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Dialogos" encompasses Greek language and literature, Greek history
and archaeology, Greek culture and thought, present and past: a
territory of distinctive richness and unsurpassed influence. It
seeks to foster critical awareness and informed debate about the
ideas, events and achievements that make up this territory, by
redefining their qualities, by exploring their interconnections and
by reinterpreting their significance within Western culture and
beyond.
Called variously the 'Byzantine epic', the 'epic of Modern Greece',
an 'epic-romance' and 'romance', the poem of Digenes Akrites has,
since its rediscovery towards the end of the nineteenth century,
exerted a tenacious hold on the imagination of scholars from a wide
range of disciplines and from many countries of the world, as well
as of writers and public figures in Greece. There are many reasons
for this, not least among them the prestige accorded to 'national
epics' in the nineteenth century and for some time afterwards.
Another reason must surely be the work's uniqueness: there is
nothing quite like Digenes Akrites in either Byzantine or Modern
Greek literature. However, this uniqueness is not confined to its
problematic place in the literary 'canon' and literary history. As
historical testimony, and in its complex relationship to later oral
song and to older myth and story-telling, Digenes Akrites again has
no close parallels of comparable length in Byzantine or Modern
Greek culture. Whether as a literary text, a historical source, or
a manifestation of an oral popular culture, Digenes Akrites
remains, more than a century after its rediscovery, persistently
enigmatic. This Byzantine 'epic' or 'romance' has now become the
focus of new research across a range of disciplines since the
publication in 1985 of a radically revised edition based on the
Escorial text of the poem, by Stylianos Alexiou. The papers in this
volume, derived from a conference held in May 1992 at King's
College London, seeks to present and discuss the results of this
new research. Digenes Akrites: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic
Poetry is the second in the series published by Variorum for the
Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London.
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 a considerable 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
Philhellenism 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 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.
Every Greek and every friend of the country knows the date 1821,
when the banner of revolution was raised against the empire of the
Ottoman Turks, and the story of 'Modern Greece' is usually said to
begin. Less well known, but of even greater importance, was the
international recognition given to Greece as an independent state
with full sovereign rights, as early as 1830. This places Greece in
the vanguard among the new nation-states of Europe whose emergence
would gather momentum through to the early twentieth century, a
process whose repercussions continue to this day. Starting out from
that perspective, which has been all but ignored until now, this
book brings together the work of scholars from a variety of
disciplines to explore the contribution of characteristically
nineteenth-century European modes of thought to the 'making' of
Greece as a modern nation. Closely linked to nationalism is
romanticism, which exercised a formative role through imaginative
literature, as is demonstrated in several chapters on poetry and
fiction. Under the broad heading 'uses of the past', other chapters
consider ways in which the legacies, first of ancient Greece, then
later of Byzantium, came to be mobilized in the construction of a
durable national identity at once 'Greek' and 'modern'. The Making
of Modern Greece aims to situate the Greek experience, as never
before, within the broad context of current theoretical and
historical thinking about nations and nationalism in the modern
world. The book spans the period from 1797, when Rigas Velestinlis
published a constitution for an imaginary 'Hellenic Republic', at
the cost of his life, to the establishment of the modern Olympic
Games, in Athens in 1896, an occasion which sealed with
international approval the hard-won self-image of 'Modern Greece'
as it had become established over the previous century.
In exploring the significance of Homer for the poetry of modern
Greece - benign shade or looming shadow? - Dr Ricks is tackling a
theme that has implications for the study of poetic influence in
general. In this 1989 book, he takes the work of Sikelianos, Cavafy
and Seferis and subjects a selection of poems to a careful
scrutiny. These poems are not imitations of Homer but fresh
engagements with Homeric themes, and comparison of the modern
versions with the original is found to be illuminating for the
poets' methods of composition. Dr Ricks does not lose sight of the
larger significance of his subject, and modern poets from outside
Greece - Eliot and Pound, in particular - find their way into the
discussion. All Greek is translated and the reader has no need to
be a specialist in modern or in ancient Greek to find this study
absorbing and instructive.
The Evolution of Alienation: Trauma, Promise and the Millennium
presents a collection of essays that examine the prevalence of
alienation in the contemporary world. Although the authors share a
critical approach to society, their views of alienation vary. While
some feel that alienation is inescapable under the conditions of
late modernity, others see that especially at this time there are
opportunities to overcome alienation. Testing their approaches, the
authors touch on highly diverse domains of life. The book is
divided into four sections, each with a focus on how alienation is
produced and, perhaps, overcome. Part I presents theoretical
approaches to 'shifting views of alienation'. Here the authors
discuss how alienation is disclosed in social science, in
technology, and in biological constructions of the human being.
Part II deals with political consequences of alienation. The three
chapters focus on how alienation can lead to fascist beliefs, how
it functions in the development of authoritarian personalities, and
how alienation is disclosed in teen-age violence, but also in the
justice meted out to desperate teens, without compassion. Part III
includes examinations of 'alienation in identity, culture, and
religion'. Here, researchers discuss how the alienating conditions
of globalization create alienated identities that are carnivalized
in shock music and in exploitative television shows. The last
chapter of this section sees in these developments evidence of our
inability or unwillingness as social scientists to deal with
transcendental values. Part IV focuses on phenomena from everyday
life, showing how alienation undermines the advantages of
community, and the intimacies of dialogue. Although the very
concern with alienation shows awareness of trauma, there are,
throughout the book, hints of promise - in technology, in loving
and creative domesticity, in activism and through grass-roots
initiatives in education. Through an interest in the cosmos human
being may yet discover the way out of alienating labyrinths.
The Evolution of Alienation: Trauma, Promise and the Millennium
presents a collection of essays that examine the prevalence of
alienation in the contemporary world. Although the authors share a
critical approach to society, their views of alienation vary. While
some feel that alienation is inescapable under the conditions of
late modernity, others see that especially at this time there are
opportunities to overcome alienation. Testing their approaches, the
authors touch on highly diverse domains of life. The book is
divided into four sections, each with a focus on how alienation is
produced and, perhaps, overcome. Part I presents theoretical
approaches to "shifting views of alienation". Here the authors
discuss how alienation is disclosed in social science, in
technology, and in biological constructions of the human being.
Part II deals with political consequences of alienation. The three
chapters focus on how alienation can lead to fascist beliefs, how
it functions in the development of authoritarian personalities, and
how alienation is disclosed in teen-age violence, but also in the
justice meted out to desperate teens, without compassion. Part III
includes examinations of "alienation in identity, culture, and
religion". Here, researchers discuss how the alienating conditions
of globalization create alienated identities that are carnivalized
in shock music and in exploitative television shows. The last
chapter of this section sees in these developments evidence of our
inability or unwillingness as social scientists to deal with
transcendental values. Part IV focuses on phenomena from everyday
life, showing how alienation undermines the advantages of
community, and the intimacies of dialogue. Although the very
concern with alienation shows awareness of trauma, there are,
throughout the book, hints of promise - in technology, in loving
and creative domesticity, in activism and through grass-roots
initiatives in education. Through an interest in the cosmos human
being may yet discover the way out
The Greek Bible and the services of the Orthodox Church have proved
a rich source of language for many poets of modern Greece, and
perhaps for none more than for Kostis Palamas, Angeles Sikelianos
and Odysseas Elytis, whose overlapping careers span the period
1876-1996. A blurring of the boundaries between Orthodoxy and
'Greekness' (
Called variously the 'Byzantine epic', the 'epic of Modern Greece',
an 'epic-romance' and 'romance', the poem of Digenes Akrites has,
since its rediscovery towards the end of the nineteenth century,
exerted a tenacious hold on the imagination of scholars from a wide
range of disciplines and from many countries of the world, as well
as of writers and public figures in Greece. There are many reasons
for this, not least among them the prestige accorded to 'national
epics' in the nineteenth century and for some time afterwards.
Another reason must surely be the work's uniqueness: there is
nothing quite like Digenes Akrites in either Byzantine or Modern
Greek literature. However, this uniqueness is not confined to its
problematic place in the literary 'canon' and literary history. As
historical testimony, and in its complex relationship to later oral
song and to older myth and story-telling, Digenes Akrites again has
no close parallels of comparable length in Byzantine or Modern
Greek culture. Whether as a literary text, a historical source, or
a manifestation of an oral popular culture, Digenes Akrites
remains, more than a century after its rediscovery, persistently
enigmatic. This Byzantine 'epic' or 'romance' has now become the
focus of new research across a range of disciplines since the
publication in 1985 of a radically revised edition based on the
Escorial text of the poem, by Stylianos Alexiou. The papers in this
volume, derived from a conference held in May 1992 at King's
College London, seeks to present and discuss the results of this
new research. Digenes Akrites: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic
Poetry is the second in the series published by Variorum for the
Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London.
Dialogos" encompasses Greek language and literature, Greek history
and archaeology, Greek culture and thought, present and past: a
territory of distinctive richness and unsurpassed influence. It
seeks to foster critical awareness and informed debate about the
ideas, events and achievements that make up this territory, by
redefining their qualities, by exploring their interconnections and
by reinterpreting their significance within Western culture and
beyond.
Perhaps because of the fact that modern Greece is, through the
Orthodox Church, inextricably linked with the Byzantine heritage,
the precise meaning of this heritage, in its various aspects, has
hitherto been surprisingly little discussed by scholars. This
collection of specially commissioned essays aims to present an
overview of some of the different, and often conflicting,
tendencies manifested by modern Greek attitudes to Byzantium since
the late eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The aim is to show just
how formative views of Byzantium have been for modern Greek life
and letters: for historiography and imaginative literature, on the
one hand, and on the other, for language, law, and the definition
of a culture. All Greek has been translated, and the volume is
aimed at Byzantinists and Neohellenists alike.
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 a considerable 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
Philhellenism 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 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.
Every Greek and every friend of the country knows the date 1821,
when the banner of revolution was raised against the empire of the
Ottoman Turks, and the story of 'Modern Greece' is usually said to
begin. Less well known, but of even greater importance, was the
international recognition given to Greece as an independent state
with full sovereign rights, as early as 1830. This places Greece in
the vanguard among the new nation-states of Europe whose emergence
would gather momentum through to the early twentieth century, a
process whose repercussions continue to this day. Starting out from
that perspective, which has been all but ignored until now, this
book brings together the work of scholars from a variety of
disciplines to explore the contribution of characteristically
nineteenth-century European modes of thought to the 'making' of
Greece as a modern nation. Closely linked to nationalism is
romanticism, which exercised a formative role through imaginative
literature, as is demonstrated in several chapters on poetry and
fiction. Under the broad heading 'uses of the past', other chapters
consider ways in which the legacies, first of ancient Greece, then
later of Byzantium, came to be mobilized in the construction of a
durable national identity at once 'Greek' and 'modern'. The Making
of Modern Greece aims to situate the Greek experience, as never
before, within the broad context of current theoretical and
historical thinking about nations and nationalism in the modern
world. The book spans the period from 1797, when Rigas Velestinlis
published a constitution for an imaginary 'Hellenic Republic', at
the cost of his life, to the establishment of the modern Olympic
Games, in Athens in 1896, an occasion which sealed with
international approval the hard-won self-image of 'Modern Greece'
as it had become established over the previous century.
In exploring the significance of Homer for the poetry of modern
Greece - benign shade or looming shadow? - Dr Ricks is tackling a
theme that has implications for the study of poetic influence in
general. In this 1989 book, he takes the work of Sikelianos, Cavafy
and Seferis and subjects a selection of poems to a careful
scrutiny. These poems are not imitations of Homer but fresh
engagements with Homeric themes, and comparison of the modern
versions with the original is found to be illuminating for the
poets' methods of composition. Dr Ricks does not lose sight of the
larger significance of his subject, and modern poets from outside
Greece - Eliot and Pound, in particular - find their way into the
discussion. All Greek is translated and the reader has no need to
be a specialist in modern or in ancient Greek to find this study
absorbing and instructive.
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