The Making of Modern Greek Poetry

In this course, we read back and forth through Greek literary history from the 1980s to the 1930s, 1920s, 1880s and 1820s, mapping contemporary critical concerns and contemporary literary works onto earlier works, as well as examining how previous generations of writers influence contemporary writers. We will focus on questions of women’s writing, gender and sexuality, as well as how translation conceals and reveals these questions. Texts include works by Anghelaki-Rooke, Cavafy, Dimoula, Elytes, Laina, Mastoraki, Ritsos, Sachtouris, Seferis, Sikelianos and Solomos. This method of reading back and forth not only highlights what is linguistically familiar about contemporary writing and more foreign about earlier writing, but makes questions of canon formation and literature as a national institution integral to the process of studying Modern Greek poetry. Students will create portfolios of their own translations of the poems we read and discuss them with poets and translators over the course of the semester. No knowledge of Greek is necessary, although an extra-credit tutorial will be offered for Greek speakers wishing to read the poetry in the original. Class discussion and texts will be in English. Works also available in Greek for those students wishing to read in Greek. Assignments may be completed in English or Greek.