Books - Modern Greek History
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The Forster–Cavafy Letters - Friends at a Slight Angle |
The letters exchanged between the English novelist E.M. Forster and the Greek–Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy are being published for the first time.
The book entitled The Forster- Cavafy Letters: Friends at a Slight Angle presents Forster’s relentless determination to promote Cavafy, as well as a number of major twentieth century literary personalities (such as Arnold Toynbee, T.S. Eliot, T.E. Lawrence, and Leonard Woolf) who participated in Forster’s early translation project.
The book, edited by Peter Jeffreys, includes all extant letters, the earliest Cavafy translations by George Valassopoulos, poems by E.M. Forster, archival photographs, and related letters.
The American University in Cairo Press - The Forster–Cavafy Letters: Friends at a Slight Angle GreekNewsAgenda: Cavafy, Forster: a lasting friendship (11.06.09)
Vassiliki Kolocotroni and Efterpi Mitsi (Eds.) - Women Writing Greece
This collection aims to cast new light on women's participation in the discourses of Hellenism and Orientalism, examining their ideological rendering of Greece as at once a luminous land and a site crossed by contradictory cultural memories. Arranged chronologically, the essays discuss encounters with Greece by, among others, Lady Hester Stanhope, Mary Shelley, Eva Palmer-Sikielianos, Jane Ellen Harrison and Virginia Woolf. Read more... |
Women Writing Greece explores images of modern Greece by women who experienced the country as travellers, writers, and scholars, or who journeyed there through the imagination. The essays assembled here consider women's travel narratives, memoirs and novels, ranging from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, focusing on the role of gender in travel and cross-cultural mediation and challenging stereotypical views of 'the Greek journey', traditionally seen as an antiquarian or Byronic pursuit.
Maria Koundoura: The Greek Idea: The Formation of National and Transnational Identities
The Greek Idea offers a new critical paradigm from which to explore these identities. Drawing upon postcolonial theory, Maria Koundoura addresses and analyzes the cultural material that produced Greece’s representation as both Europe’s origin and "other". The long association of Greece and English Literature began with English travellers' "discovery" of Greece in the late-eighteenth century and the reinforcement of the myth which placed Greece as the location of Western culture. Koundoura maps what this representation signifies for Greeks, both national and diasporic. In doing so she touches on England, Greece, the United States, Australia and twentieth century diaspora cultures. Read more... |
How do those living in diaspora form their own national and transnational identity?
Bruce Clark: Twice a Stranger: Greece, Turkey and the Minorities They Expelled
As Bruce Clark, international security editor of The Economist, says in his book “Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions That Forged Modern Greece and Turkey,” it was "a massive, yet little-known landmark of modern history that made nearly two million citizens of Turkey or Greece move across the Aegean.” Using a variety of sources — interviews with some of the last surviving eyewitnesses, documents and accounts from the time, research by local historians in Greece and Turkey — Clark tells both the diplomatic and human stories of the exchange. Clark points out in his book that the exchange achieved its goals by creating clear boundaries and thus making it possible for the two countries to live side by side, while illustrating at the same time the human cost of the population exchange. Read more: |
On 24 July 1923, the Peace Treaty of Lausanne was signed in Switzerland by Greece, Turkey and other countries that fought in the First World War, setting out the boundaries of modern Greece and Turkey. One result of this was the large compulsory exchange, based on religion, of populations between the two countries.
Milton describes how two million innocent civilians were caught up in the conflict as victorious Turkish troops entered Smyrna. The port was ransacked and looted for days, women were raped, men tortured and hundreds of thousands deported or killed. Milton actually met survivors of the massacre, who he says are haunted by the destruction of their city "every day of their lives." Eyewitness testimonies, diary entries, and letters – some of them published for the first time – are all part of this meticulously researched, informed account. "Paradise Lost" is a timely reminder of the appalling cost of expansionist political ambitions; it tells a fascinating story with clarity and insight. Read more: |
Smyrna was the richest and most cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire, where Levantine dynasties, Greeks, Armenians, Turks, and Jews, had created together, a majority Christian city that was unique in the Islamic world. This harmony came to an abrupt end on September 9, 1922, when it witnessed the terrible backlash of Turkey’s brutal three-year war with Greece.
Placing Modern Greece - The Dynamics of Romantic Hellenism, 1770-1840
| Placing Modern Greece is about literary representations of Greece in the period of Romanticism, encompassing the time in the 1820s when it became a territorial and political reality as a nation state. Constanze Guthenke claims that the imagining of and attitude towards Greece was shaped by a fascination with the material, and by the highly conceptualized tension between the ideal on the one hand, and the material on the other. Read more... |
Greek lives and times (Times Literary Supplement, 20.07.2007)
| Richard Clogg reviews six books published in the UK about Greek modern history. His review concludes that theses six books afford a good insight into the way in which the study of the modern history and society of Greece has in recent years been expanded, enriched and in many respects transformed. Read more… |
Mark Mazower: Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950
Drawing on a wealth of archival documents, Mazower weaves a lavish tapestry illustrating the tangled history of Salonica, which began as a Hellenistic urban center in 315 B.C. and flourished through the Middle Ages as a Greek Orthodox city. In 1430, the Ottoman Empire commenced a rule that lasted until 1912. Mazower's graceful, evocative prose, his deft attention to details and his empathetic presentation of all sides of the story add up to a magnificent tale of this unique city. Read more: |
Situated on the Aegean where two mountain ranges meet, Salonica has a unique geographical location, which promoted the rich confluence of cultures that once characterized the city. Part travelogue, part history and part cultural study, this is a splendid tour of the fortunes and misfortunes of this Balkan city.
Modern Greek History |
Classics & Buzantium |
Contemporary Greece |
