This volume examines the long and complex history of the Greco-Roman
tradition in South America, arguing that the Classics have played a
crucial, though often overlooked, role in the self-definition in the New
World. Chronicling and theorizing this history through a detailed
analysis of five key moments, chosen from the early and late colonial
period, the emancipatory era, and the 20th and 21st centuries, it also
examines an eclectic selection of both literary and cinematographic
works and artefacts such as maps, letters, scientific treatises, songs,
monuments, political speeches, and even the drafts of proposals for
curricular changes across Latin America.
The heterogeneous cases analysed in this book reveal cultural anxieties
that recur through different periods, fundamentally related to the
'newness' of the continent and the formation of identities imagined as
both Western and non-Western - a genealogy of apprehensions that South
American intellectuals and political figures have typically experienced
when thinking of their own role in world history. In tracing this
genealogy, The Classics in South America innovatively reformulates our
understanding of well-known episodes in the cultural history of the
region, while providing a theoretical and historical resource for
further studies of the importance of the Classical tradition across
Latin America.
