Literature as National Institution ：Studies in the Politics of Modern Greek Criticism ( Princeton Legacy Library )

Publication subTitle ：Studies in the Politics of Modern Greek Criticism

Publication series ：Princeton Legacy Library

Author： Lambropoulos Vassilis;;;  

Publisher： Princeton University Press‎

Publication year： 2014

E-ISBN: 9781400859351

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780691067315

Subject： I Literature;I06 Literature, Literature Appreciation

Keyword： 文学

Language： ENG

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Description

This book examines how the practices of criticism establish a particular domain of knowledge, the truth of literature. As a discussion of the ideology and politics of literary knowledge, it concentrates on constitutive elements of its production: the intertextuality of writing, the mediatedness of understanding, the formative role of reading expectations, the enabling presence of relevant literacy, the conditioning horizon of expectations, and the economic character of axiology. The main argument advanced is that criticism, by constructing literature as an ethnic heritage and communal treasure, participated in the invention of a national identity necessary for the legitimization of the modern state.

Case studies have been selected from the highly relevant area of contemporary Greek criticism. Microscopic investigations of its dominant sites, mechanisms, and discourses reveal that the field emerged in response to concrete political needs and provided the state with a literary tradition as proof of its national composition, purity, continuity, and autonomy. The construction and canonization of texts as art works invariably employed, as a measure of aesthetic (and ultimately moral) merit, the Greekness of the literary sign. The book, as a genealogical approach to the neglected national role of literature, should be of interest to specialists in literary theory, comparative literature, Greek studies, and cultural studies.

Originally published in 1988.

The

Chapter

Cover

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Toward a Genealogy of "Literature": The Institutionalization of Tradition in C. Th. Dimaras's A History of Modern Greek Literature

2. Who has been Reading Masterpieces on our Behalf? George Seferis, Makriyannis, and the Literary Canon

3. The Fictions of Criticism: The "Prolegomena" of Iakovos Polylas as Künstlerroman

4. Incompleteness as Damnation: The Poetics of the Romantic Fragment in Dionysios Solomos's The Free Besieged

5. The Hermeneutics of Openness in the Novel: The Unsettling Modernism of Yannis Beratis's Whirlwind

6. Writing Greek as the Only Language: The Impossible Postmodernism of Renos Apostolidis's "The John of My Life"

7. What Makes Good Literature Good and Literature: The Politics of Evaluation Surrounding the Work of Yannis Ritsos

8. The Violent Power of Knowledge: The Struggle of Critical Discourses for Domination over Constantine P. Cavafy's "Young Men of Sidon, A.D. 400"

9. Encountering the Poststructuralist Challenge, or Beyond Humanism: The Paradigms of Contemporary Greek Criticism and the Languages of Theory

Postscript: Peri Hermeneias

Bibliography

Index

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