ABSTRACT

Classical Heritage and European Identities examines how the heritages of classical antiquity have been used to construct European identities, and especially the concept of citizenship, in Denmark from the eighteenth century to the present day. It implements a critical historiographical perspective in line with recent work on the "reception" of classical antiquity that has stressed the dialectic relationship between past, present and future.

Arguing that the continuous employment and appropriation of lassical heritages in the Danish context constitutes an interesting case of an imagined geography that is simultaneously based on both national and European identities, the book shows how Denmark’s imagined geography is naturalized through very distinctive uses of classical heritages within the educational and heritage sectors.

Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at https://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. 

chapter 1|19 pages

Classical heritage and European identities

Introducing the Danish case

chapter 2|25 pages

Classical antiquity in the Danish classroom

Oldtidskundskab as heritage

chapter 3|31 pages

The imagined geographies of collecting

Displaying classical antiquity in Danish museums

chapter 4|24 pages

Excavating a wonder of the ancient world

Danish classicism in the field

chapter 5|6 pages

Becoming European

The critical heritage of Danish classicism