Modern Greek Languages & Literature

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.

This book examines the memories that shaped Asia Minor refugee identity, focusing on the ways in which these memories continue to reverberate in contemporary Greek culture. It explores how memories of Asia Minor frame wider social debates, foster affective alliances, inform different notions of belonging and provide a toolkit for addressing contemporary concerns."

'This book establishes a cinematic and cultural history of Greece during the last difficult decade. It focuses on key films from the post-2009 ‘New’ or ‘Weird Wave’ of Greek cinema, proposing the Greek Weird Wave as a paradigmatic cinema movement of biopolitical realism.'

"Over the past thirty years, the representation of Greek history in literature, film, and popular culture has undergone significant change. This book investigates the ways in which history operates as a tool for contemporary storytellers in various genres to contemplate the meaning of the past and its implications for the future"--

"Although the Astoria section of New York has been considered the largest Hellenic settlement outside of Greece or Cyprus, it is striking that it has received relatively little attention by writers, artists, and social scientists. The present bilingual book of poems and images, both as a physical object and as a discursive project, is about a culturally neglected enclave in the midst of ethnic and social transformations...Poet and Diplomat Yiorgos Chouliaras states: “Alexiou’s poetry is strikingly visual and lyrically obsessive.”

This is a unique book that combines a political narrative with poetry to examine the role of culture and the fusion of religion and politics during the struggle against colonialism. The context is Britain's geopolitical interests in the Middle East. The author utilizes a vital cultural source echoing the authentic voice of the people, Cypriot folk poems, which has remained virtually unknown to the English reader until now. Translated into English, they are interwoven into the book's narrative to reflect the yearning for social justice and the political sentiments of the vast majority of the population, the peasants, in a rural society.