Curating the past: the retrieval of historical memories and utopian ideals

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    Abstract

    Utopia is a landscape of the imagination. In this introduction to the volume, Neil gives an overview of the roles played by the reshaping of texts, physical landscapes, and built environments from 300 to 750 CE in altering people’s memory of their common pasts. Neil looks at different definitions of utopia and reviews recent scholarship on memory studies. In framing the chapters to come, she introduces various methods of approach to memory studies dealing with late-antique sources. These range from North Africa, Italy, Spain, and Gaul in the West, to Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Palestine, and Syria in the East. Neil argues that we can find similar ideologically motivated discourses of destruction and reconstruction of the past right across the Later Roman Empire, from the initial contact of Graeco-Roman communities with Christians up to the Arab-Byzantine wars of the seventh and eighth centuries.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationMemories of Utopia
    Subtitle of host publicationthe revision of histories and landscapes in late antiquity
    EditorsBronwen Neil, Kosta Simic
    Place of PublicationLondon ; New York
    PublisherRoutledge, Taylor and Francis Group
    Chapter1
    Pages3-19
    Number of pages17
    ISBN (Electronic)9780429448508
    ISBN (Print)9781138328679
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020

    Publication series

    NameRoutledge Monographs in Classical Studies
    PublisherRoutledge

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright the Author(s) 2020. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

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