In Mahābhārata Book 6, as a disastrous war between cousins is about to begin, huge forces on both sides are poised for action, but the action does not begin. It is suspended because Arjuna has lost the will to act. The best warrior of the Pāṇḍavas is immobilized by the… Read more
Mon propos est une invitation à re-lire ensemble les études de Nicole Loraux sur l’Antigone de Sophocle (je fais référence à La main d’Antigone qui date de 1986 et au texte écrit en guise d’introduction à l’édition des Belles Lettres de 1997) [1] et l’étude… Read more
When the ancient Greeks first start writing mimetic prose narrative, where do they get the narrative resources for that? In particular, I’m interested in the verbal and stylistic resources for depicting rapid-fire dialogue and complex, unstructured speech situations involving multiple speakers. [*] [1]… Read more
Introduction By employing recent work done in the discipline of Pragmatics (Historical Pragmatics; (Im)politeness studies), this paper aims to sketch out a typology and a description of the dynamics of verbal abuse in Homer. [*] The metalanguage of verbal abuse, that is, how the narrator… Read more
πεφύκασι δ’ οἱ πλεῖστοι τῶν φιλοσόφων τῶν κωμικῶν κακήγοροι μᾶλλον εἶναι. Most philosophers are naturally more disposed to slander than the comic playwrights. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 5.220a The subject of this paper is the rhetorical strategies of abuse that Socrates employs in the Apology and Meno, strategies ubiquitous in Plato’s writings… Read more
From the 1950s to the 1980s, there has been a revival of interest for Orthodox Christianity in Greece. The main authors associated with this revival are often referred to as “neo-Orthodox.” [1] Influenced by nineteenth and twentieth century Russian theology, these authors have dealt with… Read more
Nationalism as a source of collective identity is the most persistent spiritual offspring of the French Revolution. The collapse of Yugoslavia refuted the view of Eric Hobsbawm (1990) who thought that the subject of his book was, historically speaking, in full retreat. The topicality of this phenomenon of nationalist revival… Read more
The recourse to history for creating literary products has anchored much of the most notable 19th and 20th century Greek fiction and poetry writing. Several names come readily to mind: among poets, Solomos, Kalvos, Cavafy, Sikelianos, Palamas, Elytis, Ritsos, Anagnostakis stand out. Fiction writers prove equally ready to rely on… Read more
This article examines Manolis Anagnostakis’s eight collections of poems, Τα ποιήματα 1941–1971 (Εποχές 1–3, Συνέχεια, Παρενθέσεις, Συνέχεια 2–3, Ο Στόχος [Epochs 1–3, Continuation, Parentheses, Continuation 2–3, The Goal]) that exemplify the spiritual journey of a (poetic) consciousness in crisis, suggesting an interpretive model for understanding and overcoming some of Greece’s… Read more
Historian Eric Hobsbawm defines “invented tradition” as “a set of practices… of a ritually symbolic nature” that “automatically implies continuity with… a suitable historic past” (1983:1). Sometimes the past—suitable or not—is there for the taking. This paper explores the interaction between fiction and reality in the musical culture of western… Read more
