Re-imagining the Past

Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture

Edited by Dimitris Tziovas

Classical Presences

Offers new insights into the modern Greek reception of antiquity
Covers a period stretching from the twelfth century CE to the present day
Incorporates chapters which adopt a comparative perspective

Re-imagining the Past

Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture

Edited by Dimitris Tziovas

Description

Antiquity has often been perceived as the source of Greece's modern achievements, as well as its frustrations, with the continuity between ancient and modern Greek culture and the legacy of classical Greece in Europe dominating and shaping current perceptions of the classical past.

By moving beyond the dominant perspectives on the Greek past, this edited volume shifts attention to the ways this past has been constructed, performed, (ab)used, Hellenized, canonized, and ultimately decolonized and re-imagined. For the contributors, re-imagining the past is an opportunity to critically examine and engage imaginatively with various approaches. Chapters explore both the role of antiquity in texts and established cultural practices and its popular, material and everyday uses, charting the transition in the study of the reception of antiquity in modern Greek culture from an emphasis on the continuity of the past to the recognition of its diversity.

Incorporating a number of chapters which adopt a comparative perspective, the volume re-imagines Greek antiquity and invites the reader to look at the different uses and articulations of the past both in and outside Greece, ranging from literature to education, and from politics to photography.

Re-imagining the Past

Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture

Edited by Dimitris Tziovas

Classical Presences

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
1. Introduction: decolonizing antiquity, heritage politics and performing the past, Dimitris Tziovas
Part I: Antiquity, Greece, and Europe
2. Collecting the past: Greek antiquaries and archaeological knowledge in the Venetian Empire, Anastasia Stouraiti
3. Re-imagining Greek antiquity in 1821: Shelley's Hellas in its literary and political context, Roderick Beaton
4. A syncretic antiquity in translation: polis and political modernity in conflict in nineteenth-century Greek Antigones, Alexandra Lianeri
Part II: Hellenisms, Institutions, and Politics
5. Antique names and self-identification: Hellenes, Graikoi and Romaioi from late Byzantium to the Greek nation-state, Tassos A. Kaplanis
6. The Christian Hellenism and linguistic archaism of Neofytos Doukas, Peter Mackridge
7. The University of Athens and Greek antiquity (1837-1937), Vangelis Karamanolakis
8. Antiquity as cold war propaganda: the political uses of the classical past in post-civil war Greece, Alexander Kazamias
Part III: Material Culture and Performance
9. Dead archaeologists, buried gods: archaeology as an agent of modernity in Greece, Dimitris Plantzos
10. In the spirit of matter: re-connecting to antiquity in the Greek present, Eleana Yalouri
11. Postcards from Metaxas' Greece: the uses of classical antiquity in tourism photography, Katerina Zacharia
12. Between texts and contexts: moderns against ancients in the reception of ancient tragedy in Greece (1900-1933), Eleni Papazoglou
Part IV: Literary Receptions of Antiquity
13. Sin and the City: a mid-fifteenth-century lament for the fall of Athens to the 'Persians', Gonda Van Steen
14. Lucretian moments in modern Greek poetry, David Ricks
15. Rethinking the Greek Legacy: Dorians in modern Greek fiction, Gunnar de Boel
16. Yannis Ritsos, Marxist dialectics and the re-imagining of Ancient Greece, Marinos Pourgouris
17. The wound of history: Ritsos and the reception of Philoctetes, Dimitris Tziovas
18. Plato, Seferis and Heaney: poetry as redress, Rowena Fowler
Part V: Greek Culture and Classical Reception
19. Exceptionalities and paradigms: ancient and modern Greek culture in classical reception research, Lorna Hardwick
Bibliography
Index

Re-imagining the Past

Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture

Edited by Dimitris Tziovas

Classical Presences

Author Information

Dimitris Tziovas is Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham

Contributors:

Dimitris Tziovas
Anastasia Stouraiti
Roderick Beaton
Alexandra Lianeri
Tassos A. Kaplanis
Peter Mackridge
Vangelis Karamanolakis
Alexander Kazamias
Dimitris Plantzos
Eleana Yalouri
Katerina Zacharia
Eleni Papazoglou
Gonda Van Steen
David Ricks
Gunnar de Boel
Marinos Pourgouris
Dimitris Tziovas
Rowena Fowler
Lorna Hardwick

Re-imagining the Past

Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture

Edited by Dimitris Tziovas

Classical Presences

Reviews and Awards

"This is a rich and varied volume that includes excellent and innovative work from a balanced group of established and young, male and female scholars, and I warmly recommend it to anyone with an interest in Greek history and the dilemmas of identity, ownership and legacy related to national narratives in general, Europe's Greek legacy, and the modern Greek experience." -- Trine Stauning Willert, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies

"This volume delivers a wealth of information on Modern Greek perceptions of the past, and it goes far beyond the acceptance of glorifying nationalist views of continuity. The variety of essays should help Modern Greek Studies of classical reception reach a larger field." -- Charles Stewart , Journal of Modern Greek Studies

"This collection expands the discussion of classical reception further in the Modern Greek world, not narrowing the argument to literature, but enriching the research fields, including history, arts, and humanities in general ... embedding cultural studies in the contemporary discourse." -- Georgia Tsatsani , diogenes