Framing Classical Reception Studies contains a representative number of analytic and synthetic contributions by scholars from diverse parts of the field of Classical Reception Studies. Together, they afford a synoptic view and typology of an extremely large and continuously diversifying discipline. Attentive to questions such as what, by whom, in what contexts and to what ends Classics have functioned and are functioning in our culture, all contributors ask themselves from what conceptual or disciplinary frame they approach the reception of the cultures of classical Greek and Roman antiquity. Within this questioning format, the book also contains suggestions for future agendas of research, and forcefully argues for the political, cultural and cognitive relevance of classical receptions in the Academy.

Raphael's Poetics applies strategies of interpretation implicit in antique poetry to the visual art of the Renaissance, concentrating on Raphael's Roman works and their cultural context. Until recently, scholarly discussion was dominated by the application of Renaissance literary theory to visual arts, obscuring the fact that Renaissance humanists who contributed to literary theory were, in the first instance and almost without exception, poets rather than theorists. To counter the tendency towards theory, the hermeneutic rules implicit in their poetry and thus the poetry itself is brought to the fore by this study as a hermeneutical tool. By focusing on the interaction between the work of art and its public, Rijser offers innovative interpretations of canonical works and important insights into the cultural history of the early modern period. Reconstructing a visual grammar and defining the context in which Raphael's art functioned, this study illuminates contemporary significances that have since been lost.