Studies of W. E. B. Du Bois typically emphasize his shift from an elitist devotion to European classics to a more radical promotion of African culture. These essays move beyond this simple dichotomy. We aim to demonstrate that throughout his life, Du Bois used classical ideas to challenge white Americans' exclusive claims to power, even as he recognized and critiqued the role of Classics in sustaining racist hierarchies and institutions. Rather than focus exclusively on explicit citations of Greece and Rome in Du Bois's writing, we use Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s model of Signifyin(g) and Lorna Hardwick's conception of 'fuzzy connections' to trace and interrogate Du Bois's elusive engagement with Classics. We provide detailed studies of three works: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), The Star of Ethiopia (1910s) and 'Of the Ruling of Men' (1920). The concluding essay situates Du Bois's classicism in the wider context of African American literature and at the intersection of debates on education, humanism, and race in America. Throughout these papers, we examine Du Bois's understanding of what is at stake for those who present themselves as the inheritors and interpreters of antiquity. By putting Du Bois back at the centre of ongoing scholarly conversations on black classicism, we hope to show that his inventive and political approach to the past provides a valuable model for reception studies today.
Chapter 6 comments on the rarely observed telestich at Met. 1.452–5, spelling out the noun Naso. The chapter posits that it ought to be connected to the acrostic deus, noted by Isidor Hilberg at 1.29–32. Together, the two so-named intexts form the authorial signature Naso deus, which resembles Ovid’s references to himself elsewhere in his poetry and invites a number of playful interpretations ranging from the metapoetic to the political. By including intexts in his poetry, Ovid inserts himself into a tradition of literary sophistication that reaches back ultimately to the Hellenistic era. Yet Ovid’s signature also highlights the poet’s role as the demiurge who created the cosmos of the Metamorphoses. The deus acrostic occurs in a passage describing the formation of the universe, and the Naso telestich marks the famous Primus amor Phoebi episode, which narrates the world’s transformation into a truly Ovidian realm of illicit sexual affairs between humans and gods. For this literary creation, the signature suggests, Ovid can claim the title of Naso deus.
Aratus has been notorious for his wordplay since the first decades of his reception. Hellenistic readers such as Callimachus, Leonidas, or ‘King Ptolemy’ seem to have picked up on the pun on the author's own name atPhaenomena2, as well as on the famous λεπτή acrostic atPhaen.783–6 that will be revisited here. Three carefully placed occurrences of the adjective have so far been uncovered in the passage, but for a full appreciation of its elegance we must note that Aratus has set his readers up to notice a fourth.
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