Introduction

This book calls for a thorough re-examination of C. P. Cavafy’s historical and archaeological poetics by placing his work in the context of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary, cultural, political and sexualized receptions of antiquity. My inquiry pays particular attention to a set of his poems which stage readings of Hellenistic and late ancient objects and texts and discusses them extensively, drawing on material from the recently digitized and publicly available Cavafy Archive of the Onassis Foundation and from books in the poet’s personal library. In this pursuit, I aim to trace Cavafy’s specific historical and scholarly sources, to explore the complex ways in which he made creative use of them and to situate his work in the context of the broad spectrum of intellectual and cultural manifestations of his time, including appropriations of the classics to legitimate British colonial rule and homoerotic desire.