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Professor Lorna Hardwick

Profile summary

  • Emeritus Professor
  • School of Arts & Humanities
  • Classical Studies

Professional biography

Lorna Hardwick is Professor emeritus of Classical Studies and is director of the Classical Receptions in Late Twentieth Century Drama and Poetry in English project. She is an Honorary Research Associate of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford. Classical Reception Studies is one of the fastest growing areas in Classics research and teaching. It looks at the ways in which Greek and Roman texts, ideas and material culture have been interpreted, used and reworked by subsequent writers, thinkers, artists and societies. In the ancient world oral, written, built or performed texts were a vibrant part of community culture and its often contested values and power struggles. The work of the research project focuses on how these processes have also played an important part in recent culture and politics and have often been catalysts for cultural change. Classical drama and poetry, images and ideas have provided a field for debates about cultural identity and aesthetic values in the present and these activities have redirected attention back to the ancient texts and their contexts, often suggesting new perspectives and interpretations and revealing aspects that have been marginalised or suppressed. The research project’s website publishes a database of modern productions of Greek drama together with critical essays on key aspects of the research. A similar database covering classical referents in modern poetry in English is in preparation. The website also includes a showcase for new researchers, the refereed e-journal New Voices and an archive for the annual international electronic seminar series on the reception of Greek and Roman drama.

Research interests

Lorna’s publications in the field of classical reception include Translating Words, Translating Cultures (2000) and New Surveys in the Classics; Reception Studies (2003) as well as a number of articles on drama and poetry. She has a particular interest in the impact of various kinds of translation and adaptation on modern perceptions of Greece and Rome and in the reworking of classical material in post-colonial contexts (publications.) She is, with Professor Jim Porter (University of Michigan) the Series Editor for the new series Oxford Studies in Classical Receptions: Classical Presences and is co-editor, with Dr Chris Stray (Swansea) of the Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions (2008) and, with Carol Gillespie, of Classics in Post-colonial Worlds. She was founding editor of the Classical Receptions Journal, launched as an Oxford Journal in 2009. She is founding convenor of the international research group Classics and Poetry Now (CAPN).

Recent Publications on Classical Receptions

Hardwick, L., 2023 (forthcoming), Reception Studies, 2nd edition, Classical Association: New Surveys in the Classics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hardwick, L., 2023 (forthcoming), ‘Seamus Heaney’s Religious Palette: Catholic, Roman, Greek’, in C. Murray, ed., Cambridge Themes in Irish Literature and Culture: Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hardwick, L., Harrison S. J., and Vandiver, E., eds, 2023, forthcoming, Greek and Roman Antiquity in First World War Poetry: Making Connections, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hardwick, L., 2022, ‘Recusatio from Both Directions: Tony Harrison’s Gazes’, in S. Byrne, ed., Tony Harrison and the Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 95-116.

Hardwick, L., 2022, ‘Female Agency in Greek Tragedy and its Receptions in the Late- Twentieth and Early Twenty-first Centuries’, in K. Moore, ed., The Routledge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Gender and Sexuality, Routledge: New York and London, ch. 30.

Hardwick, L., 2022, ‘Heightened Receptivities: when ancient and modern meet in Greek Tragedy’, in I. Karamanou, ed., Ancient Theatre: Proceedings of the Nafplion Conference on Otherness, University of the Peloponnese, ts.uop.gr, 283-295.

Hardwick, L., 2021, ‘Tracking Classical Scholarship: Myth, Evidence and Epistemology’, in S.J. Harrison and C. Pelling, eds., Classical Scholarship and Its History: Essays in Honour of Christopher Stray, Trends in Classics: Scholarship in the Making, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 9-31.

Hardwick, L., 2021, ‘Translation and/as Adaptation’, in V. Liapis and A. Sidiropoulou, eds., Adapting Greek Tragedy: Contemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 110-130

Hardwick, L., 2020, ‘Aspirations and Mantras in Classical Reception Research: Can there really be dialogue between ancient and modern?, in M. De Pourcq et al., eds., Framing Classical Reception Studies, Leiden: Brill, 15-32.

Hardwick, L., 2019, ‘Epilogue: Heaney’s Classical Ground’, in S. Harrison, F. Macintosh and H. Eastman, eds., Seamus Heaney and the Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 263-274.

Hardwick, L., 2019, ‘Classics in Extremis: the Edges of Classical Reception’ in E. Richardson, ed., Classics in Extremis, London: Bloomsbury, 13-24.

Hardwick, L., 2018, ‘The Poetics of Cultural Memory: World War 1 Refractions of Ancient Peace’ in Classical Receptions Journal Special Issue: Classics and Classicists in World War 1, edited by Elizabeth Pender, Classical Receptions Journal vol. 10, Issue 4, October 2018, 393-414.

Hardwick, L., 2018, ‘Voices, Bodies, Silences and Media: Heightened Receptivities in Epic in Performance’ in F. Macintosh and J. McConnell, eds. Epic Performances: from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 558-572.

Hardwick, L., 2017, ‘Voices of Trauma: Remaking Aeschylus in the Twentieth Century’, in S. E. Constantinidis, ed., The Reception of Aeschylus’ Plays through Shifting Models and Frontiers, Leiden: Brill, 280-303.

Hardwick, L., 2017, ‘The Reception of Antigone in the 20th and 21st Centuries, in C. Morais, L. Hardwick and M. de F. Silva, eds., Portrayals of Antigone in Portugal: 20th and 21st Century Rewritings of the Antigone Myth, Metaforms vol. 9, Brill: Leiden, 27-42.

Hardwick, L., 2016, ‘Translating Myths, Translating Fictions’, in J. McConnell and E. Hall, eds., Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction since 1989,75-90.

Hardwick, L., 2016, ‘Homer, Repetition and Reception’, in A. Efstathiou and I. Karamanou, eds., Homeric Reception across Generic and Cultural Contexts, Trends in Classics Supplementary Volume 37, Berlin: De Gruyter, 15-30.

Hardwick, L., 2016, ‘Cultural Spaces in the Recent Translation and Performance of Greek Drama’, in P. Monaghan and J. Montgomery Griffiths, eds., Close Relations: Spaces of Greek and Roman Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 155-176.

Hardwick, L., 2015, ‘Radicalism and Gradualism Enmeshed:  Classics from the Grass Roots in the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-century Britain’, in H. Stead and E. Hall, eds., Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform, London: Bloomsbury, 20-36.

Hardwick, L., 2015, ‘Audiences across the pond: Oceans apart or shared experiences?’, in K. Bosher, F. Macintosh, J. McConnell and P. Rankine, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 819-40.

Hardwick, L., 2015, ‘Concepts’, in C. Lee and N. Morley, eds., A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides, Chichester and Malden MA, 493-511.

Hardwick, L., 2014, ‘’Exceptionalities and Paradigms: Ancient and Modern Greek culture in Classical Reception Research’, in D. Tziovas, ed., Re-imagining the Past: Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 333-349.

Hardwick, L., 2013, ‘Translating Greek plays for the theatre today: Transmission, transgression, transformation’, in Target 25.3, Special issue: Translation in the Theatre, ed. C. Marinetti, 321-342.

Hardwick, L., 2013, ‘The problem of the spectators: ancient and modern’, in A. Bakogianni, ed., Dialogues with the Past 1: Classical Reception Theory and Practice, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 126-1, London: ICS, 11-26.

Hardwick, L., 2013, ‘Against the ‘Democratic Turn’: Counter-texts; Counter-contexts; Counter-arguments’, in L. Hardwick and S. J. Harrison, eds., Classics in the Modern World: A ‘Democratic Turn’?, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 15-32.

Hardwick, L., 2013 ‘Moving Targets, Modern Contests: Marathon and Cultural memory’, in C. Carey, ed., Marathon, London: BICS.

Hardwick, L., 2013, ‘Imaging Magic, Imaging Thinking: the representation of epistemologies and their reception’ in F.Carla and I Berti, eds, Magic and the Supernatural from the Ancient World to the Present Day, Mainz: Imagines.

Hardwick, L, 2012, ‘Greek Drama and Theatre for the Oppressed’, in J. Nelis, ed., Receptions of Antiquity, Gent: Academia Press.

Hardwick, L, 2011 ‘Fuzzy Connections: Classical Texts and Modern Poetry in English’, in J. Parker and T. Mathews (eds), Translation, Trauma and Tradition, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Hardwick, L., 2011, Antigone’s Journey: From Athens to Edinburgh via Paris and Tbilisi’ in H. Foley and E. Mee (eds), Mobilising Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hardwick, L., 2010, ‘Negotiating Translation for the Stage’ in E. Hall and S. Harrop (eds.) Theorising Performance: Greek Drama, Cultural History and Critical Practice, London, Duckworth, 192-207.

Hardwick, L., 2009, ‘Is the ‘silken thread' worth more than ‘a fart in a bearskin'? or How Translation practice matters in poetry and drama' in S. J. Harrison, (ed.) Living Classics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 172-193.

Hardwick, L., 2009, 'Can (Modern) Poets Do Drama? The Case of Ted Hughes', in R. Rees, (ed.)Ted Hughes and the Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 39-61.

Hardwick, L., 2008, ‘Translated Classics: Vibrant Hybrids or Shattered Icons?' in A. Lianeri and V. Zajko,  (eds.) Translation and the Classic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 341 -366.

Hardwick, L., 2007, (ed. with C. A. Stray) The Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hardwick, L., 2007, ‘Shades of Multi-Lingualism and Multi-Vocalism in Modern Performances of Greek Tragedy in Post-Colonial Contexts’, in L. Hardwick & C. Gillespie (eds) Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 305-28.

Hardwick, L., 2007, ‘Singing across the faultlines: cultural shifts in twentieth century receptions of Homer' in B. Graziosi and E. Greenwood, (eds.) Homer in the 20th Century: Between World Literature and the Western Canon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 47-74.

Hardwick, L., 2006, ‘Remodelling Receptions: Greek Drama as Diaspora in Performance' in C. Martindale and R. Thomas, (eds.) Classics and the Uses of Reception, Oxford: Blackwell, 204-15.

Hardwick, L., 2005, ‘Refiguring Classical Texts: Aspects of the Post-colonial Condition' in B. Goff, (ed.) Classics and Colonialism, London: Duckworth, 107-17.

Hardwick, L., 2005, ‘Staging Agamemnon: The Languages of Translation', in F. Macintosh, P. Michelakis, E. Hall, and O. Taplin, (eds.) Agamemnon in Performance, 458 BC-2004 AD, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 207-21.

Hardwick, L., 2004 ‘Greek drama and anti-colonialism: De-colonising Classics', in E. Hall, F. Macintosh and A. Wrigley, (eds), Dionysus since '69: Tragedy at the Dawn of the Millennium, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 219-44.

Hardwick, L., 2003 Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics no. 33 Reception Studies ; Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Also, translated into Greek. Second edition forthcoming: Cambridge University Press).

Hardwick, L., 2002, ‘Classical Texts in Post-Colonial Literatures: Consolation, Redress and New Beginnings in the Work of Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney' in the International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 9/2:236-56.

Hardwick, L., 2000 Translating Words, Translating Cultures, London, Duckworth.

Teaching interests

She has contributed to many Open University courses in Classical Studies, including Rome: The Augustan Age, Fifth-century Athens: City State and Democracy, Homer: Poetry and Society, Culture Identity and Power in the Roman Empire, Exploring the Classical World and the MA in Classical Studies Greek theatre module. She has also contributed teaching material on classical themes to a number of Arts Faculty interdisciplinary courses including the first level course, The Arts Past and Present, in which she discusses the relationship between Sophocles’ play Antigone and Seamus Heaney’s The Burial at Thebes. Lorna has also contributed to the MA in English (starting October 2009).

From 2000–2005 Lorna was Subject Director for Classics and Ancient History in the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology. She works extensively with post-graduate students in the OU and internationally and was the founding Convenor of the Classical Reception Studies Network (serving until 2010). In 2005–7 she served as the President of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers.