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Haunting Europe: Some Modernist Uses of Hellenism

Author(s):

  • Kolocotroni, Vassiliki

Subject Area: Social Studies/ Modern Greek

Series Name: Michigan Paper Series

Publication Date: 2005

Description: Lecture given at EUC as part of the "Conversations on Europe" series in February 2005. ABSTRACT: Hellenism is a way of seeing ghosts. Normally associated with the gothic genre, these shadowy visions persist in the writings of modernist writers in a variety of forms, representative of distinctive(and often conflicting) positions on art and cultural politics. The concern with the continuity of European civilization  and the ability of the modern artist and intellectual to energize the present by reanimating the past amounts to more than a mere exercise of classical allusion for a learned audience.  Through meditations on mythical motifs and staged encounters between ancient ritual and contemporary crises, writers such as Eliot, Pound, Woolf, Joyce, and thinkers such as Freud and Heidegger, conjure the spectre of Hellenism as a familiar and fortifying sight.

Author Bio: Vassiliki Kolocotroni,lecturer, Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow

Document: /UMICH/ceseuc/Home/EVENTS & PROGRAMS/Michigan Paper Series/Kolokotroni_Haunting Europe.pdf

Notes/Comments: Michigan Paper Series