Suchergebnisse

Review of: Inter–Esse: Themata kai Ermineutikes Proseggiseis sti Neoelliniki Logotehnia ('Inter–Esse: Themes and interpretative approaches to modern Greek literature'), Sophia Iakovidou (2020)
Athens: Gutenberg, 451 pp.,
ISBN 978-9-60012-148-3, p/bk, €23.00

"In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, and with British political influence over Greece soon to be ceded to the United States, there was nonetheless a degree of cultural interaction between Greek and British literati. Sponsored or assisted by the British Council, this interaction was notable for its diversity and quality alike. Indeed, the British Council in Greece made a more significant contribution to local culture in that period than at any other time, and perhaps in any other country. Many of the participants among them Patrick Leigh Fermor, Steven Runciman, and Louis MacNeice are well known, while others deserve to be better known than they are today. But what has been less fully discussed, and what the volume sets out to do, is to explore the two-way relations between Greek and British literary production in which the British Council played a particularly important role until the outbreak of armed conflict in Cyprus in 1955, which rendered further contacts of this kind difficult. Close attention is paid to the variety of ways - marked by personal affinities and allegiances, but also by political tensions - in which the British Council functioned as an agent of interaction in a climate where a complex blend of traditional Anglophilia or Phihellenism found itself encountering a new post-war and Cold War environment. What is distinctive about the volume, beyond the inclusion of much recent archival research, is its attention to the British Council as part of the story of Greek letters, and not just as a place in which various British men and women of letters worked. The British Council found itself, sometimes more through improvisation and personal affinities, rather than through careful planning, at the heart of some key developments, notably in terms of important periodical publications which had a lasting influence on Greek letters. Though in the cultural forum that influence was arguably to be less pervasive than that of France, with its more ambitious cultural outreach, or than that of the USA in later decades, the role of the British Council in Greece in this crucial period of Greek (and indeed European) post-war history continues to make a rich case study in cultural politics. This volume thus fills a gap in the rich bibliography on Anglo-Greek relations and contributes to a wider scholarly and public discussion about cultural politics."--Provided by publisher.

The Moon exerted a powerful influence on ancient intellectual history, as a playground for the scientific imagination. This book explores the history of the Moon in the Greco-Roman imaginary from Homer to Lucian, with special focus on those accounts of the Moon, its attributes, and its 'inhabitants' given by ancient philosophers, natural scientists and imaginative writers including Pythagoreans, Plato and the Old Academy, Varro, Plutarch and Lucian. ní Mheallaigh shows how the Moon's enigmatic presence made it a key site for thinking about the gaze (erotic, philosophical and scientific) and the relation between appearance and reality. It was also a site for hoax in antiquity as well as today. Central issues explored include the view from elsewhere (selēnoskopia), the relation of science and fiction, the interaction between the beginnings of science in the classical polis and the imperial period, and the limits of knowledge itself.

Review of: I Logotechnia Sto Panepistimio: I Sygkrotisi Tis Epistimis Tis Neoellinikis Filologias (1942–1982) ('Literature at the University: The Formation of the Scholarly Study of Modern Greek Literature [1942–1982]'), Venetia Apostolidou (2022)
Athens: Polis, 560 pp.,
ISBN 978-9-60435-785-7, p/bk, €27.70

Discipline: études grecquesLa pagination du document disponible sous forme électronique ne correspond pas exactement à celle de la thèse "papier" présentée. Cela tient aux changements introduits par la version de Word utilisée pour convertir les textes grecs, composés à l'origine manuellement en Ismini, au format Unicode. ; This work is a study of the maxims (γνῶμαι) upon which the Greek literature, from the first poets to philosophers and historians, invites its audience to meditate. The role of those maxims in the elaboration of the moral, political, juridical and philosophical tradition is very important. If, for the Ancients, Homer was the master of the γνώμη, if the "mythical" explanations of the world were also "gnomic", so are the first philosophers, often poets themselves, only known through sententious fragments. The maxims are also central in the Histories of Herodotus, who builds, side by side, an historical argument and a web of poetical explanations. They are one of the keys to the sophists' art of persuasion. Thucydides reinvents them according to different criteria et rejects their poetic origin. As for Aristotle, he imagines a science devoted to them, the "gnomology". The enduring quality of those maxims is remarkable, as well as the role they play in the history of ideas in ancient Greece. Once put into words, the γνῶμαι seem to become set as so many unchanging formulas. But their meaning and significance change as time goes by, ensuring their relevance, even when the beliefs and values which had given birth to them became, if not suppressed, at least discussed, or even disputed. One must consider how those maxims, even though neither the words nor the formulas have changed, may have been used to explain very different realities, so distant sometimes that the latest could appear to make a clean sweep of the past. ; Ce travail est consacré à l'étude des « sentences » (γνῶμαι) que la littérature grecque, depuis les premiers poètes jusqu'aux philosophes et historiens, invite ses auditeurs et, plus ...

Discipline: études grecquesLa pagination du document disponible sous forme électronique ne correspond pas exactement à celle de la thèse "papier" présentée. Cela tient aux changements introduits par la version de Word utilisée pour convertir les textes grecs, composés à l'origine manuellement en Ismini, au format Unicode. ; This work is a study of the maxims (γνῶμαι) upon which the Greek literature, from the first poets to philosophers and historians, invites its audience to meditate. The role of those maxims in the elaboration of the moral, political, juridical and philosophical tradition is very important. If, for the Ancients, Homer was the master of the γνώμη, if the "mythical" explanations of the world were also "gnomic", so are the first philosophers, often poets themselves, only known through sententious fragments. The maxims are also central in the Histories of Herodotus, who builds, side by side, an historical argument and a web of poetical explanations. They are one of the keys to the sophists' art of persuasion. Thucydides reinvents them according to different criteria et rejects their poetic origin. As for Aristotle, he imagines a science devoted to them, the "gnomology". The enduring quality of those maxims is remarkable, as well as the role they play in the history of ideas in ancient Greece. Once put into words, the γνῶμαι seem to become set as so many unchanging formulas. But their meaning and significance change as time goes by, ensuring their relevance, even when the beliefs and values which had given birth to them became, if not suppressed, at least discussed, or even disputed. One must consider how those maxims, even though neither the words nor the formulas have changed, may have been used to explain very different realities, so distant sometimes that the latest could appear to make a clean sweep of the past. ; Ce travail est consacré à l'étude des « sentences » (γνῶμαι) que la littérature grecque, depuis les premiers poètes jusqu'aux philosophes et historiens, invite ses auditeurs et, plus tard, ses lecteurs à méditer. La place de ces maximes dans l'élaboration de la tradition morale, politique, juridique et philosophique est très importante. Si, pour les Anciens, Homère est le maître de la γνώμη, si les explications « mythiques » du monde sont également « gnomiques », de même, les premiers philosophes, souvent poètes eux-mêmes, ne sont connus que par de sentencieux fragments. Ce sont encore les sentences qui nourrissent les Enquêtes d'Hérodote, l'historien développant, côte à côte, un raisonnement historique et un réseau d'explications poétiques. Ce sont elles dont les sophistes font l'une des clefs de leur art, celui de persuader. Thucydide, lui, les réinvente selon d'autres critères et rejette leur origine poétique. Quant à Aristote, il invente leur science, la « gnomologie ». La pérennité de ces maximes est donc remarquable, tout comme le rôle qu'elles jouent dans l'histoire des idées en Grèce ancienne. Une fois exprimées, les γνῶμαι semblent se figer en autant de « formules ». Mais leur rôle, leur portée ont évolué au fil du temps, assurant à chaque fois leur pertinence, y compris lorsque les croyances et les valeurs qui leur avaient donné naissance se trouvèrent, sinon abolies, du moins discutées, voire contestées. Il convient donc d'apprécier de quelle manière ces sentences, sans que ni les mots ni les formules ne changent, ont pu servir à expliquer des réalités très différentes, si éloignées parfois que les plus récentes pouvaient sembler faire table rase du passé.

In this paper, I argue that Greek poetry is a living tradition characterized by a diversity of voices and styles and that Greek poetry is a vital part of contemporary World Literature. The diversity of voices in contemporary Greek poetry gives it both aesthetic value and political relevance. Greek poetry, as it survives translation into a number of languages, including English, gives us a model for the successful translation of texts in both World literature and Comparative literature. A thematic analysis of some poems is presented in this paper. The aim is not to chronicle the contemporary Greek poetic production but to show how Greek poetic tradition continues to expand beyond national boundaries.

The first period of Albanian rule in Northern Epirus, from 1912 to 1945, witnessed a continuation of the oral tradition enriched by the experience of the unceasing struggle for liberation. It should be stressed that what we now call "literature of the ethnic Greek minority of Albania" is in fact nothing but an integral part of Greek literature. It is the literary output of the Greek inhabitants of the area who, despite the adverse political developments that left them outside the borders of the Greek state, maintained their creativity and their Greek identity. From 1945 onwards, with the establishment of the People's Republic of Albania, any attempt to assess the literature of the Greek minority in Northern Epirus stumbles upon the political and national dichotomy of the land and its people. Firstly, the writers who identified themselves with the Communist ideals were following the principles of Socialist Realism. Secondly, those who followed a path of silent resistance and struggled for the preservation of the Greek language reverted to allegory and cryptic writing.

In Greek children's literature, very few books deal with Roma children, especially in a protagonist role – therefore, the aim of this article is to examine literary re[1]presentations of Roma children. The four books presented in this paper help the youngest readers understand how marginalised this social group is in the context of Greek society. Adopting the basic principles of multicultural literature as well as the method of imagology or cultural iconology, it can be said that prejudices and stereotypes are projected through literary characters. In addition, the perpetual persecution of the Roma people is revealed in the works analysed herein, including their genocide during the Second World War. The ideological stance of the books is one of friendliness towards Roma children, even though the racist and suspicious attitude of non-Roma is not in any way glossed over or concealed. In conclusion, according to the authors of the article, what is missing in Greek and European children's literature is the authentic portrayal of Roma and the authentic voices of Roma writers.