington, USA) 8. Emily Hauser, interviewed by Lena Linne (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany) 9. Madeline Miller, interviewed by Emily Hauser (Exeter University, UK) Part Two: Creative Work 10. Original short story on Orpheus and Eurydice (Jennifer Saint, Independent Scholar, USA) 11. Original creative piece by Roz Kaveney (Roz Kaveney, Independent Scholar, USA) 12. Bats in the Metamorphoses(Katie Byford, Independent Scholar, UK) 13. Original Poetry by Carrie Etter (Carrie Etter, University of Bristol, UK) 14. Original poetry by Gwyneth Lewis (“Stage Manager’s Notes”) (Gwyneth Lewis, Independent Scholar, UK) 15. Contemporary Women Poets: Discussion between contemporary poets Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Clare Pollard, Carrie Etter (Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Clare Pollard, Carrie Etter, Independent Scholars, UK) 16. Finding Three Voices: Catullus, Callimachus, Me (Isobel Williams, Independent Scholar, UK) 17. Transforming Voices: Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Translation (Victoria Punch, Exeter University, UK) 18. Declassifying Myself (Donna Zuckerberg, Independent Scholar, USA) 19. Using Smells and Bells: Five Ways to Help you Write about Classics Creatively (Caroline Lawrence, Independent Scholar, USA) Part Three: Creativity for the Future and Inclusive Classics 20. Students Shaping Classics: Non-traditional, Open Assessment, Creativity, Inclusivity and Shifting Disciplinary Boundaries” (Helen Lovatt, University of Nottingham, UK) 21. Creative Teaching: Facing the Fear and Doing it Anyway (Sharon Marshall, Exeter University, UK) 22. On equality, diversity and inclusivity in education and leadership (Katherine Harloe, Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, UK) 23. Breaking the Form: Women Writers (Tom Geue, St. Andrews University, UK; Emily Hauser, Exeter University, UK; Daisy Dunn, Independent Scholar, UK) Conclusion (Emily Hauser and Helena Taylor, Exeter University, UK) Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

The editors are to be commended for gifting to scholars of classical reception a vast trove of material relating to the rich afterlives of ancient Greek and Roman women in contemporary anglophone literature. In essay form and in conversation with women academics, invaluable insights are provided by an impressive line-up of women artists. -- Fiona Macintosh, Emeritus Professor of Classical Reception, University of Oxford, UK Women Re-Creating Classics: Contemporary Voices offers audiences an opportunity to flip the mirror of classical mythology and reflect it against our own experiences and visions. The most unique contributions of this volume come from the creative works by women novelists, poets and playwrights who have thoughtfully and beautifully engaged with classical tales of violence, oppression and heroism. Alongside well-known figures like M. Miller and J. Saint, the second half of this volume brings these creative voices into direct dialogue with more conventional scholars, allowing us to see the creative process and choices in action. For those considering this feminist neoclassical moment in the 21st century—its inspirations and implications—this is a key volume that places a wide range of diverse voices in context and conversation, rather than lionising only a few well-known bestsellers and pop hits. -- Anise K. Strong, Associate Professor of History, Western Michigan University, USA

Author Information

Emily Hauser is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, UK. She is author of Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written Out of It (2025), How Women Became Poets (2023) and For the Most Beautiful (2016). She is co-editor of Reading Poetry, Writing Genre (2018). Helena Taylor is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter, UK. She is author of Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France (2024) and The Lives of Ovid in Seventeenth-Century French Culture (2017). She is co-editor of Ovid in French: Reception by Women from the Renaissance to the Present (2023) and Women and Querelles in Early Modern France (2021).

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