49th Annual Procope S. Costas Memorial Lecture: Reconsidering the Myth of Icarus in Modern and Contemporary Icarus

Are there modes of classical reception that disrupt the privileged position afforded to the “original” aesthetic text (or object)? Charles Martindale, one of the early proponents of reception studies in the field of classics, adhered to and fortified the idea of the aesthetic beauty of the model, a Kantian proposition he had no interest in eschewing. As to challenges to this notion, radical theorizations of Black Classicism, for example, support the possibility of new centers of meaning—and even beauty—beyond any notion of an original object to be held in value.

Through the myth of Icarus, Professor of Classics Patrice Rankine ’92 takes one particularly prominent theme among Black authors and artists as a case in point for the proposition of either hopeful transformation, or radical despair. In whatever direction one takes these instances of Black receptions of Icarus, of which he will show a few, what comes out of the engagement is an Icarus radically transformed, if even at all recognizable.

Rankine earned his B.A. in Ancient Greek, magna cum laude, from Brooklyn College, and his Ph.D. in classical languages and literatures from Yale University. In addition to his scholarship, he has served in several significant administrative roles, including as dean for the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond. He is also a committed teacher who won an Excellence in Teaching Award in the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University. He researches the Greco-Roman classics and their afterlife, particularly as they pertain to literature, theater, and the history and performance of race.

He is author of Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title Ulysses in Black: Ralph Ellison, Classicism, and African American Literature and Aristotle and Black Drama: A Theater of Civil Disobedience as well as coauthor of The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas. His current book projects include Theater and Crisis: Myth, Memory, and Racial Reckoning, 1964–2020 and Slavery and the Book.