Making a New Myth of Greece: Lawrence Durrell, Rex Warner, and the “Captain” of Modern Greek Letters

For the better part of the twentieth century, the quest for a ‘Greek’ continuity in the so-called revival of ancient drama in Greece was inextricably linked to what is termed and studied in this paper as a Ritual Quest. Rituality was understood in two forms: one was aesthetic and neoclassicist in its hermeneutic and performative codes, which were established and recycled – and as such: ritualized – in ancient tragedy productions of the National Theatre of Greece from the 1930s to the 1970s; the other, cultivated mainly during the 1980s, was cultural and centred around the idea that continuity can be traced and explored through the direct employment of Byzantine and folk ritual elements. Both aimed at eliciting the cohesive collective response of their spectators: their turning into a liminal ritual community. This was a community tied together under an ethnocentric identity, that of Greeks participating in a Greek (theatrical) phenomenon. At first through neoclassicism, then through folklore, this artistic phenomenon was seen as documenting a diachronic and essentially political modern Greek desideratum: continuity with the ancient past. Such developments were in tune with broader cultural movements in the period under study, which were reflected on the common imaginings of Antiquity in the modern Greek collective – consciousness – a sort of ‘Communal Hellenism’. The press reception of performances, apart from being a productive vehicle for the study of the productions as such, provides indispensable indexes to audience reception. Through the study of theatre reviews, we propose to explore the crucial shifts registered in the definition of Greekness and its dynamic connections to Antiquity.

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

European Review ◽

10.1017/s1062798719000577 ◽

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.

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The Developmental Trajectory of the Greek State

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198825104.013.2 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 22-37

Author(s):

Stathis N. Kalyvas

Keyword(s):

Historical Development ◽

Global Economy ◽

Debt Crisis ◽

Developmental Trajectory ◽

Institutional Constraints ◽

Modern Greek ◽

Peripheral Position ◽

Economic Boom ◽

Early Late ◽

Of Greece

Greece’s historical development gives credence to two competing narratives. The first identifies Greece as a small and vulnerable nation, one marked by crises and failure. The second narrative acknowledges the success of nation-building—indeed, the metamorphosis of Greece—having come through exceptional challenges. To reconcile these two narratives, I draw upon neo-Marxist political economy—which stresses its ‘semi-peripheral’ position in the global economy—and build on recent studies that focus more on the domestic institutional constraints on development. I disaggregate Modern Greek history into seven, intertwined, political and economic ‘boom, bust, and bailout’ cycles. Greece is an ‘early late modernizer’, to borrow Seymour Martin Lipset’s formulation. As one of the early ‘new nations’ on the European stage, Greece attempted a number of highly visible and risky modernization leaps intended to reduce the gap that separated it from the more advanced states of the continent. Predictably, these leaps and their failures attracted considerable global attention, way out of proportion to the country’s size, resources, or strategic importance. They did so due to the perception that its modernization effort was deeply intertwined with processes of much broader historical and global significance; the stakes were high, hence the need for some sort of intervention. That these foreign interventions ultimately turned out to be favourable to Greece should not detract from the fact that they were often perceived negatively in Greece. The recent debt crisis is part of a similar pattern and a Greek recovery would validate this interpretation.

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The Legal System and Economic Development of Greece

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050700109982 ◽

1959 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 173-198 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

A. A. Pepelasis

Keyword(s):

Economic Development ◽

Legal System ◽

Economic Activity ◽

Economic History ◽

Arable Land ◽

Modern Greek ◽

The Third ◽

History Of ◽

Poor Soil ◽

Of Greece

A side from some overworked generalizations regarding poor soil, shortage of capital, lack of arable land, population density and such, there are no studies in English that deal with the general economic history of Greece or with specific problems in her economic development since the establishment of the modern Greek state in the third decade of the last century. An analysis of the influence of the legal system on this development, therefore, may throw light on Greek economic history in general and open a useful discussion. It may also add something to our knowledge of the larger problem of the relation of socialcultural institutions and economic activity.

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Towards Modern Greek Consciousness

The Historical Review/La Revue Historique ◽

10.12681/hr.170 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

pp. 51

Author(s):

Loukia Droulia

Keyword(s):

The Self ◽

Common Language ◽

Human Group ◽

War Of Independence ◽

Modern Greek ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Subject ◽

Definition Of ◽

Of Greece ◽

Over Time

This paper deals with the subject of Modern Greek consciousness which can be said epigrammatically to have its starting point in the Provisional Constitution of Greece ratified by the Assembly of Epidaurus in January 1822. For it was then necessary that two crucial questions be answered, namely who were to be considered as citizens of the new state about to be created and what regions it covered. The attempt to find answers to these questions necessarily led to the re-examination of the Greek nation's historical course over the millenia.For this purpose the terms that express the concepts which register the self-definition of a human group and their use over time, are here examined as well as the links that formed the connection between the groups of Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians who, as a result of historical circumstances, had until then been geographically scattered. One solid link was the unbroken use of their common language; the "ancestral culture" was the other definitive element which had a continuous though uneven presence throughout the centuries. Finally the "place", having preserved the same geographical name, "Hellas", through the centuries although its borders were certainly unclear, now took on a weighty significance as regards the conscious identification of the historical land with the new state that the Greeks were struggling to create in the nineteenth century. These and other factors contributed to the acceptance by the Greek nation of the nomenclature Ellines, Ellada which were unanimously adopted during the Greek war of Independence, instead of the terms Graikoi, Romioi, Graikia.

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Secularism in Context: The Relations between the Greek State and the Church of Greece in Crisis

European Journal of Sociology ◽

10.1017/s0003975609000447 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 50 (1) ◽

pp. 133-167 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Evangelos Karagiannis

Keyword(s):

Present Article ◽

Orthodox Church ◽

Modern Greek ◽

Structural Weakness ◽

Single Pattern ◽

Modern Greece ◽

The Church ◽

Of Greece

AbstractThe present article addresses the question of secularism in Greece. It discusses the prevalent modernist and civilisationist explanations of the recent crisis in state-church relations in Greece. Based on the idea that there is neither a single route to, nor a single pattern of, modernity and secularism, the article argues that the entanglement between state and church in modern Greece does not necessarily indicate either incomplete modernity or incomplete secularism. The paper emphasises both the structural weakness of the Orthodox Church in the modern Greek state and the secularisation of the church's ideology as core dimensions of the particular pattern of secularism in this country. The recent crisis is interpreted as a result of the twofold challenge of democratisation and globalisation that this historically grown pattern of secularism is facing over the last decades. Further, the article seeks to demonstrate that the nationalist stance of the Church of Greece should not be seen as persistent blind traditionalism and anti-modernism.

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Defence Spending and Sovereign Debt in Greece: A Long-Term Historical Perspective

Peace Economics Peace Science and Public Policy ◽

10.1515/peps-2021-0020 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Christos Kollias ◽

Suzanna-Maria Paleologou ◽

Michel Zouboulakis

Keyword(s):

Public Debt ◽

Sovereign Debt ◽

Empirical Investigation ◽

Debt Accumulation ◽

Modern Greek ◽

Defence Spending ◽

Debt Dynamics ◽

The Military ◽

Of Greece

Abstract The paper sets out to examine the military spending-public debt nexus in the case of Greece. Unlike previous studies that exclusively focus their analyses in the post-WWII period, the empirical investigation conducted herein covers almost the entire two hundred years of the modern Greek state. The estimations using an ARDL framework cover the period 1848–2018 as well as sub-periods therein. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to approach this issue in the case of Greece with such a long-term perspective. In broad terms, the findings do not unearth a statistically traceable effect of defence expenditures on public debt accumulation. The results indicate that this was very much driven by debt dynamics and the need to draw funds to service existing loans. This finding is consistent across both the entire period under scrutiny here as well as the various sub-periods.

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The “Wretched of Europe”

Humanity & Society ◽

10.1177/0160597616664169 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 102-127 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Anastasia Christou

Keyword(s):

Public Discourse ◽

Debt Crisis ◽

Historical Narratives ◽

The Public ◽

Modern Greek ◽

Cultural Codes ◽

Current Context ◽

Ethnographic Data ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

Of Greece

This article focuses on narratives of the crisis in contemporary Greece and aims to understand the current context of austerity as a trope, symbolic signifier, and construct of inequality beyond austerity and in its manifestation as new social morphology in Europe. While the future recovery of Greece will require an extensive understanding of both economic and historical narratives which have sustained and fueled the Modern Greek state, a deeper analysis of structural and societal cultural codes mirrored in the public sphere is paramount in comprehending the cultural politics of inequalities in academic and public discourse. In a changing political and social environment, youth in Greece face the consequences of the debt crisis and, at the same time, reexamine their identity, values, and aspirations. Drawing from narrative, visual, and ethnographic data, this article explores stories of the crisis in grounding an account of inequality as narrated by those experiencing dispossession and austerity.

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Changing the Map in Greece and Italy: Place-name Changes in the Nineteenth Century

The Historical Review/La Revue Historique ◽

10.12681/hr.27072 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 ◽

pp. 205

Author(s):

Eleni Kyramargiou ◽

Yannis Papakondylis ◽

Fransesco Scalora ◽

Dimitris Dimitropoulos

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

The Political ◽

Place Names ◽

Public Dialogue ◽

Modern Greek ◽

Political Conflicts ◽

Fundamental Causes ◽

Name Changes ◽

Deliberate Effort ◽

Of Greece

The concern of the newly founded Kingdom of Greece for the reestablishment of old place names dates to 1833 and was due to a clear and deliberate effort to break with the Ottoman past and connect the modern Greek state with ancient and Byzantine Greece. In post-Risorgimento Italy, the fundamental causes of toponymic changes wasto lessen the potential for confusion between the numerous homonymous municipalities that, once part of various sovereign states, were now part of a single nation. This article discusses the parallel paths that Greece and Italy followed on the renaming issue, where the internal discourse evolved within similar political and ideological parameters, both at an administrative and public dialogue level. However, despite their similarities, the final decisions in Greece and Italy were dictated by, firstly, the administrative organisation and structure selected by each country and, secondly, the political and ideological priorities, which were set in direct correlation with the domestic political conflicts, as well as the different circumstances each country faced in relation to its borders and the rise of antagonistic neighbouring nationalisms.

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