This book demonstrates the rich and varied ways in which heavy metal music draws on the ancient Greek and Roman world. Contributors examine bands from across the globe, including: Blind Guardian (Germany), Therion (Sweden), Celtic Frost, Eluveitie (Switzerland), Ex Deo (Canada/Italy), Heimdall, Stormlord, Ade (Italy), Kawir (Greece), Theatre of Tragedy (Norway), Iron Maiden, Bal-Sagoth (UK), and Nile (US). These and other bands are shown to draw inspiration from Classical literature and mythology such as the Homeric Hymns, Vergil's Aeneid, and Caesar's Gallic Wars, historical figures from Rome and ancient Egypt, and even pagan and occult aspects of antiquity. These bands' engagements with Classical antiquity also speak to contemporary issues of nationalism, identity, sexuality, gender, and globalization. The contributors show how the genre of heavy metal brings its own perspectives to Classical reception, and demonstrate that this music-often dismissed as lowbrow-engages in sophisticated dialogue with ancient texts, myths, and historical figures. The authors reveal aspects of Classics' continued appeal while also arguing that the engagement with myth and history is a defining characteristic of heavy metal music, especially in countries that were once part of the Roman Empire.

This multi-disciplinary book explores the textual analysis of heavy metal lyrics written in languages other than English including Japanese, Yiddish, Latin, Russian, Hungarian, Austrian German, and Norwegian. Topics covered include national and minority identity, politics, wordplay, parody, local/global, intertextuality, and adaptation.

Exploring the musical styles and cultures of metal, this Companion is an indispensable introduction to this popular and distinctive genre.

This book demonstrates the rich and varied ways in which heavy metal music draws on the ancient Greek and Roman world. Contributors examine bands from across the globe, including: Blind Guardian (Germany), Therion (Sweden), Celtic Frost, Eluveitie (Switzerland), Ex Deo (Canada/Italy), Heimdall, Stormlord, Ade (Italy), Kawir (Greece), Theatre of Tragedy (Norway), Iron Maiden, Bal-Sagoth (UK), and Nile (US). These and other bands are shown to draw inspiration from Classical literature and mythology such as the Homeric Hymns, Vergil's Aeneid, and Caesar's Gallic Wars, historical figures from Rome and ancient Egypt, and even pagan and occult aspects of antiquity. These bands' engagements with Classical antiquity also speak to contemporary issues of nationalism, identity, sexuality, gender, and globalization. The contributors show how the genre of heavy metal brings its own perspectives to Classical reception, and demonstrate that this music-often dismissed as lowbrow-engages in sophisticated dialogue with ancient texts, myths, and historical figures. The authors reveal aspects of Classics' continued appeal while also arguing that the engagement with myth and history is a defining characteristic of heavy metal music, especially in countries that were once part of the Roman Empire

Many metal songs incorporate poetry into their lyrics using a broad array of techniques, both textual and musical. This book develops a novel adaptation, appropriation, and quotation taxonomy that both expands our knowledge of how poetry is used in metal music and is useful for scholars across adaptation studies broadly. The text follows both a quantitative and a qualitative approach. It identifies 384 metal songs by 224 bands with intertextual ties to 146 poems written by fifty-one different poets, with a special focus on Edgar Allan Poe, John Milton's Paradise Lost and the work of WWI's War Poets. This analysis of transformational mechanisms allows poetry to find an afterlife in the form of metal songs and sheds light on both the adaptation and appropriation process and on the semantic shifts occasioned by the recontextualisation of the poems into the metal music culture. Some musicians reuse – and sometimes amplify – old verses related to politics and religion in our present times; others engage in criticism or simple contradiction. In some cases, the bands turn the abstract feelings evoked by the poems into concrete personal experiences. The most adventurous recraft the original verses by changing the point of view of either the poetic voice or the addressed actors, altering the vocaliser of the narrative or the gender of the protagonists. These mechanisms help metal musicians make the poems their own and adjust them to their artistic needs so that the resulting product is consistent with the expectations of the metal music culture.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research is the first comprehensive academic survey of the field of rock music as it stands today. More than 50 years into its life and we still ask - what is rock music, why is it studied, and how does it work, both as music and as cultural activity? This volume draws together 37 of the leading academics working on rock to provide answers to these questions and many more. The text is divided into four major sections: practice of rock (analysis, performance, and recording); theories; business of rock; and social and culture issues. Each chapter combines two approaches, providing a summary of current knowledge of the area concerned as well as the consequences of that research and suggesting profitable subsequent directions to take. This text investigates and presents the field at a level of depth worthy of something which has had such a pervasive influence on the lives of millions.

This is the first book to deal exclusively with ludic interactions with classical antiquity – an understudied research area within classical reception studies – that can shed light on current processes of construction and appropriation of the Greco-Roman world. Classical antiquity has, for many years, been sold as a product and consumed in a wide variety of forms of entertainment. As a result, games, playing and playful experiences are a privileged space for the reception of antiquity. Through the medium of games, players, performers and audiences are put into direct contact with the classical past, and encouraged to experience it in a participative, creative and subjective fashion. The chapters in this volume, written by scholars and practitioners, cover a variety of topics and cultural artefacts including toys, board games and video games, as well as immersive experiences such as museums, theme parks and toga parties. The contributors tackle contemporary ludic practices and several papers establish a dialogue between artists and scholars, contrasting and harmonising their different approaches to the role of playfulness. Other chapters explore the educational potential of these manifestations, or their mediating role in shaping our conceptions of ancient Greece and Rome. Altogether, this edited collection is the first to offer a comprehensive overview of the ways we can play with antiquity.

This study examines the reception of Cleopatra from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day as it has been reflected in popular culture in the United States of America. Daugherty provides a broad overview of the influence of the Egyptian queen by looking at her presence in film, novels, comics, cartoons, TV shows, music, advertising and toys. The aim of the book is to show the different ways in which the figure of Cleopatra was able to reach a large and non-elite audience. Furthermore, Daugherty makes a study of the reception of Cleopatra during her own lifetime. He begins by looking at her portrayal in the vicious propaganda campaign waged by Octavian against his rival Marc Antony. The consequence was that Cleopatra was left with a tarnished reputation after the civil war. Daugherty's examination of both the historical and contemporary reception of Cleopatra shows the enduring legacy of one of history's most remarkable queens.

This volume examines the influence that Pompeii and, to a lesser extent, Herculaneum had on the visual and performing arts in Spain and countries across South America. Covering topics from architecture, painting and decorative arts to theatre, dance and photography, the reader will gain insight into the reception of classical antiquity through the analysis of the close cultural ties between both sides of the Atlantic, in the past and the present. Each contribution has been written by a specialist researcher participating in the project, 'The Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America', funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PGC2018-093509-B-I00 Ministry of Science and Innovation/AEI/ERDF/EU). Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts begins by examining the influence of Pompeiian architecture in Spain in paintings that depict scenes inspired by Roman scenes and also buildings modelled on those of Pompeii. Next, the influence of Pompeii crosses the Atlantic to Mexico with a study of the archaeological site's influence on the visual and performing arts. An exploration of the elitist use of the ancient past in architecture is seen in Chilean architecture, which leads onto an investigation of the new art styles that emerged in the 19th century. Later chapters look into the influence of the ancient frescoes and the use of modern plaster casts of statues. The final chapters are devoted to comics and photography, which also make a study of the places in Latin America nicknamed 'Pompeii' in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Focusing in turn on history, powerful individuals, under-represented voices and the arts, the essays in this collection cover a wide variety of modern and contemporary narrative fiction from Jo Walton and L. Sprague De Camp to T. S. Chaudhry and Catherynne M. Valente. Chapters look into the question of chance versus determinism in the unfolding of historical events, the role individuals play in shaping a society or occasion, and the way art and literature symbolise important messages in counterfactual histories. They also show how uchronic narratives can take advantage of modern literary techniques to reveal new and relevant aspects of the past, giving voices to marginalised minorities and suppressed individuals of the ancient world. Counterfactual fiction and uchronic narratives have been largely up until now the domain of literary critics. However, these modes of literature are here analysed by scholars of Ancient History, Egyptology and Classics, shedding important new light on how cultures of the ancient world have been (and still are) perceived, and to what extent our conceptions of the past are used to explore alternate presents and futures. Alternate history entices the imagination of the public by suggesting hypothetical scenarios that never occurred, underlining a latent tension between reality and imagination, and between determinism and contingency. This interest has resulted in a growing number of publications that gauge the impact of what-if narratives, and this one is the first to give scholars of the ancient world centre-stage.