A proletarian classics?

Abstract

The relationship between the study of Greek and Roman classics and European communism, particularly in the USSR and the Soviet bloc, has attracted increasing critical attention over the past decade. The international workshop in which the following articles were initially presented as papers was held online in October 2021. Hosted by the School of Classics, University of St. Andrews, and sponsored by the Classical Reception Studies Network, it aimed to explore further the conflicted and complex relationship between classics and communism, using the prism of the ambiguous or polysemic concept of proletarianism. What, after all, is “a proletarian classics”?