scholarly journals Going East or West? Finnish Travelers in Nineteenth Century Greece

Linguaculture ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-42
Author(s):  
Vassilis Letsios
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Modern Greece ◽  
East West

Abstract In this article I will discuss two different attitudes of traveling in mid-nineteenth century Greece, at a crucial time for the “western” or “eastern” orientation of the Greek state. To capture this I will demonstrate aspects of the travel writing of two Finnish travelers in nineteenth century Greece. The first recognized in modern Greece the light of classical antiquity and the importance of its conveying to the west, the second focused on contemporary Greece and its connection with the east. The two travelers, with a common starting point and at about the same time, traveled in a very different way in nineteenth century Greece and with their different skills “opened” different ideological horizons in a place that they both “loved” and “hated” for different reasons. How does the binary “east/west?” relate to the travelers’ expectations and predispositions at a time of the development of modern Greek identities and consciousness?

The emergence of modern Greek studies in late-nineteenth-century France and England: The yearbooks of the Association pour l’encouragement des études grecques en France (1867) and of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (1877)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandros Katsigiannis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
French And English ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Modern Greece

Was the field of modern Greek studies perceived as an ‘exotic’ discipline in the making, or was it considered to be a branch of the already canonised Hellenic studies? This chapter examines two major associations that were established in the late nineteenth century in France and in England and dealt with the promotion of Greek studies: the Association pour l’encouragement des études grecques en France (1867) and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (1877). Their yearbooks constitute an unexamined treasure of information illuminating the reception of modern Greece and, at the same time, the construction of the modern Greek cultural identity by French and English Hellenists, from the mid-1860s onward.

Modern Greek studies in Italy (1866–1897) : Philhellenic revival and classical tradition through the lens of the Nuova Antologia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Scalora
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Modern Greece

During the long era of Italian philhellenism, interest in modern Greece was more than just political and ideological. In particular, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the philhellenism of the Risorgimento period was animated by an interest in the culture of modern Greece and by the wish to investigate the character and most significant aspects of the civilisation and literary production of modern Greece. In the context of literate and pluralistic Italian editorial opinion, the magazine Nuova Antologia exhibited a sincerity of interest in modern Greece in the years when Italy and Greece were still engaged in the process of national resolution and finding their places within the European political and cultural scene.

scholarly journals Walter Scott and the Islamic East: Ivanhoe and the Talisman

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 758-764
Author(s):  
Nisreen Tawfiq Yousef
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
The West ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
East West

This paper examines representations of the Islamic East in two novels by Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe (1820) and The Talisman (1825). The paper’s argument is that Scott’s representations of the Islamic East seems influenced in very specific ways by dominant nineteenth-century portrayals of the East. Scott’s two novels present ambivalent depictions of the East, some of which deviate from standard patterns of representation of earlier centuries. For instance, on the one hand his novels attribute positive spiritual qualities to Saracens such as generosity, bravery and kindness to animals, while on the other, and often in the same passage, they sometimes depict Saracens as violent and atavistic. I argue that, through his various narrators and characters, Scott depicts the relationship between the Islamic East and the Christian West as a significant form of cultural interaction whereby the East is presented as complementing the West. However, Scott’s portrayal of East-West relation is complex, and it would be inaccurate to claim that this denotes total acceptance of Islamic manners, customs and perspectives. 

Portrayal of the West and the Expression of Nepalese Male Ethos in Jungabahadurko Belayet Yatra

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 84-98
Author(s):  
Dharma Bahadur Thapa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
European Society ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The West ◽  
Conceptual Frame ◽  
Queen Victoria ◽  
The Feminine

Jungabahadurko Belayet Yatra [Jungabahadur’s England Visit] is a pioneering work of travel account in the Nepalese literature. It recounts Jungabahadur Rana’s formal visit to England and France in 1850 as a goodwill ambassador of the Nepalese king to Queen Victoria while he was the prime minister of Nepal. Although the author is not identified, the work informs the reader of the European life and society with its colour, culture and sound. More than this, it reveals the male ethos of the observer. This paper attempts to analyse the text to see how it represents and reacts to the European society of the mid-fifties of the nineteenth century. The article uses the conceptual frame works of Michel Foucault’s discourse and power and Edward Said’s Orientalism and the generic parameters of travel writing. Finally, the article comes to the conclusion that, despite addressing diverse issues, it portrays England and France mainly in the feminine tropes and presents Rana as the centre of attraction.

Of acts and words

1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-149
Author(s):  
Alexandra Alexandri
Keyword(s):  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dominant Feature ◽  
Modern Greece ◽  
Secular Religion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Sophisticated Analysis

‘Sacralising the past: cults of archaeology in modern Greece’ appears within the framework of recent discussions on archaeology and nationalism and attempts to produce a reflexive and sophisticated analysis of the construction of nationalist discourses, both at the level of state and on an individual basis. Along these lines, Hamilakis and Yalouri argue that attitudes toward classical antiquity in modern Greece constitute what they term a form of ‘secular religion’ which presents distinct affinities with Orthodoxy. In constructing their argument the authors combine a number of analytical domains and touch upon a multitude of issues, all of which merit extensive discussion. However, the main point of their thesis concerns the relationship between the classical past and Greek Orthodox religion, a link forged during the creation of the modern Greek state. According to the authors, apart from being at the roots of nationalist state discourse, this link has also been a persistent, even dominant, feature in the popular perception of classical heritage.

Translations of Virgil into Ancient Greek

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Paschalis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Translation Techniques ◽  
Modern Greece

This chapter traces the two-thousand-year-old tradition of translating Virgil into ancient Greek. It examines verse translations composed in late antiquity (Oratio Constantini) and in the Renaissance (Scaliger and Heinsius) as well as translations from the period of the modern Greek Enlightenment (Voulgaris) down to nineteenth-century modern Greece (Philitas and Ioannou). Paschalis investigates the elements of continuity and change in relation to translation techniques, adaptation to the genre’s conventional dialect, metrical and verbal equivalences between the translations and the original, the kinds of audience to which translations are addressed, and the role of ideology in determining the character of the translations.

Indigenous Hellenisms/Indigenous Modernities: Classical Antiquity, Materiality, and Modern Greek Society

2009 ◽  
pp. 18-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Hamilakis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Of Greece

This article attempts to briefly highlight an alternative Hellenism, indigenous Hellenism as performed by intellectuals and state bureaucrats, politicians and citizens, and poets and ordinary people, in Greece since the nineteenth century. Through a process of sacralization, classical antiquity was placed at the centre of the emerging modern state, and the material culture of the past (ruins, statues, inscriptions, etc.) gained in status and value. While the new nation of Greece saw itself as the resurrection of an ancient entity, the ideological basis for this national project was provided by a home-grown synthesis of ‘western’ and indigenous Hellenisms. The discussion also argues that it was the crucial work of Johann Gustav Droysen which facilitated this synthesis. It was his idea of a continuity between the ancient and modern worlds that gave Greek intellectuals the impetus to trace their own origins back to the classical past.

scholarly journals “East”—“West”: Interaction of Theatre Cultures

2019 ◽  
pp. 90-96
Author(s):  
Violeta Demeshchenko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
The World ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Aesthetic Concepts ◽  
East West ◽  
Different Parts

This article examines the issues of interaction and mutual influence of theatre cultures of the "West" and "East", which at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries proved to be the most vivid. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, new aesthetic concepts and art views are emerging, leading to the emergence of decadence and later to modernism. At the time, the process of establishing directing completed, the performance revealed new requirements of being a holistic and artistically completed product. The problem of synthesis of arts in the theatre of that time became one of the few investigated and quite relevant today. Since the theatre combines various kinds of arts, including dramaturgy, music, dance, decor, painting, costume, make-up, and actor's skill, altogether, it forms the complex synthetic nature of the theatre requiring research. The theatre is a peculiar mirror of society, of historical epochs reflecting the human life on the stage having its creative crises, as well as the society itself. At the end of the nineteenth century, Western artists understood that the time for people, continents, religions, and art in different parts of the world to combine their efforts to save the world was coming. Therefore, interest in the "East" as of something else able to help to identify oneself and receive energy for personal innovations appeared. Over the last century, much has been done in this direction especially in understanding and conducting a dialogue of cultures along the horizontal East-West.

scholarly journals Travel Writing and the Integration of East-Central Europe: John Paget’s Hungary and Transylvania

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Márta Pellérdi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
The West ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Social

John Paget’s travelogue from 1839, Hungary and Transylvania; with Remarks on their Condition, Social, Political, and Economical, makes a clear distinction between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania, both under Austrian rule at the time, and the rest of Eastern Europe. In terms of the variety and depth of the descriptions of the social, political, and economic conditions in the East-CentralEuropean country and province, Paget’s comprehensive and objective text stands out from the travelogues written about the region in the nineteenth century. This essay demonstrates that Hungary and Transylvania reveals the author’s intention to rediscover the history and culture of a neglected European nation who have attempted for centuries, successfully, and often unsuccessfully, to orient their politics toward the West rather than the East. It suggests that despite the occasional colonial discourse, Paget’s travelogue is an attempt to economically, politically, and culturally promote the integration of Hungary and Transylvania into the more “civilized” West. (MP)

MOLDAVIA AND WALLACHIA IN THE EYES OF RUSSIAN OBSERVERS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Taki
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
The West ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
West European ◽  
The Way

Taking as its starting point the Enlightenment discourse about Eastern Europe, thc article examines the way Russian elites responded to the emergence of the West-East symbolic divide through discovery and appropriation of their own "Orient." The encounter of the Westernized Russian officer corps and diplomats with the Hellenized Romanian boyar elite of Moldavia and Wallachia in the course of the Russian-Ottoman wars provides an illustration of this phenomenon. Deriving from the classic oppositions between "Europe" and "Orient," "civilization" and "barbarity," the Russian discourse on Moldavia and Wallachia differed from West European models through the recognition of common religion and the similarities between the lifestyle of the Romanian elite and the old Muscovite ways. This interplay of "sameness" and "otherness" served the Russian imperial elite to monopolize the civilizing mission in the region and assert its European identity in the period when the latter became increasingly questioned both intemationally and domestically.

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