Cultural Issues In Greek Literature

These ‘cultural allegories’ are associated with an increasing tendency concerning communication and border crossing (Tziovas, 2004). At this point, it will be useful to mention certain other –non western European- orientations of the Greek fiction since 1974 that reveal the fragmentation and the hybridity of the self, the division of identity as well as the rise of the Other (Mike, 2004). Vagelis Hatzivassiliou (2004) claims that the focus of Greek literature has been also turned to the Balkans because of the influx of Balkan immigrants in Greece. Prose writers base their material on the intersection between the locals and the foreigners inside or beyond Greek borders outlining their meeting point and their differentiations. In a similar way,

This fact along with Greece’s entry to European Union led to the metamorphosis of Greek literature: Europe for fictional characters is considered as their home. Therefore, the Greek novel, which was not anymore associated with national issues concerning collectivities, tried to express the European orientation of the Greek society, indicating its outgoing characteristics (Tziovas, 2002). Dimitris Tziovas names this trend ‘centrifugal’ because, as he argues, ‘characters are in constant motion, travelling and searching in various parts of Europe.’ Many novels take place outside Greece, being characterized by topographical wanderings and travelling issues as well as including in their plot ‘the difficult adjustment and the identity problems of Greeks outside Greece’ such as We, the others (2010) by Yiannis Kiourtsakis or Paris-Athens by Vasilis Alexakis (1993). (Tziovas 2004, 27, 37). This is the second major shift that took place in Greek literature according to scholars and indicates the relationship between Greece and Europe at the age of

Regarding the Comparative criticism, it has focused on the similarities and the differences between Greek and other European literatures. Specifically, it has detected the relation between artistic movements, genres, poets and novelists which belong mostly to form and construction issues of the literary text. Additionally, the debate about Greek modernism and particularly, if and at what degree, Greek modernism used to be an outgoing as well as extroverted phenomenon which propelled the construction of a European identity, emphasized mainly on the study of critical texts.

On the contrary, as for the late criticism which indicated the notion of space, it has approached the relationship between Greece and Europe from a different perspective. Critics based their study on the content of the literary texts themselves in order to interpret it. Furthermore, leaving aside Roderick Beaton’s recent article which examines fifty years of Greek literature, there are no other studies dealing with such a long period. Despite this fact, the article also focuses mainly on non-textual