scholarly journals Bodies Out of Time: Sculpting Queer Poetics and Queering Classical Sculpture in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Raw Material ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek World

AbstractTwo major themes dominate the poetry of the Alexandrian poet, C. P. Cavafy: homosexual desire and Greekness, broadly defined. This paper explores the interconnectivity of these motifs, showing how Cavafy’s poetic queerness is expressed through his relationship with the ancient Greek world, especially Hellenistic Alexandria. I focus on Cavafy’s incorporation of ancient sculpture into his poetry and the ways that sculpture, for Cavafy, is a vehicle for expressing forbidden desires in an acceptable way. In this, I draw on the works of Liana Giannakopoulou on statuary in modern Greek poetry and Dimitris Papanikolaou on Cavafy’s homosexuality and its presentation in the poetry. Sculpture features in around a third of Cavafy’s poems and pervades it in various ways: the inclusion of physical statues as focuses of ecphrastic description, the use of sculptural language and metaphor, and the likening of Cavafy’s beloveds to Greek marbles of the past, to name but three. This article argues that Cavafy utilizes the statuary of the ancient Greek world as raw material, from which he sculpts his modern Greek queerness, variously desiring the statuesque bodies of contemporary Alexandrian youths and constructing eroticized depictions of ancient Greek marbles. The very ontology of queerness is, for Cavafy, ‘created’ using explicitly sculptural metaphors (e.g. the repeated uses of the verb κάνω [‘to make’] in descriptions of ‘those made like me’) and he employs Hellenistic statues as a productive link between his desires and so-called ‘Greek desire’, placing himself within a continuum of queer, Greek men.

scholarly journals The Role of Archaeology in Forming Greek National Identity and its Embodiment in European Identity

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-458
Author(s):  
Olga Katsiardi-Hering
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Europe Today ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Of Greece

The murder of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, for many the ‘founder of archaeology’, in 1768 in a Trieste inn, did not mean the end for his work, which could be said to have been the key to understanding ancient Greece, which Europe was re-discovering at the time. In the late Enlightenment, Neoclassicism, followed by Romanticism, elevated classical, Hellenistic and Roman antiquity, and archaeological research, to the centre of academic quests, while the inclusion of archaeological sites in the era’s Grand Tours fed into a belief in the ‘Regeneration’/‘Wiedergeburt’ of Greece. The Modern Greek Enlightenment flourished during this same period, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a concomitant classicizing turn. Ancient Greek texts were republished by Greek scholars, especially in the European centres of the Greek diaspora. An admiration for antiquity was intertwined into the Neohellenic national identity, and the first rulers of the free Greek State undertook to take care of the nation’s archaeological monuments. In 1837, under ‘Bavarian rule’, the first Greek University and the ‘Archaeological Society of Greece in Athens’ were set up. Archaeologists flocked to Greece and those parts of the ancient Greek world that were still part of the Ottoman Empire. The showcasing of classical monuments, at the expense of the Byzantine past, would remain the rule until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Modern Greek national identity was primarily underpinned by admiration for antiquity, which was viewed as a source of modern Hellenism, and for ‘enlightened, savant, good-governed Europe’. Today, the ‘new archaeology’ is striving to call these foundations into question.

Hellenism and Modernity

2009 ◽  
pp. 6-18
Author(s):  
James I. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Matthew Arnold ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Controversial Concept

This article argues that Hellenism is a controversial concept with a lengthy history, and which ultimately defies all attempts to give it definition. In discussing Matthew Arnold, it suggests that people think of Hellenism as a relationship between a particular past and a perpetually changing present. The ancient Greek world is contested, fragile, and phantasmatic; it is constructed by a gaze that looks intensely back into the past. While the concept of Hellenism has been extraordinarily fertile, it is also restrictive, and its evasions and exclusions need to be acknowledged. A broader and more inclusive conception, as some have argued, would allow for a more critical and self-aware reception of the Greek past and would engage with the range of diverse traditions that have contributed to the formation of Hellenism since antiquity. The article focuses on German and British Hellenism, the two most formative traditions in modernity.

scholarly journals Images of Sculptures in the Poetry of Giorgis Manousakis

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Michał Bzinkowski ◽  
Rita Winiarska
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Nobel Prize Winner ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Modern Greek

The imagery of fragmentary sculptures, statues and stones appears often in Modern Greek Poetry in connection with the question of Modern Greeks’ relation to ancient Greek past and legacy. Many famous poets such as the first Nobel Prize winner in literature, George Seferis (1900-1971), as well as Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990) frequently use sculptural imagery in order to allude to, among other things, though in different approaches, the classical past and its existence in modern conscience as a part of cultural identity. In the present paper we focus on some selected poems by a well-known Cretan poet Giorgis Manousakis (1933-2008) from his collection “Broken Sculptures and Bitter Plants” (Σπασμένα αγάλματα και πικροβότανα, 2005), trying to shed some light on his very peculiar usage of sculpture imagery in comparison with the earlier Greek poets. We attempt to categorize Manousakis’ metaphors and allusions regarding the symbolism of sculptures in correlation with existential motives of his poetry and the poet’s attitude to the classical legacy.

Motherhood(s) and Polytheisms: Epistemological and Methodological Reflections on the Study of Religions, Gender, and Women

Numen ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Pasche Guignard ◽  
Giulia Pedrucci
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Concrete Case ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mother Daughter Relationship ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Academic Study

AbstractThrough an approach that combines the academic study of religions with motherhood studies, this article examines rarely considered maternal aspects of Demeter, a goddess of the pantheon of ancient Greek religion. We first discuss theoretical input and concepts drawn from maternal theory that are relevant to uncover innovative lines of research on religious representations and practices in polytheistic systems of the past. In this way we also contribute to broader epistemological reflections in the history and study of religions. Then, considering theHomeric Hymnas well as key ritual elements of theThesmophoriafestival through the lenses of maternal theory, we examine the mother-daughter relationship and the role of the mother as maternal trainer. This concrete case study from the ancient Greek world demonstrates the relevance for historians of religions of considering past polytheistic systems while harnessing the fruitful interdisciplinary potential of maternal theory.

The Continuity of Hellenism

1971 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Thomson
Keyword(s):  
The Sun ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Full Life ◽  
Greek Civilization

InThe Twelve Lays of the Gipsy, one of the masterpieces of modern Greek poetry, Palamás puts into the mouth of his Gipsy these words, addressed to the Beautiful Immortals, who symbolize the achievements of ancient Greek civilization:What if you are immortal ? Your life is over,The full life that you lived in full bodily vigourIn the sun and air of the blissful country of your birth.Now there is another sun, another air, and you are onlyApparitions.

Social Ecology of the Ancient Greek World

1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-218
Author(s):  
Simon Cornelis Bakhuizen
Keyword(s):  
Social Ecology ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek World
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