7AABM112 Poetic Geography: landmarks of the nation in the modern Greek poetic tradition, 1821-1940
Credit value: 20 credits
Module convenor/tutor: Dr Polina Tambakaki
Teaching Pattern:
Availability: Please see module list
Assessment: 2 x essay of 3,000 words (50% each)
Much attention has been devoted in recent years to the construction of ‘imagined communities’, modern Greece since 1821 being a paradigmatic case. This module (which complements 7AABM111 Perceptions of the past) seeks to explore how such constructions emerge and are then canonized through the poetic tradition, in a country in which poetry has been especially prized, not least for its susceptibility to being read in national (and indeed in nationalist) terms. Covering a representative range of major poets since the initial rising against the Ottomans up to the declaration of war by Greece in 1940, this module seeks to encourage students to interrogate (but not necessarily to disavow) connections between the poetic tradition and the mental map which it constructs of significant, even sacred, places in the modern national memory. Within that memory, the ancient, Byzantine and Revolutionary pasts each have a salience which derives as much from poetry as it does from history – and the aim of the module is help students to explore the relation between the two, on the basis of texts to be studies either in the Greek original or in translation.
Teaching plan
[The places in question appear in square brackets.]
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Week 1: The War of Independence I: the classical heritage vs the Ottoman present. Andreas Kalvos, Odes (1824/1826) 1 [Zante/Zakynthos]; V [Delhi]: VI [Chios]; VII [Parga]; XII [Psara]; XV [Souli]
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Week 2: The War of Independence II: linking the classical heritage, the medieval and modern tradition of risings, and the hallowing of Missolonghi. Count Dionysios Solomos, Hymn to Liberty (1823) [various]; ‘The Cretan’ (1833-4) [Crete/Zante]; ‘The Free Besieged’, draft III (1844-9) [Missolonghi]
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Week 3: The kleftic songs and their poetic geography. Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne, ed. Claude Fauriel (1824-5) [Constantinople, Parnassos/Liakoura, Souli, Parga, Thermopylae/Alamana]
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Week 4: The Ionian Islands before and after 1864: voices of Unionist and irredentist sentiment. Athanasios Valaoritis, Thanasis Diakos (1867, extracts) [Alamana], Foteinos (written before 18790 [Lefkas]; Gerasimos Markoras, The Oath (1875, extracts) [Crete]
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Week 5: The Acropolis as a site of national longing. Ioannis Karasoutsas, ‘The Ruins of the Parthenon’ (1860); Spyridon Vasilieiadis, ‘The Parthenon’ (1867, extract); Kleanthis Papazoglou, ‘Reminiscence of the Parthenon’ (1871)
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Week 6: Many homelands into one: one national poet’s construction. Kostis Palamas, Homelands (1895) [Missolonghi, Patras, Athens, Corfu, Egypt, Athos, Constantinople]; The King’s Flute (extracts, 1910) [Athens]
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Week 7: Poetic subversions of the national map. Kostis Palamas, Satirical Exercises (1912); C.P. Cavafy, ‘Retour de la Gréce’ (1914); K.G. Karyotakis, ‘Delphic Festival’ (1927), Nicolas Calas, ‘Acropolis’ (1933)
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Week 8: Sacralizing place before and after the Asia Minor Disaster. Angelos Sikelianos, Visionary (1909, extracts) [Lefkas]; ‘Pan’ (1914) [Salamis]; ‘Pantarkis’ (1914) [Olympia]; ‘Sparta’ (1914); ‘Hymn to Artemis Orthyia’ (1917) [Sparta]; ‘At the Monastery of Blessed Luke’ (1935) [Osios Loukas]; ‘Sacred Way’ (1935) [Eleusis]
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Week 9: A shrunken Greece. George Seferis, Mythistorema (1935) [Mycenae, Hydra, etc]; ‘Gymnopaidia’ (1935) [Santorini]; ‘The King of Asine’ (1940)
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Week 10: Student presentations on places of national significance in modern Greek poetry
General bibliography
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Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, 2nd ed. (Cambridge 2002).
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Douglas Dakin, The unification of Greece, 1770-1923 (London 1972)
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Thomas W. Gallant, Modern Greece (London 2001)
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Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (London 1983)
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Yannis Hamilakis, The Nation and its Ruins (Oxford 2007)
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Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London 1960)
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Robert Shannan Peckham, National Histories, Natural States (London 2001)
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David Ricks and Paul Magdalino (eds), Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity (Aldershot 2004)
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Roderick Beaton & David Ricks (eds), The Making of Modern Greece, eds Roderick Beaton, David Ricks (Farnham 2009)
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Arnold Toynbee, The Greeks and their Heritages (1981)
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F.-M. Tsigakou, The Rediscovery of Greece: Travellers and Painters of the Romantic Era (London 1981)
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Katerina Zacharia (ed.), Hellenisms (Farnham 2008)