Suchergebnisse

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Nassia Yakovaki, The «Traité des trois imposteurs)) and the European Enlightenment The aim of this article is to present the obscure but fascinating story of the production and diffusion of the Traité des trois imposteurs, the best seller of the clandestine literature in Europe during the first half of the 18th century and to discuss the new and to some extent controversial interpretations that the study of this text has provoked as far as the understanding of the European Enlightenment is concerned. The importance of this text derives, first of all, from its subversive ideas: it offers a bold and straightforward attack on all three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) by rejecting the principle of revelation and by pronouncing their founders as «impostors», while attributing the appearance of organized religions to political interests. Yet, the significance of this text goes beyond its content: the conditions of its production as well as of its circulation offer to modern historical research the chance to explore an «underground universe», peopled by relatively unknown figures, working among the middlemen of the publishing world. These circles —as it seems— had the readiness to respond creatively to a turbulent religious and political environment, to adopt rigid philosophical stands and to step into radical politics. Historical research has recently succeeded in investigating the complicated issues of the origin, dating, authorship and circulation of this notorious text and in disentangling the thread connecting this late 17th century production with the medieval legend of the «imposture». Crucial among these findings is on the one hand the bond that links the Traité with the works of Spinoza and on the other the connection between the production of the text and a group of people in late 17th and early 18th century Holland. The interesting questions concerning the general understanding of the era of «the crisis of the European consciousness» that the historical scholarship about the Traité has raised have already led to the formation of a new, stimulating, yet controversial historiographical trend which elaborates a new interpretation of the Enlightenment, around the idea of an early and radical Enlightenment (Margaret Jacob, 1981 and 2003, Jonathan Israel, 2001).

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Yiannis Papatheodorou, a The cruel April of 1944»: Fiction, History and Memory in Straus Tsirkas's Drifting Cities Stratis Tsirkas, a distinguished Greek diaspora novelist in Egypt, published his important and controversial trilogy {The Club, Ariagne, The Bat), in the early '60s. The novel is situated in three colonial Mediterranean cities —Jerusalem, Cairo and Alexandria— drifting towards chaos in a war-torn Middle East, during 1942-1944. As far as the plot is concerned, the trilogy is inscribed to the wider context of postwar European literary «master-narratives» elaborating representations of war, Nazism and resistance, and also opening an agenda to the traumatic phenomena of a discontinuous modernity: violence, social repression, exclusion of the Other. This article discusses the politics of history and memory in Stratis Tsirkas's trilogy Drifting Cities in order to show how he problematizes the tropes of historical representation in a dialogical perspective, by focalizing to the Greek military left underground «movement of April 1944». His historical point of view, which clearly can be identified as the «return of the repressed», is related to the questions of an alternative narration about the past, enriched within a critical and deliberating interpretation of the left collective memory.