Modern Greek literature
Encyclopedia
Modern Greek literature refers to literature
written in the Greek language
from the 11th century, with texts written in a language that is more familiar to the ears of Greeks
today than is the language of the early Byzantine
literature, the compilers of the New Testament, or, of course, the classical authors of the fifth and fourth centuries BC.
romance, which bore the stamp of influence from western courtly tradition, but a genre nevertheless rooted in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial ages; ancient stories reviving mythical and historical figures such as Achilles
and Theseus
and Alexander the Great; and didactic, sardonic texts, concerned with philosophy and the allegory of daily life, with birds and animals taking the leading roles. But these will prove to be also the mainstay of modern Greek literature, modified, of course, by the various aesthetic and other values specific to each era.
Acritic songs
The cultural context within which the first known works of vernacular literature
were created was undoubtedly Byzantine
. The earliest group of such works dates mainly to the twelfth century: known as the Ptochoprodromika, the moralizing poem Spaneas, the autobiographical and didactic verses written in prison by Michael Glykas, the verse Eisiterion (a poem welcoming Princess Agnes of France), and a few examples of heroic poetry such as the Song of Armouris
and the epic Digenis Acritas
. The overwhelming majority of literary works in the vernacular has survived anonymously. Furthermore, it has proved difficult to assign a precise date to many of them, a problem exacerbated by the fact that the form in which the works have survived is often somewhat protean. Many have survived in a number of manuscripts, each of which preserves substantial variants or a different version. This phenomenon also occurs in the medieval literature of western Europe. It can be attributed to the methods by which texts were copied and disseminated in the age of the manuscript; in some cases, differing manuscript traditions may provide evidence of oral as well as written transmission of texts.
Romances
Verse romances are among the finest achievements of Byzantine literature
, continuing as they do the long tradition of the love story whose roots go back to the Hellenistic and Late Antiquity
periods. The Byzantine
romance began its revival in the 12th century with Ysmine and Ysminias by Eustathius Macrembolites
, Rodanthe and Dosikles by Theodoros Prodromos, Drosilla and Charikles by Niketas Eugenianos and Aristandros and Kallithea by Konstantinos Manasses. The differences (and similarities) in the case of the romances of the 13th and 14th centuries are clear. The plot has been reduced considerably; only Livistros and Rodamne maintains a sub-plot. The element of adventure becomes less prominent as the description of the action is reduced. The number of characters taking part in the action also becomes smaller. The social origins of the protagonists changes: no longer simply well-to-do, they derive for the most part from royalty. Furthermore, fairy tale
elements like dragons, winged horses and magical objects are incorporated into the story while the erotic aspect of the romance is given particular emphasis, like the sensuality of the bathing scene in Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe, the passionately entwined Velthandros and Chrysantza whose cries of pleasure echo around the garden, and the obvious erotic symbolism of Achilles’ entry with his lance into the maiden’s garden in the Achilleid
. The heroes are either of Byzantine or Roman lineage, though the co-stars are sometimes of eastern origin. The action no longer evolves within a Mediterranean, classical setting; the scenery is contemporary, but with obvious utopian elements and a liking for the scenery of the folktale.
A number of scholars have termed the Greek romances as chivalric, yet they appear neither to imitate nor to have assimilated anything of the western chivalric ideal. The similarities of the central hero to the knight
of the western courtly romance are limited to the external characteristics of the noble knight, in his capacity both as a warrior and as a hunter, and to his exceptional valour and beauty. The codification of the system of values of feudal society as expressed in the ideal of western chivalry is absent from Byzantine
and post-Byzantine works. The social and ideological base of the Greek romances is quite different. Furthermore, the ideal of love that is portrayed is substantially different to the standards of courtly love in the western tradition, while there is considerable difference with regard to the subject of adultery, which appears only very rarely and was quite foreign to the Byzantine notion of love. Apart from the story of Helen and Paris, which in any case was handed down from antiquity, as related in the Tale of Troy, the notion of love is encountered only in Livistros and Rodamne, where the sub-plot concerns an adulterous relationship.
Translations and adaptations of western European romances into the vernacular Greek of the day date to the 14th and 15th century: the Theseid is a translation of Boccaccio
’s "Teseida", while Imberios, Margarona, Florios and Platziaflora were both based on the Italian versions of the Old French romances "Pierre de Provence et la Belle Maguelonne" and "Floire et Blanchefleur". To this group of works can also be added The War of Troy, a translation of Benoît de Sainte-Maure
's "The Romance of Troy".
, consisting of 6120 lines of political verse. The vernacular literary production of the fourteenth century also includes three long verse accounts of the Trojan War
, each presenting a different treatment of the subject. The most popular of these, judging by the seven manuscripts preserving the text, was the War of Troy, an anonymous work that in essence comprises a loose translation, or paraphrase, in 14,400 lines of fifteen-syllable political verse, of the "Roman de Troie" by Benoît de St. Maure. The second of these works, the Tale of Troy (the so-called "Byzantine Iliad") by an anonymous author, also observes the conventions of the romance. The third work, a vernacular paraphrase of the Iliad made by Constantine Hermoniakos
at the court of the despotate of Epirus
in about 1330, seems to follow the Homeric text fairly closely. However, in the twenty-four books of 8800 non-rhyming eight-syllable lines of Hermoniakos’ paraphrase, the narrative also relates the events that preceded the action described by Homer as well as the sequel to the sack of Ilium, all in an affected idiom composed of both vernacular and learned linguistic features.
is undoubtedly the masterpiece of this period, and perhaps the supreme achievement of modern Greek literature. It is a verse romance written around 1600 by Vitsentzos Kornaros
(1553-1613). In over 10,000 lines of rhyming fifteen-syllable couplets, the poet relates the trials and tribulations suffered by two young lovers, Erotokritos and Aretousa, daughter of Heracles, King of Athens. It was a tale that enjoyed enormous popularity among its Greek readership and succeeded in making itself something of a folk hero, whose pedigree was as brother to Digenis Acritas
and Alexander the Great. The poets of this period use the spoken Cretan dialect, freed of the medieval vernacular. The tendency to purge the language of foreign elements was above all represented by Georgios Chortatsis, Vitsentzos Kornaros
and the anonymous poets of Voskopoula and The Sacrifice of Abraham, whose works highlight the expressive power of the dialect. As dictated by the pseudo-Aristotelian theory of decorum, the heroes of the works use a vocabulary analogous to their social and educational background. It was thanks to this convention that the Cretan comedies were written in a language that was an amalgam of Italicisms, Latinisms and the local dialect, thereby approximating to the actual language of the middle class of the Cretan towns. The time span separating Antonios Achelis, author of the Siege of Malta
(1570), and Chortatsis and Kornaros is too short to allow for the formation, from scratch, of the Cretan dialect we see in the texts of the latter two. The only explanation, therefore, is that the poets at the end of the sixteenth century were consciously employing a particular linguistic preference – they were aiming at a pure style of language for their literature and, via that language, a separate identity for the Greek literary production of their homeland.
The flourishing Cretan school was all but terminated by the Turkish capture of the island in the 17th century. The ballads of the klephts, however, survive from the 18th century; these are the songs of the Greek mountain fighters who carried on guerrilla warfare against the Turks.
in 1453 the only Greek regions which had not fallen to the Ottomans were Crete
, Cyprus
, Rhodes
and the Ionian Islands
, which were already under Venetian control. In these islands, and especially in Crete, literary production continued uninterrupted to a very high standard, in contrast with the Ottoman occupied territories. This period of approximately 150 years from the fall of Crete (in 1669) to the beginning of the Greek War of Independence
(in 1821) produced some of the greatest texts of the Greek Enlightenment, texts produced by Greek humanists, lay and clerical, which were not only portents of the national revival but also sought for the education and training of the subjugated nation which would guide them through a process that was to achieve a national consciousness and full independence.
The Korakistika (1819), a lampoon written by Iakovakis Rizos Neroulos and directed against the Greek intellectual Adamantios Korais
, is a good example of its kind. Until recently, the first satire in the modern Greek tradition was thought to be the Anonymous
of 1789. Today, however, an earlier work, dated 1785, and bearing the title Alexandrovodas the Callous, can claim to be the first of this genre in Greek. Written by Georgakis Soutsos-Dragoumanakis, the target of its invective is Alexander Mavrokordatos, ruler of Moldavia
, referred to in the work as the Fugitive. Two works from the mid 18th century, the Stoicheiomachia (1746) and the Bosporomachia (1766), printed by Eugenios Voulgaris
and attached to a verse translation of Voltaire
’s Memnon
were the products of Phanariot circles. Both texts display a growing awareness of the natural landscape
and foreshadow the age of lyricism that was to follow, while also legitimizing to an extent the mixed linguistic register of the Greek then spoken in Constantinople, with its mingling of a great number of Turkish words, a feature that was to appear in Phanariot poetry a few years later.
The turn of the century saw the rise of two major authors. Rigas Feraios
and Adamantios Korais
. Rigas was born in Velestino, Thessaly, in 1757, where he received his basic education. With the capture of Bucharest by the Austro-Russian alliance he moved on to Vienna for a period of six months (1790), and it was there that he printed his first book: The School for Delicate Lovers. It brought the climate of pre-Romanticism and the ‘new sensibility’ to modern Greek prose writing, while at the same time it constituted a fiery declaration of the radical ideas that were shaking Europe. Marriage that broke the barriers of social class, demands for social equality, a new role for women – indeed, the entire programme of the Enlightenment – filled the sensuous tales of The School for Delicate Lovers, which, ‘giving pleasure and instruction’, can be seen to belong to the wider programme of social change and reform of the day. The literature of enlightenment which Rigas undertook to bring to the knowledge of his fellow Greeks constantly sought to find a balance between the didactic, the new ideology, and the social, thematic and technical innovations of a new literariness. The popular, Constantinopolitan language, as well as the interposed verses, many of which are to be found in the manuscript anthologies of the Phanariots, served to familiarize the readership with the new literary genre of the novella or short story.
Adamantios Korais
spent most of his long life outside the bounds of the Ottoman state. Born in Smyrna
in 1748, he learnt foreign languages at an early age and grew up in an environment that fostered respect for learning and literature. His translations and publishing activity were governed by a desire to give his countrymen access to the learning of the West and also to arouse their interest in the literature of their ancient forebears. In 1804, he gave material evidence of his interest in the ancient writers by publishing an edition of
Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, the first in a series of ancient writers that was given the title Elliniki Vivliothiki (Greek Library). The books in this series, which included authors such as Aristotle, Plutarch, Isocrates, Xenophon and Plato, were prefaced with scholarly introductions and supplemented with detailed commentaries. Following the Franco-Turkish rapprochement, Korais came to believe that his people required systematic long-term preparation, above all in the field of learning, in order through their own efforts to gain independence.
Ionian or Heptanese School of Literature
Dionysios Solomos
, born in Zakynthos
in 1798, is generally recognised as the leading spokesman for the great values which inspired the struggling nation. His first considerable achievements, the lyrical poetic composition Lambros (1824 and after) and the satirical prose poem Woman of Zakynthos (1826 and after) brought him
to the forefront of modern Greek and European literature. A striking example of the thematic and ideological evolution evident in Solomos’ works of his mature Corfu period are the successive revisions (1833 and later) of a previous attempt (1826) to compose a poem on one of the most important events of the revolution, the siege and fall of Mesolongi, the town where Lord Byron died. The main theme of the poem continues to be the heroic exodus of the inhabitants under siege, yet that which is stressed in the latter versions is human spiritual suffering, strength and moral freedom, as eloquently expressed by the poem’s new title: The Free Besieged.
The poetic work of the Ionian islander Andreas Kalvos
, also born in Zakynthos
in 1792, consists of twenty Odes written in the Greek language. He penned a total of twenty Odes about the Greek revolution. The language he used is highly poetic, his versification classical, and the ideology expressed within these lines worthy of great poetry. They are contained in two collections he published at a young age, The Lyre (Odes 1-10 headed by a short invocation to the Muses in verse) and Lyric Poems (Odes 11-20). These twenty poems together bear the title of Odes. His other, less important, works were written in Italian in the previous decade (1811-1821) and comprise three tragedies and a few odes, marked by the literary influence of Ugo Foscolo
and Neo-classicism. During the rest of his life Kalvos published no other poems. His overriding aim was to achieve a combination of Romanticism and Neo-classicism and to lend kydos to the revolution. Initially his work was unknown, but today the quality of his writing and his importance in the shaping of the modern nation is undisputed.
Historiography
Makriyannis (1797 - 1864) was a distinguished memoir writer. Ioannis Triantaphyllodimitris, or Triantaphyllou, his real name, was born in the village of Avoriti in Doris. His turbulent life, driven by a fighter’s spirit and passion and endowed with the genuine sensibility of simple folk, has been rightly seen as a symbol of modern Hellenism. Makriyannis’ Memoirs were initially published as an important historical document. It was for this reason that his rambling Visions and Marvels were ignored at the time, being considered not worth publishing. Makriyannis had been illiterate. His need to record the events he had lived through persuaded him to acquire just enough knowledge of reading and writing to enable him to set down his memoirs; he was untouched by scholarly tradition. However, that they have been acknowledged and survived is not only because of their importance as an historical source of information or because of their ideology. It is also because of the language in which they were written. The immediacy and passion of his writing as well as his total absorption in popular tradition and popular mores distinguish his Memoirs from those of other patriots, making him one of the most authentic writers of modern Greek prose. This is proved by the wide appreciation of his work in later years.
If any one individual were to be considered responsible for the image the Greeks have about themselves and their history, that person would be Constantine Paparrigopoulos (1815 - 1891). He wrote his five-volume History of the Greek Nation between 1860 and 1874 and, since then, his ideas have been promulgated in every conceivable way: incorporated into other texts, repeated by thousands of lecturers, memorised by generations of students and eventually absorbed by the nation, which gradually saw itself in the image conceived by Paparrigopoulos. The success of this work was so great that few remember the image-maker and even fewer are aware of the imagery involved in the formation of the concept of Greekness. Paparrigopoulos succeeded in convincing his public that things had always been so. The picture he presented was seen as a mirror of the collective self. History of the Greek Nation was re-issued several times with additions concerning more recent events by other authors. A century later, in 1971, when a new monumental history began to be published, incorporating all the research and studies carried out in the meantime, Paparrigopoulos’ History retained its title and its original historiographical pattern.
Folklore
The publication of the first volume of Study of the Life of Modern Greeks and of Modern Greek Mythology by Nikolaos Politis
(1852 -1921) in 1871 constitutes the birth certificate of folklore as a science. Its young author had recently been awarded a prize for his essay On the customs and lore of modern Greece in comparison with those of ancient Greece. Thus was born Greek folklore as a field of study; to be more precise, the study of folklore was now being born in Greece, for in that same year The Folk Life of Modern Greeks and Greek Antiquity by Bernhard Schmidt appeared in Leipzig
and signalled a transition from archeological folklore. It reached adulthood, however, much later, since twelve years had to pass before it was acknowledged in 1883 and another twenty-five years before its official name laography was validated in 1908.
, Panagiotis Soutsos
, Dimitrios Vikelas, Achilleas Paraschos, Dimitrios Paparrigopoulos
, became famous at the age of thirty, following the publication of his provocative novel, Pope Joan
, in 1866. This sensational book was translated immediately into many European languages and was, until the mid-20th century, the most widely translated Greek novel. Numerous Greek editions have been published up to the present day as well as many new editions of the translations. Lawrence Durrell
and Alfred Jarry
are two of the many distinguished translators of Pope Joan. An astonishingly original and fascinating work, Pope Joan is the female Greek version of Don Juan
. Roidis’ ambitious and cynical heroine wanders around medieval Europe in the ninth century.
Georgios Vizyinos (1849 - 1896), author of poems, short stories, children’s literature and essays of philosophical, psychological and ethnological subject matter, is thought of as the pioneer of modern Greek prose. According to Costis Palamas, he is a "short story writer-poet", who "has a penchant for novel writing" and his texts, "if published in a community better prepared to receive them, would constitute a great and unforgettable event". In a span of merely fifteen months (1883-1884) Vizyinos wrote and published five short novels in the magazine Hestia, thus opening the way for a new literary form and at the same time demonstrating unique thematic, narrative and structural inventiveness. The short stories Who was my Brother’s Murderer?, The only Voyage of his Life, The Consequences of an Old Story and Moskov-Selim deal with the controversial subject of relations and the terms of coexistence among Greeks, Slavs and Turks in the Balkans, as well as the dialogue between the Greeks of Greece and the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire and the Diaspora, and also between Europe and modern and ancient Hellenism. The symbolic function of language and the self-referring function of literature are reflected mainly in the short stories Between Piraeus and Naples and The only Voyage of his Life. These issues are also the subject matter of his poems.
The poet and critic Costis Palamas dominated the Greek literary scene for almost fifty years, from about 1880 until 1930. With his eighteen books of poetry published between 1886-1935 and the abundance of essays and articles that he wrote during the same period, he is considered the chief proponent of the fundamental changes brought about in Greek letters by the 1880s generation, the generation of which he was undeniably the greatest poet. Palamas promoted, perhaps more than anyone else, the use of the colloquial language in literature, establishing its eventual dominance, and contributed to the appreciation of Greek popular culture. The poem "Palm Tree" is held to be the epitome of his work. It is a short composite poem of thirty-nine eightline stanzas written in 1900 and published in The Inert Life in 1904. In this poem symbolism, musicality and versification are evolved and combined as never before or since by Palamas, making it perhaps the most perfected and successful of all
symbolist poems in the Greek language.
, Kostas Ouranis
In Greece, the decade of the 1920s signalled a period of manifold crises: ideological, political and social. The experience of national discord and the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922 seriously injured the concept of Greek ‘grand idealism’. The dictatorship of Pangalos
(1925 - 1926) and a succession of governmental crises (1926-1928) created an atmosphere of widespread instability and insecurity. The refugee problem, unemployment and the wretchedness of state employees sparked a series of protest demonstrations and demands from the unions. Kostas Karyotakis
gave existential depth as well as a tragic dimension to the emotional nuances and melancholic tones of the Neo-symbolist and Neo-romantic poetry of the time. Elegies and Satires (1927) is his last and most complete collection of poems published by Karyotakis. A landmark work in the history of Greek poetry of the 20th century, it is remarkable for its simplicity of expression, its condensed meaning, its existential anguish and the social pressure endured by the poet.
is paradoxically the best-known Greek novelist outside Greece: paradoxically, because he himself rated his poetry and dramas far above his novels, to which he devoted himself seriously only during the last decade of his life. Paradoxically, too, because Kazantzakis has tended to be regarded more highly in international circles than at home. His wanderings temporarily halted by the occupation of Greece during the Second World War, Kazantzakis in the winter of 1941-1942, at the age of fifty-eight, began work on the novel that would mark his second début in Greek literature. This was Zorba the Greek
. Zorba was the first of seven novels (if we count the autobiographical Report to Greco, on which he was still working at the time of his death) that Kazantzakis wrote in his final years, and on which his international reputation now principally rests.
Odysseus Elytis, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize
for Literature, was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1911 and died in Athens in 1996. A major poet in the Greek language, Elytis is also one of the most outstanding international figures of 20th-century poetry. In his work, modernist European poetics and Greek literary tradition are fused in a highly original lyrical voice. Elytis’ later work consists of ten collections of poems and a substantial number of essays. Outstanding among them are The Monogram (1972), an achievement in the European love poem tradition, and The Oxopetra Elegies (1991), which include some of the most difficult but profound poems written in our times. It is significant that in these mature works the tone is no longer jubilant. Melancholy, reflection and solemnity gradually prevail, although the poet’s faith in the power of imagination and the truth of poetry (a belief that brings him close to the Romantics) is still unshakeable.
, M. Karagatsis
, Photios Kontoglou
, Stratis Myrivilis
, Yorgos Theotokas
, Elias Venezis
, Andreas Empeirikos, Nikos Engonopoulos
, Nanos Valaoritis
, critic and poet, confronted the chaotic period of the Greek Civil War
in his two major poetry series, the Epoches, and the Synecheia. Publishing and writing while imprisoned, Anagnostakis explored the role of the poet under tyranny. His award-winning work was arranged by composer Mikis Theodorakis
and thereby continue to influence Greek poets and songwriters in the present.
See also Dido Sotiriou, Nikos Gatsos
, Nikos Karouzos
, Kiki Dimoula
, Miltos Sachtouris
, Antonis Samarakis
See also: Maro Douka
, Yannis Kondos
, Dimitris P. Kraniotis
, Christoforos Liontakis
, Dimitris Lyacos
, Soti Triantafyllou.
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
written in the Greek language
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
from the 11th century, with texts written in a language that is more familiar to the ears of Greeks
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
today than is the language of the early Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
literature, the compilers of the New Testament, or, of course, the classical authors of the fifth and fourth centuries BC.
The emergence of modern Greek literature (11th - 15th century)
The main forms and themes of this period include scholarly and popular epic songs celebrating the new champions of Hellenism; long compositions; verseVerse (poetry)
A verse is formally a single line in a metrical composition, e.g. poetry. However, the word has come to represent any division or grouping of words in such a composition, which traditionally had been referred to as a stanza....
romance, which bore the stamp of influence from western courtly tradition, but a genre nevertheless rooted in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial ages; ancient stories reviving mythical and historical figures such as Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
and Theseus
Theseus
For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...
and Alexander the Great; and didactic, sardonic texts, concerned with philosophy and the allegory of daily life, with birds and animals taking the leading roles. But these will prove to be also the mainstay of modern Greek literature, modified, of course, by the various aesthetic and other values specific to each era.
Acritic songsAcritic songsThe Acritic songs are the heroic or epic poetry that emerged in the Byzantine Empire probably in the 9th century. The songs celebrated the exploits of the Akrites, the frontier guards defending the eastern borders of the Byzantine Empire. The historical background was the almost...
The cultural context within which the first known works of vernacular literatureVernacular literature
Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin...
were created was undoubtedly Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
. The earliest group of such works dates mainly to the twelfth century: known as the Ptochoprodromika, the moralizing poem Spaneas, the autobiographical and didactic verses written in prison by Michael Glykas, the verse Eisiterion (a poem welcoming Princess Agnes of France), and a few examples of heroic poetry such as the Song of Armouris
Song of Armouris
The Song of Armouris or Armoures is a heroic Byzantine ballad, and probably one of the oldest surviving acritic songs, dating from the 11th century...
and the epic Digenis Acritas
Digenis Acritas
Digenes Akrites , known in folksongs as Digenes Akritas , is the most famous of the Acritic Songs. The epic details the life of its eponymous hero, Basil, a man, as the epithet signifies, of mixed Roman and Syrian blood...
. The overwhelming majority of literary works in the vernacular has survived anonymously. Furthermore, it has proved difficult to assign a precise date to many of them, a problem exacerbated by the fact that the form in which the works have survived is often somewhat protean. Many have survived in a number of manuscripts, each of which preserves substantial variants or a different version. This phenomenon also occurs in the medieval literature of western Europe. It can be attributed to the methods by which texts were copied and disseminated in the age of the manuscript; in some cases, differing manuscript traditions may provide evidence of oral as well as written transmission of texts.
RomancesRomance (genre)As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
Verse romances are among the finest achievements of Byzantine literatureByzantine literature
Byzantine literature may be defined as the Greek literature of the Middle Ages, whether written in the territory of the Byzantine Empire or outside its borders...
, continuing as they do the long tradition of the love story whose roots go back to the Hellenistic and Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
periods. The Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
romance began its revival in the 12th century with Ysmine and Ysminias by Eustathius Macrembolites
Eustathius Macrembolites
Eustathius or Eumathius , surnamed Macrembolites , a medieval revivalist of the Greek romance, flourished in the second half of the 12th century CE....
, Rodanthe and Dosikles by Theodoros Prodromos, Drosilla and Charikles by Niketas Eugenianos and Aristandros and Kallithea by Konstantinos Manasses. The differences (and similarities) in the case of the romances of the 13th and 14th centuries are clear. The plot has been reduced considerably; only Livistros and Rodamne maintains a sub-plot. The element of adventure becomes less prominent as the description of the action is reduced. The number of characters taking part in the action also becomes smaller. The social origins of the protagonists changes: no longer simply well-to-do, they derive for the most part from royalty. Furthermore, fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
elements like dragons, winged horses and magical objects are incorporated into the story while the erotic aspect of the romance is given particular emphasis, like the sensuality of the bathing scene in Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe, the passionately entwined Velthandros and Chrysantza whose cries of pleasure echo around the garden, and the obvious erotic symbolism of Achilles’ entry with his lance into the maiden’s garden in the Achilleid
Achilleid
The Achilleid is an unfinished epic poem by Publius Papinius Statius that was intended to present the life of Achilles from his youth through his death at Troy. Only about one and a half books were completed before the poet's death...
. The heroes are either of Byzantine or Roman lineage, though the co-stars are sometimes of eastern origin. The action no longer evolves within a Mediterranean, classical setting; the scenery is contemporary, but with obvious utopian elements and a liking for the scenery of the folktale.
A number of scholars have termed the Greek romances as chivalric, yet they appear neither to imitate nor to have assimilated anything of the western chivalric ideal. The similarities of the central hero to the knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
of the western courtly romance are limited to the external characteristics of the noble knight, in his capacity both as a warrior and as a hunter, and to his exceptional valour and beauty. The codification of the system of values of feudal society as expressed in the ideal of western chivalry is absent from Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
and post-Byzantine works. The social and ideological base of the Greek romances is quite different. Furthermore, the ideal of love that is portrayed is substantially different to the standards of courtly love in the western tradition, while there is considerable difference with regard to the subject of adultery, which appears only very rarely and was quite foreign to the Byzantine notion of love. Apart from the story of Helen and Paris, which in any case was handed down from antiquity, as related in the Tale of Troy, the notion of love is encountered only in Livistros and Rodamne, where the sub-plot concerns an adulterous relationship.
Translations and adaptations of western European romances into the vernacular Greek of the day date to the 14th and 15th century: the Theseid is a translation of Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
’s "Teseida", while Imberios, Margarona, Florios and Platziaflora were both based on the Italian versions of the Old French romances "Pierre de Provence et la Belle Maguelonne" and "Floire et Blanchefleur". To this group of works can also be added The War of Troy, a translation of Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Benoît de Sainte-Maure was a 12th century French poet, most probably from Sainte-Maure de Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenets' administrative center was located in Chinon - west of Tours....
's "The Romance of Troy".
Tales set in the classical world
An outstanding example of the adaptation of the figure of Alexander the Great to the literary needs of the age is provided by the 14th century Alexander RomanceAlexander Romance
Alexander romance is any of several collections of legends concerning the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great. The earliest version is in Greek, dating to the 3rd century. Several late manuscripts attribute the work to Alexander's court historian Callisthenes, but the historical figure died...
, consisting of 6120 lines of political verse. The vernacular literary production of the fourteenth century also includes three long verse accounts of the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
, each presenting a different treatment of the subject. The most popular of these, judging by the seven manuscripts preserving the text, was the War of Troy, an anonymous work that in essence comprises a loose translation, or paraphrase, in 14,400 lines of fifteen-syllable political verse, of the "Roman de Troie" by Benoît de St. Maure. The second of these works, the Tale of Troy (the so-called "Byzantine Iliad") by an anonymous author, also observes the conventions of the romance. The third work, a vernacular paraphrase of the Iliad made by Constantine Hermoniakos
Hermoniakos' Iliad
The Hermoniakos' Iliad is a 14th-century Byzantine paraphrase of the Iliad composed by Constantine Hermoniakos. The poem was commissioned by the Despot of Epirus, who asked Hermoniakos to write a new version of this epic in the Greek vernacular language.-Background and text:Constantine Hermoniakos...
at the court of the despotate of Epirus
Despotate of Epirus
The Despotate or Principality of Epirus was one of the Byzantine Greek successor states of the Byzantine Empire that emerged in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. It claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire, along with the Empire of Nicaea, and the Empire of Trebizond...
in about 1330, seems to follow the Homeric text fairly closely. However, in the twenty-four books of 8800 non-rhyming eight-syllable lines of Hermoniakos’ paraphrase, the narrative also relates the events that preceded the action described by Homer as well as the sequel to the sack of Ilium, all in an affected idiom composed of both vernacular and learned linguistic features.
Cretan literature (15th - 17th centuries)
ErotokritosErotokritos
Erotokritos is a romance composed by Vikentios Kornaros in early 17th century Crete. It consists of 10,012 fifteen-syllable rhymed verses....
is undoubtedly the masterpiece of this period, and perhaps the supreme achievement of modern Greek literature. It is a verse romance written around 1600 by Vitsentzos Kornaros
Vitsentzos Kornaros
Vitsentzos or Vikentios Kornaros or Vincenzo Cornaro was a Cretan poet, who wrote the romantic epic poem Erotokritos. He wrote in vernacular Greek, and was a leading figure of the Cretan Renaissance....
(1553-1613). In over 10,000 lines of rhyming fifteen-syllable couplets, the poet relates the trials and tribulations suffered by two young lovers, Erotokritos and Aretousa, daughter of Heracles, King of Athens. It was a tale that enjoyed enormous popularity among its Greek readership and succeeded in making itself something of a folk hero, whose pedigree was as brother to Digenis Acritas
Digenis Acritas
Digenes Akrites , known in folksongs as Digenes Akritas , is the most famous of the Acritic Songs. The epic details the life of its eponymous hero, Basil, a man, as the epithet signifies, of mixed Roman and Syrian blood...
and Alexander the Great. The poets of this period use the spoken Cretan dialect, freed of the medieval vernacular. The tendency to purge the language of foreign elements was above all represented by Georgios Chortatsis, Vitsentzos Kornaros
Vitsentzos Kornaros
Vitsentzos or Vikentios Kornaros or Vincenzo Cornaro was a Cretan poet, who wrote the romantic epic poem Erotokritos. He wrote in vernacular Greek, and was a leading figure of the Cretan Renaissance....
and the anonymous poets of Voskopoula and The Sacrifice of Abraham, whose works highlight the expressive power of the dialect. As dictated by the pseudo-Aristotelian theory of decorum, the heroes of the works use a vocabulary analogous to their social and educational background. It was thanks to this convention that the Cretan comedies were written in a language that was an amalgam of Italicisms, Latinisms and the local dialect, thereby approximating to the actual language of the middle class of the Cretan towns. The time span separating Antonios Achelis, author of the Siege of Malta
Siege of Malta
Siege of Malta may refer to:* The Siege of Malta , in which the Ottoman Empire failed to dislodge the Knights Hospitaller** Siege of Malta, 1570 work of the Cretan writer Antonios Achelis, about the above...
(1570), and Chortatsis and Kornaros is too short to allow for the formation, from scratch, of the Cretan dialect we see in the texts of the latter two. The only explanation, therefore, is that the poets at the end of the sixteenth century were consciously employing a particular linguistic preference – they were aiming at a pure style of language for their literature and, via that language, a separate identity for the Greek literary production of their homeland.
The flourishing Cretan school was all but terminated by the Turkish capture of the island in the 17th century. The ballads of the klephts, however, survive from the 18th century; these are the songs of the Greek mountain fighters who carried on guerrilla warfare against the Turks.
Enlightenment era (17th century - 1821)
After the Fall of ConstantinopleFall of Constantinople
The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which occurred after a siege by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, against the defending army commanded by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI...
in 1453 the only Greek regions which had not fallen to the Ottomans were Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
, Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, Rhodes
Rhodes
Rhodes is an island in Greece, located in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007, and also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within...
and the Ionian Islands
Ionian Islands
The Ionian Islands are a group of islands in Greece. They are traditionally called the Heptanese, i.e...
, which were already under Venetian control. In these islands, and especially in Crete, literary production continued uninterrupted to a very high standard, in contrast with the Ottoman occupied territories. This period of approximately 150 years from the fall of Crete (in 1669) to the beginning of the Greek War of Independence
Greek War of Independence
The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...
(in 1821) produced some of the greatest texts of the Greek Enlightenment, texts produced by Greek humanists, lay and clerical, which were not only portents of the national revival but also sought for the education and training of the subjugated nation which would guide them through a process that was to achieve a national consciousness and full independence.
Adamantios Korais
Adamantios Korais or Coraïs was a humanist scholar credited with laying the foundations of Modern Greek literature and a major figure in the Greek Enlightenment. His activities paved the way for the Greek War of Independence and emergence of a purified form of the Greek language, known as...
, is a good example of its kind. Until recently, the first satire in the modern Greek tradition was thought to be the Anonymous
Anonymity
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a...
of 1789. Today, however, an earlier work, dated 1785, and bearing the title Alexandrovodas the Callous, can claim to be the first of this genre in Greek. Written by Georgakis Soutsos-Dragoumanakis, the target of its invective is Alexander Mavrokordatos, ruler of Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, referred to in the work as the Fugitive. Two works from the mid 18th century, the Stoicheiomachia (1746) and the Bosporomachia (1766), printed by Eugenios Voulgaris
Eugenios Voulgaris
Eugenios Voulgaris or Boulgaris or Vulgares was a Greek Orthodox educator, and bishop of Kherson . Writing copiously on theology, philosophy and the sciences, he disseminated western European thought throughout the Greek and eastern Christian world, and was a leading contributor to the Modern...
and attached to a verse translation of Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
’s Memnon
Memnon
Memnon may refer to:* Saint Memnon the Wonderworker — early Christian saint from Egypt, hermit and hegumen of one of Egyptian monasteries* Memnon and those erroneously named after him in the Graeco-Roman era:...
were the products of Phanariot circles. Both texts display a growing awareness of the natural landscape
Natural landscape
A natural landscape is a landscape that is unaffected by human activity. A natural landscape is intact when all living and nonliving elements are free to move and change. The nonliving elements distinguish a natural landscape from a wilderness. A wilderness includes areas within which natural...
and foreshadow the age of lyricism that was to follow, while also legitimizing to an extent the mixed linguistic register of the Greek then spoken in Constantinople, with its mingling of a great number of Turkish words, a feature that was to appear in Phanariot poetry a few years later.
The turn of the century saw the rise of two major authors. Rigas Feraios
Rigas Feraios
Rigas Feraios or Rigas Velestinlis was a Greek writer and revolutionary of Aromanian origin, active in the Modern Greek Enlightenment, remembered as a Greek national hero, a victim of Balkan uprising against the Ottoman Empire and a forerunner of the Greek War of Independence.-Early...
and Adamantios Korais
Adamantios Korais
Adamantios Korais or Coraïs was a humanist scholar credited with laying the foundations of Modern Greek literature and a major figure in the Greek Enlightenment. His activities paved the way for the Greek War of Independence and emergence of a purified form of the Greek language, known as...
. Rigas was born in Velestino, Thessaly, in 1757, where he received his basic education. With the capture of Bucharest by the Austro-Russian alliance he moved on to Vienna for a period of six months (1790), and it was there that he printed his first book: The School for Delicate Lovers. It brought the climate of pre-Romanticism and the ‘new sensibility’ to modern Greek prose writing, while at the same time it constituted a fiery declaration of the radical ideas that were shaking Europe. Marriage that broke the barriers of social class, demands for social equality, a new role for women – indeed, the entire programme of the Enlightenment – filled the sensuous tales of The School for Delicate Lovers, which, ‘giving pleasure and instruction’, can be seen to belong to the wider programme of social change and reform of the day. The literature of enlightenment which Rigas undertook to bring to the knowledge of his fellow Greeks constantly sought to find a balance between the didactic, the new ideology, and the social, thematic and technical innovations of a new literariness. The popular, Constantinopolitan language, as well as the interposed verses, many of which are to be found in the manuscript anthologies of the Phanariots, served to familiarize the readership with the new literary genre of the novella or short story.
Adamantios Korais
Adamantios Korais
Adamantios Korais or Coraïs was a humanist scholar credited with laying the foundations of Modern Greek literature and a major figure in the Greek Enlightenment. His activities paved the way for the Greek War of Independence and emergence of a purified form of the Greek language, known as...
spent most of his long life outside the bounds of the Ottoman state. Born in Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
in 1748, he learnt foreign languages at an early age and grew up in an environment that fostered respect for learning and literature. His translations and publishing activity were governed by a desire to give his countrymen access to the learning of the West and also to arouse their interest in the literature of their ancient forebears. In 1804, he gave material evidence of his interest in the ancient writers by publishing an edition of
Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, the first in a series of ancient writers that was given the title Elliniki Vivliothiki (Greek Library). The books in this series, which included authors such as Aristotle, Plutarch, Isocrates, Xenophon and Plato, were prefaced with scholarly introductions and supplemented with detailed commentaries. Following the Franco-Turkish rapprochement, Korais came to believe that his people required systematic long-term preparation, above all in the field of learning, in order through their own efforts to gain independence.
19th century literature (1821 - 1880)
This period, which begins with the struggle for independence in 1821 and ends sixty years later when the fledgling Greek State was confronting new situations and challenges, is marked by many important literary works. Ionian or Heptanese School of LiteratureHeptanese School (literature)The term Heptanese School of literature denotes the literary production of the Ionian Island's literature figures from the late 18th century till the end of the 19th century...
Dionysios SolomosDionysios Solomos
Dionysios Solomos was a Greek poet from Zakynthos. He is best known for writing the Hymn to Liberty , of which the first two stanzas, set to music by Nikolaos Mantzaros, became the Greek national anthem in 1865...
, born in Zakynthos
Zakynthos
Zakynthos , also Zante, the other form often used in English and in Italian , is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the third largest of the Ionian Islands. It is also a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. It covers an area of ...
in 1798, is generally recognised as the leading spokesman for the great values which inspired the struggling nation. His first considerable achievements, the lyrical poetic composition Lambros (1824 and after) and the satirical prose poem Woman of Zakynthos (1826 and after) brought him
to the forefront of modern Greek and European literature. A striking example of the thematic and ideological evolution evident in Solomos’ works of his mature Corfu period are the successive revisions (1833 and later) of a previous attempt (1826) to compose a poem on one of the most important events of the revolution, the siege and fall of Mesolongi, the town where Lord Byron died. The main theme of the poem continues to be the heroic exodus of the inhabitants under siege, yet that which is stressed in the latter versions is human spiritual suffering, strength and moral freedom, as eloquently expressed by the poem’s new title: The Free Besieged.
The poetic work of the Ionian islander Andreas Kalvos
Andreas Kalvos
Andreas Kalvos was a contemporary of Dionysios Solomos and one of the greatest Greek writers of the 19th century. Paradoxically enough, no known portrait of his survives today.-Biography:...
, also born in Zakynthos
Zakynthos
Zakynthos , also Zante, the other form often used in English and in Italian , is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the third largest of the Ionian Islands. It is also a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. It covers an area of ...
in 1792, consists of twenty Odes written in the Greek language. He penned a total of twenty Odes about the Greek revolution. The language he used is highly poetic, his versification classical, and the ideology expressed within these lines worthy of great poetry. They are contained in two collections he published at a young age, The Lyre (Odes 1-10 headed by a short invocation to the Muses in verse) and Lyric Poems (Odes 11-20). These twenty poems together bear the title of Odes. His other, less important, works were written in Italian in the previous decade (1811-1821) and comprise three tragedies and a few odes, marked by the literary influence of Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo
Ugo Foscolo , born Niccolò Foscolo, was an Italian writer, revolutionary and poet.-Biography:Foscolo was born on the Ionian island of Zakynthos...
and Neo-classicism. During the rest of his life Kalvos published no other poems. His overriding aim was to achieve a combination of Romanticism and Neo-classicism and to lend kydos to the revolution. Initially his work was unknown, but today the quality of his writing and his importance in the shaping of the modern nation is undisputed.
HistoriographyHistoriographyHistoriography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
Makriyannis (1797 - 1864) was a distinguished memoir writer. Ioannis Triantaphyllodimitris, or Triantaphyllou, his real name, was born in the village of Avoriti in Doris. His turbulent life, driven by a fighter’s spirit and passion and endowed with the genuine sensibility of simple folk, has been rightly seen as a symbol of modern Hellenism. Makriyannis’ Memoirs were initially published as an important historical document. It was for this reason that his rambling Visions and Marvels were ignored at the time, being considered not worth publishing. Makriyannis had been illiterate. His need to record the events he had lived through persuaded him to acquire just enough knowledge of reading and writing to enable him to set down his memoirs; he was untouched by scholarly tradition. However, that they have been acknowledged and survived is not only because of their importance as an historical source of information or because of their ideology. It is also because of the language in which they were written. The immediacy and passion of his writing as well as his total absorption in popular tradition and popular mores distinguish his Memoirs from those of other patriots, making him one of the most authentic writers of modern Greek prose. This is proved by the wide appreciation of his work in later years.If any one individual were to be considered responsible for the image the Greeks have about themselves and their history, that person would be Constantine Paparrigopoulos (1815 - 1891). He wrote his five-volume History of the Greek Nation between 1860 and 1874 and, since then, his ideas have been promulgated in every conceivable way: incorporated into other texts, repeated by thousands of lecturers, memorised by generations of students and eventually absorbed by the nation, which gradually saw itself in the image conceived by Paparrigopoulos. The success of this work was so great that few remember the image-maker and even fewer are aware of the imagery involved in the formation of the concept of Greekness. Paparrigopoulos succeeded in convincing his public that things had always been so. The picture he presented was seen as a mirror of the collective self. History of the Greek Nation was re-issued several times with additions concerning more recent events by other authors. A century later, in 1971, when a new monumental history began to be published, incorporating all the research and studies carried out in the meantime, Paparrigopoulos’ History retained its title and its original historiographical pattern.
FolkloreFolkloreFolklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
The publication of the first volume of Study of the Life of Modern Greeks and of Modern Greek Mythology by Nikolaos PolitisNikolaos Politis
Nikolaos Politis was a Greek diplomat of the Interwar period. He was a professor of law by training, and prior to the First World War taught law at Paris University. He served as Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs on 1916-1920 and again in 1922. Also served as Greek representative to the League of...
(1852 -1921) in 1871 constitutes the birth certificate of folklore as a science. Its young author had recently been awarded a prize for his essay On the customs and lore of modern Greece in comparison with those of ancient Greece. Thus was born Greek folklore as a field of study; to be more precise, the study of folklore was now being born in Greece, for in that same year The Folk Life of Modern Greeks and Greek Antiquity by Bernhard Schmidt appeared in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
and signalled a transition from archeological folklore. It reached adulthood, however, much later, since twelve years had to pass before it was acknowledged in 1883 and another twenty-five years before its official name laography was validated in 1908.
First Athenian School
See Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, Alexandros SoutsosAlexandros Soutsos
Alexandros Soutsos was a Greek poet from a prominent Phanariote family. He founded the Greek Romantic school of poetry. Soutsos was born in Istanbul in 1803 from Chian parentage. At the time of the Greek Revolution, he was a young, liberal partisan. He wrote poems to encourage the insurgents....
, Panagiotis Soutsos
Panagiotis Soutsos
Panagiotis Soutsos , was a Greek newspaper editor, journalist, author, and poet of the romantic school, born in Constantinople . He was an admirer of the ancient Greek tradition, while he used an archaic language in his works...
, Dimitrios Vikelas, Achilleas Paraschos, Dimitrios Paparrigopoulos
Emmanuel Roidis, Georgios Vizyinos
Emmanuel Roidis (1836 - 1904), distinguished cosmopolitan writer and great stylist of katharevousaKatharevousa
Katharevousa , is a form of the Greek language conceived in the early 19th century as a compromise between Ancient Greek and the Modern Greek of the time, with a vocabulary largely based on ancient forms, but a much-simplified grammar. Originally, it was widely used both for literary and official...
, became famous at the age of thirty, following the publication of his provocative novel, Pope Joan
Pope Joan
Pope Joan is a legendary female Pope who, it is purported, reigned for a few years some time in the Middle Ages. The story first appeared in the writings of 13th-century chroniclers, and subsequently spread through Europe...
, in 1866. This sensational book was translated immediately into many European languages and was, until the mid-20th century, the most widely translated Greek novel. Numerous Greek editions have been published up to the present day as well as many new editions of the translations. Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...
and Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
are two of the many distinguished translators of Pope Joan. An astonishingly original and fascinating work, Pope Joan is the female Greek version of Don Juan
Don Juan
Don Juan is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630...
. Roidis’ ambitious and cynical heroine wanders around medieval Europe in the ninth century.
Georgios Vizyinos (1849 - 1896), author of poems, short stories, children’s literature and essays of philosophical, psychological and ethnological subject matter, is thought of as the pioneer of modern Greek prose. According to Costis Palamas, he is a "short story writer-poet", who "has a penchant for novel writing" and his texts, "if published in a community better prepared to receive them, would constitute a great and unforgettable event". In a span of merely fifteen months (1883-1884) Vizyinos wrote and published five short novels in the magazine Hestia, thus opening the way for a new literary form and at the same time demonstrating unique thematic, narrative and structural inventiveness. The short stories Who was my Brother’s Murderer?, The only Voyage of his Life, The Consequences of an Old Story and Moskov-Selim deal with the controversial subject of relations and the terms of coexistence among Greeks, Slavs and Turks in the Balkans, as well as the dialogue between the Greeks of Greece and the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire and the Diaspora, and also between Europe and modern and ancient Hellenism. The symbolic function of language and the self-referring function of literature are reflected mainly in the short stories Between Piraeus and Naples and The only Voyage of his Life. These issues are also the subject matter of his poems.
1880s Generation or New Athenian School
See also: Georgios Drosinis, Ioannis Gryparis, Miltiadis MalakasisThe poet and critic Costis Palamas dominated the Greek literary scene for almost fifty years, from about 1880 until 1930. With his eighteen books of poetry published between 1886-1935 and the abundance of essays and articles that he wrote during the same period, he is considered the chief proponent of the fundamental changes brought about in Greek letters by the 1880s generation, the generation of which he was undeniably the greatest poet. Palamas promoted, perhaps more than anyone else, the use of the colloquial language in literature, establishing its eventual dominance, and contributed to the appreciation of Greek popular culture. The poem "Palm Tree" is held to be the epitome of his work. It is a short composite poem of thirty-nine eightline stanzas written in 1900 and published in The Inert Life in 1904. In this poem symbolism, musicality and versification are evolved and combined as never before or since by Palamas, making it perhaps the most perfected and successful of all
symbolist poems in the Greek language.
Constantine P. Cavafy
In Alexandria, Egypt, on the south-eastern periphery of the Greek diaspora there lived Constantine Cavafy wrote the poetry that was to earn him international recognition as one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. The one hundred and fifty-four poems that comprise Cavafy’s recognized work (some thirty additional examples were left unfinished at his death) fall into three categories, which the poet himself identified as follows: poems which, though not precisely ‘philosophical’, “provoke thought”; ‘historical’ poems; and ‘hedonistic’ (or ‘aesthetic’) poems. Many poems may be considered either historical or hedonistic, as Cavafy was also careful to point out. The poems of the first category (to which belong some of Cavafy’s best-known pieces, such as The City and Ithaca), all published before 1916, often display a certain didacticism. The historical poems (often historical in appearance only), the first of which was published in 1906, are usually set in the Hellenistic age (including Late Antiquity), the period which Cavafy believed was “particularly fitting as a context for his characters”, although Byzantium does not disappear entirely from his poetry.Neo-romanticism or Neo-symbolism
See also: Tellos AgrasTellos Agras
Tellos Agras was the nom de guerre of Sarantis-Tellos Agapinos , a Greek officer of the Hellenic Army who played a prominent role during the Greek Struggle for Macedonia.- Early life :...
, Kostas Ouranis
Kostas Ouranis
-Life:Ouranis was born in Istanbul in 1890 to Nikolaos Niarchos and Angeliki Yannousi from Leonidio, Arcadia, where he grew up and went to elementary school. He went to high school in Nafplion and then Istanbul, where he graduated...
In Greece, the decade of the 1920s signalled a period of manifold crises: ideological, political and social. The experience of national discord and the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922 seriously injured the concept of Greek ‘grand idealism’. The dictatorship of Pangalos
Theodoros Pangalos (general)
Major General Theodoros Pangalos was a Greek soldier and politician. A distinguished staff officer and an ardent Venizelist and anti-royalist, Pangalos played a leading role in the September 1922 revolt that deposed King Constantine I and in the establishment of the Second Hellenic Republic...
(1925 - 1926) and a succession of governmental crises (1926-1928) created an atmosphere of widespread instability and insecurity. The refugee problem, unemployment and the wretchedness of state employees sparked a series of protest demonstrations and demands from the unions. Kostas Karyotakis
Kostas Karyotakis
Kostas Karyotakis is considered one of the most representative Greek poets of the 1920s and one of the first poets to use iconoclastic themes in Greece. His poetry conveys a great deal of nature, imagery and traces of expressionism and surrealism...
gave existential depth as well as a tragic dimension to the emotional nuances and melancholic tones of the Neo-symbolist and Neo-romantic poetry of the time. Elegies and Satires (1927) is his last and most complete collection of poems published by Karyotakis. A landmark work in the history of Greek poetry of the 20th century, it is remarkable for its simplicity of expression, its condensed meaning, its existential anguish and the social pressure endured by the poet.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos KazantzakisNikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus...
is paradoxically the best-known Greek novelist outside Greece: paradoxically, because he himself rated his poetry and dramas far above his novels, to which he devoted himself seriously only during the last decade of his life. Paradoxically, too, because Kazantzakis has tended to be regarded more highly in international circles than at home. His wanderings temporarily halted by the occupation of Greece during the Second World War, Kazantzakis in the winter of 1941-1942, at the age of fifty-eight, began work on the novel that would mark his second début in Greek literature. This was Zorba the Greek
Zorba the Greek
Zorba the Greek is a 1964 film based on the novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. The film was directed by Cypriot Michael Cacoyannis and the title character was played by Anthony Quinn...
. Zorba was the first of seven novels (if we count the autobiographical Report to Greco, on which he was still working at the time of his death) that Kazantzakis wrote in his final years, and on which his international reputation now principally rests.
Poetry
Mythistorima is the most definitive work of George Seferis and the most truly representative text of Greek Modernism. It is a composite poem comprising 24 sections in free verse –- a poem that contains the basic concepts and recurring themes of the poetry to follow: ‘common’, almost unpoetic speech, a familiar, narrative but also dramatic voice; a continued intermingling of history and mythology as everyday figures parade through the poem in the company of mythical “personae” and symbolic figures. Everything takes place in “typical” Greek landscapes, sometimes recognisable, while the mythical subject matter (drawn chiefly from Homer and the tragic playwrights) appears fragmentarily, “peaks” of myths, as the poet himself would say, nevertheless capable of providing stability and clarity to the emotion possessing the poet.Odysseus Elytis, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
for Literature, was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1911 and died in Athens in 1996. A major poet in the Greek language, Elytis is also one of the most outstanding international figures of 20th-century poetry. In his work, modernist European poetics and Greek literary tradition are fused in a highly original lyrical voice. Elytis’ later work consists of ten collections of poems and a substantial number of essays. Outstanding among them are The Monogram (1972), an achievement in the European love poem tradition, and The Oxopetra Elegies (1991), which include some of the most difficult but profound poems written in our times. It is significant that in these mature works the tone is no longer jubilant. Melancholy, reflection and solemnity gradually prevail, although the poet’s faith in the power of imagination and the truth of poetry (a belief that brings him close to the Romantics) is still unshakeable.
Prose
See Penelope DeltaPenelope Delta
Penelope Delta was a Greek author of books for children. Practically the first Greek children's books writer, her historical novels have been widely read and influenced Greek popular perceptions on national identity and history...
, M. Karagatsis
M. Karagatsis
M. Karagatsis was the pen name of the important modern Greek novelist, journalist, critic and playwright Dimitris Rodopoulos. He was born in Athens, lived in Larissa and studied law in France. The pen name M. Karagatsis is the name the novelist is known with. The letter "M." comes from Mitya,...
, Photios Kontoglou
Photios Kontoglou
Photis Kontoglou was a Greek writer, painter and iconographer.-Life :He was raised by his mother, Despoina Kontoglou, and his uncle Stefanos Kontoglou, who was abbot in the nearby monastery of Aghia Paraskevi. He spent his childhood among the monastery, the sea and the fishermen. In 1913, he...
, Stratis Myrivilis
Stratis Myrivilis
Stratis Myrivilis , a major figure in the literary history of 20th Century Greece, is the pseudonym of Efstratios Stamatopoulos. He wrote mostly fiction: novels, novellas, and short stories.- Biography :...
, Yorgos Theotokas
Yórgos Theotokás
Yórgos Theotokás , also spelt Geórgios Theotokás, was a Greek novelist.-Biography:He was born in Constantinople ....
, Elias Venezis
Elias Venezis
Elias Venezis is the pseudonym of Elias Mellos, a major Greek novelist. He was born in 1904 in Ayvalık in Asia Minor and died in Athens in 1973. He wrote many books, of which the most famous are Number 31328 and Aeolian Earth...
The Surrealists (Late 1930s - )
See Nicolas CalasNicolas Calas
Nicolas Calas was the pseudonym of Nikos Kalamaris , a Greek-American poet and art critic. While living in Greece, he also used the pseudonyms Nikitas Randos and M...
, Andreas Empeirikos, Nikos Engonopoulos
Nikos Engonopoulos
Nikos Engonopoulos was a modern Greek painter and poet. He is one of the most important members of the Greek Generation of the '30s as well as a major representative of the surrealistic movement in Greece...
, Nanos Valaoritis
Nanos Valaoritis
Nanos Valaoritis is one of the most distinguished writers in Greece today. He has been widely published as a poet, novelist and playwright since 1939, and his correspondence with George Seferis has been a bestseller...
Postwar literature (1944 - 1974)
Manolis AnagnostakisManolis Anagnostakis
Manolis Anagnostakis was a Greek poet and critic at the forefront of the Marxist and existentialist poetry movements arising during and after the Greek Civil War in the late 1940s. Anagnostakis was a leader amongst his contemporaries and influenced the generation of poets immediately after him...
, critic and poet, confronted the chaotic period of the Greek Civil War
Greek Civil War
The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek governmental army, backed by the United Kingdom and United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece , the military branch of the Greek Communist Party , backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania...
in his two major poetry series, the Epoches, and the Synecheia. Publishing and writing while imprisoned, Anagnostakis explored the role of the poet under tyranny. His award-winning work was arranged by composer Mikis Theodorakis
Mikis Theodorakis
Mikis Theodorakis is one of the most renowned Greek songwriters and composers. Internationally, he is probably best known for his songs and for his scores for the films Zorba the Greek , Z , and Serpico .Politically, he identified with the left until the late 1980s; in 1989, he ran as an...
and thereby continue to influence Greek poets and songwriters in the present.
See also Dido Sotiriou, Nikos Gatsos
Nikos Gatsos
-Biography:Nikos Gatsos was born in 1911 in Asea in Arcadia, a district of the Peloponnese, where he finished primary school . He attended high school in Tripoli, where he became acquainted with literature and foreign languages. Afterwards, he moved to Athens, where he studied literature,...
, Nikos Karouzos
Nikos Karouzos
Giannakis 'Ioannis' Okkas is a Cypriot football striker. He currently plays for Anorthosis Famagusta FC. He is also the captain of the Cyprus national football team.- International career :...
, Kiki Dimoula
Kiki Dimoula
Kiki Dimoula is an acclaimed Greek poet. She worked as a clerk for the Bank of Greece. She was married to the poet Athos Dimoulas , with whom she had two children...
, Miltos Sachtouris
Miltos Sachtouris
Miltos Sachtouris or Miltos Sahtouris was a Greek poet. He was a descendant of Giorgos Sachtouris. When he was young he adopted the pen name Miltos Chrysanthis...
, Antonis Samarakis
Contemporary literature (1974 - )
The Annual Poetry Symposium started in 1981 by an ad hoc committee made of poets and Professors of the University of Patras. In its 25 years of activity it has significantly contributed to the promotion of Greek poetry and its study from antiquity to present, having hosted hundreds of poets, professors and delegates from Greece and abroad.See also: Maro Douka
Maro Douka
Maro Douka is an acclaimed Greek novelist. She has lived in Athens since 1966 and she studied History and Archaeology at the University of Athens...
, Yannis Kondos
Yannis Kondos
Yannis Kondos is an award winning Greek poet. He read Economics at the University of Piraeus . He founded the bookshop Ηνίοχος in 1971, along with Thanassis Niarchos. Since 1975, he has been working for Kedros publishers...
, Dimitris P. Kraniotis
Dimitris P. Kraniotis
Dimitris P. Kraniotis is a contemporary Greek poet. Born in 15 July 1966 in Stomio - Larissa, a coastal town in central Greece.- Biography :...
, Christoforos Liontakis
Christoforos Liontakis
Christoforos Liontakis is an award winning Greek poet and translator. He read Law at the University of Athens and Philosophy of Law at Sorbonne, Paris...
, Dimitris Lyacos
Dimitris Lyacos
Dimitris Lyacos is a contemporary Greek poet and playwright. He was born and raised in Athens where he studied Law. From 1988-1991 he lived in Venice, then moved to London, studied philosophy at University College London and stayed there for thirteen years...
, Soti Triantafyllou.
See also
- Greek literatureGreek literatureGreek literature refers to writings composed in areas of Greek influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek-speaking people have existed.-Ancient Greek literature :...
- List of Greek writers
- List of Greek poets