Roman History in Hewitt, McGuinness, Friel, Heaney

Reception Studies is a major growth area in Classics. The past has an impact on the present in an active rather than a passive way. T S Eliot explains: ‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different’. Marina Carr cites the example of Shakespeare: ‘he took from everywhere but look what he did with his plunder’.