Lecture by Dimitris Tziovas
Professor of Modern Greek
University of Birmigham, UK
Monday, November 7, 2005
4pm, Classical Studies Library
2175 Angell Hall
435 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

The lecture sets out to explore developments in Greek literature since 1974 and their relationship to wider social and international changes. Undoubtedly, Greece has undergone substantial social, economic and cultural changes since 1974, and the recent emphasis on fiction may be a consequence of this change. Two themes in fiction since 1974 can be singled out: otherness and history. A number of Greek novels explore attitudes to foreign migrants, minorities, diaspora communities or neglected aspects of the Greek past, and in this way they seek to shake off the past and present image of Greece as an ethnically and culturally rigid society. At the same time, we see the rise of a new kind of fiction in Greece: the historical novel, employing new forms and postmodernist techniques, with allegorical references to Byzantium and other periods of Greek history, constitutes one of the hallmarks of contemporary Greek fiction. The two themes of history and otherness can be seen as related since the revisiting of the hidden past (Ottoman and Balkan) has led many writers to rethink otherness. Through explorations of these themes, Contemporary Greek fiction has tried to capture the rapid and multi-faceted transformation of Greek society from poor farming villages to relatively well-off, modern and cosmopolitan urban centres, from ethnic homogeneity to the recognition of otherness, from monoculturalism to multiculturalism and from collectivity to individuality.

All Modern Greek events are free and open to the public.