Description

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The glorious, classical legacy of Greece is universally revered. But this legacy has come at a price. How will Greece ever move beyond its ties with the past? Is there such a thing as modern Greece? This book is the first to present an alternative cultural history of Greece. Beginning with the growth of Greece as a nation-state through to the present, it shows how modern Greece has long been undervalued and neglected. From the compositional process of the first National Poet to the first feminist text, the first sustained Marxist treatise of Greek society to the Athens subway system, this groundbreaking book brings together a fascinating mix of literary texts, maps and aspects of material culture to uncover the identity of modern Greece. In considering these rich cultural landmarks, Calotychos argues that a new relationship with the past must be forged if Greek literature, culture and society are to be truly part of the present and meet the challenges of modernity.Modern Greece: A Cultural Poetics fills a major gap. Its refreshing approach provides an original insight into the everyday, lived experience of Greece. The intriguing range of case studies, the historical depth, and the engagement with cultural and literary theory will be of great value to literature students, cultural theorists, anthropologists, philologists and historians alike.

About the Author

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Vangelis Calotychos is Acting Director, Hellenic Studies, Department of Classics, Columbia University.

Praise For…

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"This is probably the best exploration of the culture of modern Greece I have encountered In twenty years. Calotychos works with verve and skill in several fields. Although he professes to be a literary historian and critic, he clearly also has the analytic skills of an anthropologist working within a powerfully iinterdisciplinary cultural studies tradition. His theory is eclectic but unpretentious, his range deep and wide, and his writing style attractively uncluttered." --Professor Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University

"Modern Greece is really a significant work of scholarship and one which is at the same time, a major intervention in modern Greek and eastern Mediterranean cultural debates on the one hand and contemporary critical debates on the other. Rare is the book of which so much can be said." --Timothy J. Reiss, New York University