The Problem Of Modern Greek Identity

Download or read book The Problem of Modern Greek Identity written by Georgios Arabatzis and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of Modern Greek identity is certainly timely. The political events of the previous years have once more brought up such questions as: What does it actually mean to be a Greek today? What is Modern Greece, apart from and beyond the bulk of information that one would find in an encyclopaedia and the established stereotypes? This volume delves into the timely nature of these questions and provides answers not by referring to often-cited classical Antiquity, nor by treating Greece as merely and exclusively a modern nation-state. Rather, it approaches the subject in a kaleidoscopic way, by tracing the line from the Byzantine Empire to Modern Greek culture, society, philosophy, literature and politics. In presenting the diverse and certainly non-dominant approaches of a multitude of Greek scholars, it provides new insights into a diachronic problem, and will encourage new arguments and counterarguments. Despite commonly held views among Greek intelligentsia or the worldwide community, Modern Greek identity remains an open question – and wound.

Download or read book The Emergence of a Greek Identity (1700-1821) written by Stratos Myrogiannis and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of Greek-speaking intellectuals in nation-formation processes during the Greek Enlightenment. The author explores how scholars invoked the concept of the ‘nation’ and issues closely related to it in order to enforce their demands either for educational reform or for national independence. To be more specific, he studies the construction of a Modern Greek identity in relation to the Greek and European Enlightenment from 1700 up to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. The theoretical framework the author deploys is twofold. On the one hand, he exploits the methodological tools provided by the ‘history of concepts’, as formulated by Koselleck, Pocock and Skinner. On the other hand, he deploys specific concepts from current approaches on nation-formation processes in history, drawn especially from the works of Anthony Smith, Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm. He examines the discursive strategies but also the ideology of relevant works, mainly geographies, histories and political treatises. The corpus of works he studies includes both well-known texts (e.g. by Koraes, Katartzis and Rigas), but also much ignored and so far unexamined works (e.g. by Stanos and Alexandridis). Three arguments are intertwined in the present study. The first issue that this thesis claims to address is the exploration of the incorporation of Byzantium into a Greek historical schema. During the eighteenth century Greek intellectuals attempted to rewrite the history of the Greeks and their main problem was integrating in their narrative the Greek Middle Ages. This period was viewed by them as a historical gap. In their attempt to bridge this gap, the answer they gradually came up with was the invention of what Koraes first named, earlier than is previously thought, ‘Byzantine history’. Secondly, the present study clarifies the particularities of a transformation process regarding the self-image of the Greeks as a political community. This process is evident in the writings of Greek-speaking intellectuals. Influenced by modernity and the emergence of the new political paradigm of the ‘nation’ these scholars imagined Greek-speaking people in terms of a national community. The third argument this book aims to develop is the historical link between the Enlightenment as a philosophical movement and nationalism as an ideology. The author suggests a reinterpretation of the last stage of the Greek Enlightenment. He argues that Greek-speaking scholars transmuted enlightening doctrines into a nationalist ideology in order to satisfy the new political needs of the Greek nation for the creation of an independent state. This enlightened nationalism, however, was not related to the subsequent Romantic ideology, but it was based on the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment. All in all, this book aims to contribute to the study of the Greek Enlightenment by throwing further light on the complex issues of self-image and identity.

Download or read book Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766-1976 written by Peter Mackridge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-18 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Mackridge explores the ideological, social, and linguistic causes and effects of the Greek language question in its many and passionate manifestations over two turbulent centuries. He shows the crucial way in which Greek linguistic identities have interacted in the creation of the modern nation since the War of Independence in 1821.

Download or read book Hellenism in Byzantium written by Anthony Kaldellis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-31 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text was the first systematic study of what it meant to be 'Greek' in late antiquity and Byzantium, an identity that could alternatively become national, religious, philosophical, or cultural. Through close readings of the sources, Professor Kaldellis surveys the space that Hellenism occupied in each period; the broader debates in which it was caught up; and the historical causes of its successive transformations. The first section (100-400) shows how Romanisation and Christianisation led to the abandonment of Hellenism as a national label and its restriction to a negative religious sense and a positive, albeit rarefied, cultural one. The second (1000-1300) shows how Hellenism was revived in Byzantium and contributed to the evolution of its culture. The discussion looks closely at the reception of the classical tradition, which was the reason why Hellenism was always desirable and dangerous in Christian society, and presents a new model for understanding Byzantine civilisation.

Download or read book Political and Cultural Aspects of Greek Exoticism written by Panayis Panagiotopoulos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-13 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the new Greek exoticism by examining political and cultural mechanisms that contribute to Greece’s image and self-image construction. The contributions shed light on the subject from different perspectives, including political science, history of ideas, sociology, cultural studies, and art criticism. In the first part, the book provides a historical review with a focus on philhellenism, perceptions of antiquity and modernity, and the evolution of Greece as an idea. The second part looks at the current Greek crisis and analyses ideological, political and cultural aspects and stereotypes that contributed to the formation of contemporary Greek culture. The third and final part discusses notions such as aestheticism, idealism and pragmaticism, and deconstructs narrations of Greece through artistic media, such as films and exhibitions, which present a new oriental Utopia.

Download or read book Russia and the Making of Modern Greek Identity, 1821-1844 written by Lucien J. Frary and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how Russian politics and religion were instrumental in the shaping of modern Greece, providing a broad understanding of nineteenth-century Russian foreign policy and religious enterprise and the relationship between religion, nationalism, and state-building.

Download or read book Constructions of Greek Past written by Hero Hokwerda and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 1999, a second conference of Hellenists (of all periods and subject areas) from the Dutch-speaking countries was organized in Groningen. The theme of this second conference was ‘Constructions of Greek Past. Identity and Historical Consciousness from Antiquity to the Present.’ The conference theme was described as follows: When seeking to establish its own identity, a culture (country, people, nation) readily resorts to its own history, which it uses either as an example or as something to react against. In recent years there has been a growing awareness that this process often reveals more about a culture in the present day than the historical era to which it harks back: its own identity, and thus its own history, are ‘constructed’ in this way. The constructional approach is usually applied to the birth of new nation states and the development of their national ideologies, particularly in the nineteenth century. But it can be applied more broadly too. Greek culture is an excellent subject area for studying this phenomenon even further back in history, precisely because its history is so long and included several ‘Golden Ages’ to which later periods could (and can) hark back. Greek culture still presents itself as a product of Ancient Greek and/or Byzantine culture. However, the problem of continuity in Greek culture has frequently manifested itself, particularly during periods of radical political, ideological or demographic change. The Homeric influence on the Mycenaean world is therefore also an aspect of this phenomenon. The Homeric world served as an example for later periods, as did the Attic period for the Greeks in the Hellenistic-Roman age. The tensions between the Hellenistic and Roman character of the Greek world had a strong influence on the shaping of the Greek identity during late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Those tensions still exist today (ellenismós/ellenikótita v. romiosyni). The theme was designed to bring together Hellenists of all periods and disciplines (literature, language, history, archaeology, ecclesiastical history, sociology etc.) relating to the Greek world. The colloquium sessions were held in Dutch, but the papers are published in English (two in French).