Greek Worlds, Ancient and Modern: To Whom They May (or May Not) Concern

• Published in: Journal of modern Greek studies 2002-10, Vol.20 (2), p.175-190
• Main Author: Van Steen, Gonda Aline Hector
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aeschylus (522-456 BC); Anthropology; Aristophanes (450?-388? BC); Culture; Euripides (c 485-406 BC); Greek language; Greek literature; Syncretism
• ISSN: 0738-1727; 1086-3265; 1086-3265
• DOI: 10.1353/mgs.2002.0034

Particularly interesting is Giannakopoulou's great sensitivity to interwoven linguistic and architectural material: the three authors recreate a Parthenon in a poetic process that is influenced by the monument's physical or archaeological restoration to its presumed perfect state of the fifth-century B.C. Doric style and, concomitantly, they make classicizing linguistic choices and resort to a more conservative literary mode. Armstrong states: Since a lot of European secular culture from the time of the Enlightenment was so heavily invested in the idea of the ancient Greeks as heroes of Western natural reason, the pesky persistence of historical Greece has always required a critical reexamination of the function of Greece as a center, an origin, a source for some essential Occidentalism (what I like to call "occentricity"). In my own research for Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece, I pursued real theater, not merely text, and discovered a viable contemporary Greek Aristophanes who, even though he made his modern Greek debut as a revived classic, has revealed multiple affinities with native popular, even populist culture (whether on stage, on the screen, in the Karaghiozis shadow theater, in comic books, or other formats). (First published as History of Civilization in England, 2 vols., 1857-1861.)