Anne Carson is one of the most versatile of those living writers in the English language who have drawn deeply from the well of Classical waters. This book explores the role of generic transgressions and of antique spirituality throughout Carson's long career of re-staging the classical literary legacy in creative contemporary terms. It examines the way in which Carson deliberately plays with genre - and with the expectations normally associated with certain genres - and shows that it is the fluidity of genre expectations that she adapts most creatively from the classical tradition. Trained...

This is the first book-length study of the classicism of Tony Harrison, one of the most important contemporary poets in England and the world. It argues that his unique and politically radical classicism is inextricable from his core notion that poetry should be a public property in which communal problems are shared and crystallised, and that the poet has a responsibility to speak in a public voice about collective and political concerns. Enriched by Edith Hall’s longstanding friendship with Harrison and involvement with his most recent drama, inspired by Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris,...