2009 Graduate Research Colloquium, Abstracts

SESSION 1: 10.00 – 11.00

Discovering τα βυζαντινά παλικάρια

Stratos Myrogiannis (Cambridge), ‘Mind the Gap: the invention of Byzantium

in the Greek Enlightenment’

In this paper I set out to trace the process of the theoretical assimilation of the
idea of ‘Byzantium’ as a historical era into the Greek historical consciousness
during the Greek Enlightenment. So far, the mainstream view on this subject
is that ‘Byzantium’ became a distinctive part of Greek history thanks to the
remarkable work of two of the most prominent scholars of Greek Romantic
historiography, Spyridon Zampelios and Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos. In
this paper I revise this widely accepted view by reviewing key writers
through their specific works that have historiografical qualities. Within the
theoretical framework of the history of concepts and through a contextual
analysis I argue that during the eighteenth century Greek-speaking
intellectuals, from Meletios to Koraes, styled the history of the Greeks as a
secularised and uninterrupted sequence of eras. The main problem these
scholars faced was integrating in their narrative the Greek Middle Ages; a
period European historians and antiquarians had ignored. In contrast, this
period was viewed by Greek scholars as a historical gap. In their attempt to
bridge this gap, the answer they gradually came up with was the invention of
what Koraes first named – earlier than it is traditionally considered –
‘Byzantine history’.

Mary Greensted (Birmingham), ‘British Arts and Crafts Movement architects

and Byzantine architecture in Greece’

Two young British architects, Robert Weir Schultz, and Sidney H Barnsley,
were responsible for nurturing and developing the interest in Byzantine
architecture in Arts and Crafts Movement circles. They spent nearly three
years in Greece recording Byzantine churches on the mainland. After their
1
return to Britain in 1890 they began designing buildings and working in wood
and metal inspired by their Byzantine studies.

This paper will look at the impact of their early studies on their later careers
as architects and designers. What was the attraction of Byzantine work for
Arts and Crafts architects? How did Byzantine architecture fit in with Arts
and Crafts principles about sound construction, honest design, craftsmanship
and the economical use of materials? In Barnsley’s church at Lower
Kingswood, Surrey and in Schultz’s St Andrew’s Chapel in Westminster
Cathedral they produced two of the finest Arts and Crafts monuments that
are both modern and Byzantine in character.

SESSION 2: 11.30 – 13.00

Across the borders

Annika Demosthenous (Oxford), ‘Becoming the Bard: Robert Burns, Vassilis

Michaelides and the conception of the National Poet’

Born almost a century apart, and in places distant from each other both
geographically and culturally, Vassilis Michaelides and Robert Burns have one
notable thing in common: each is considered the National Poet of his country,
the Bard, charged with voicing the very essence of the nation’s identity.
Interestingly, there is a large section of common ground in their work, both
in terms of their choice of subject matter, and in the issues they reconcile
through their poetry. In other words, they share a complex relationship with
tradition, class and national identity, as well as the need for equally complex
negotiations between dialect and official language. Furthermore, both poets
are deeply complicit in the manufacture of a credible, new national image,
which to a certain extent endures in both places to this day, eliciting poetic
responses both positive and negative. Through a comparison of the two
poets’ oeuvres combined with an investigation of their reception through
analysis of articles and biographies, this paper proposes to show that it is
from this common ground that the characteristics necessary for the
establishment of a National Poet emerge.
2
Foteini Lika (Cambridge), ‘The Figures in the Text: Metaphor as
Metacommentary in Swift and Roidis’

Roidis, in the second of the Agriniot letters he wrote, charts the satirical
genealogy of Pope Joan listing among her literary forefathers prominent
ancient Greek and Latin satirical writers; as well as Italian, French, English
and Spanish satirists from the Middle Ages onwards. However, the satirist
whom he seems to emulate in order to keep his readers alert, as he himself
admits in the ëΤοις Εντευξομένοις’ part of Pope Joan, is Jonathan Swift. In
particular, Roidis’ anti-soporific remedy was inspired by Swift’s description of
the flappers in the floating island of Laputa in Gulliver’s Travels.
Nevertheless, even though Roidis admittedly draws his inspiration from
Swift’s work and justifies his rhetorical poetics from Swift’s example, Swift’s
rhetoric is in absolute contrast to what Roidis presents his readers with in
Pope Joan. Instead, it is their use of metaphor as a metatextual commentary
on satirical method that is the true affinity between the two.

Victoria Reuter (Oxford), ‘A ‘Penelopean Poetics’: Feminist Re-Vision of Myth

in the Poetry of Francisca Aguirre and Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke’

Although myths have perpetuated some of the most restrictive notions of

femininity in literature, women writers continue to engage with them and the
archetypes they produce. According to DuPlessis, myth is: “a story that,
regardless of its loose ends, states cultural agreement and coherence”1.
Myths are not just remnants of ancient legends; they exist because we have all
agreed that they should exist. Therein lies the crux of what feminism has
attempted to unravel: how and why have we come to agree on such
ideologies that subjugate and silence women? Moreover, why have women
continued to use characters such as Penelope, the quintessential ‘dutiful wife’,
as the vehicle through which to express their own poetic voice? This paper
will examine how Francisca Aguirre (b.1930) and Katerina-Anghelaki Rooke

1
DuPlessis, R. B. (1985). Writing Beyond the Ending : Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century
Women Writers. Bloomington, Ind, Indiana University Press.
3
(b. 1939) utilize Penelope as a figure with which to explore the idea of
‘Woman’ as an oppressive category for the poet and ‘Poetry’ as a prison for
women. I will position these re-writings as part of a broader trend of ‘re-
vision’ in feminist literature2 and will consider how each author participates in
a particular narrative strategy that Barbara Clayton calls a ‘Penelopean
Poetics’

2
‘Re-vision’ as coined by Adrienne Rich: Rich, A. (1972). "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-
Vision." College English 34(1): 18-30.
4
SESSION 3: 14.00 – 15.30

Gender and identity/identities

Paschalina Domouxi (Birmingham), ‘From commitment to identity: A

comparative reading of Axioti’s Twentieth century and Douka’s Fool’s Gold’

This paper will discuss the role of politics and the self in the fiction of two
leading left-wing women writers. In particular, the focus will be on Melpo
Axioti’s Eikostos Aionas (Twentieth Century,1946) and Maro Douka’s Arhea
Skouria ( Fool’s Gold, 1979). I will attempt to shed light to the transition from
clearly committed fiction in the 1940s to political narratives, produced after
the fall of the military dictatorship (1967-1974), which focus on female self-
discovery and challenge not only gender but also ideological stereotypes.
Furthermore, I will try to draw some parallels between the two novels,
regarding women’s place in public life and political action, with reference to
their participation in the Resistance against German Occupation (1941-1944)
and military dictatorship (1967-1974), and how this experience is portrayed in
their fiction. In this attempt, I will concentrate on narrative techniques, style
and women’s images, developed in these two novels.

Eirini Kotsovili (Oxford), ‘Deconstructing the notions of identity and gender

in Galanaki’s Eleni, or Nobody’

Eleni, or Nobody, is a meta-fictional biography about a 19 th c. Greek woman

painter (Eleni Altamoura), who conceals her identity and gender to pursue
studies abroad, and about the outcomes of her life choices. This paper argues
that Galanaki offers a postmodern, post/feminist exploration of the notions
and technologies of identity and gender, by subverting grand narratives
related to national and gender norms.

The author challenges the notion of a unified self, replacing it with a multitude
of subjectivities while accentuating the different life phases of Eleni
(Eleni/Nobody, female/ male, Greek Arvanit/foreigner). Fragmentation and
discontinuity become the central characteristics of the novel (from the story
line and the arrangement of the text to a number of micro-narrative

5
strategies). As a result, identity is seen as a series of intricate subject positions
assumed by the female subject, either due to internalizations of standard-
setting social structures, or, as a reaction to prevailing Greek female
stereotypes.

Borrowing from theories that treat gender as a material and cultural

phenomenon, this study traces Eleni’s gender self-transformation through
her material experiences that inform her cultural meanings. The paper argues
that gender exists in an interdependent relation with identity. In Galanaki’s
Eleni, or Nobody their fusion becomes the guide for re-defining oneself
through life experiences and choices, eschewing pre-ordained social practices
and structurally engendered roles.

Eleni Mouatsou (Birmingham), ‘The role of the grammatical gender in Kiki

Dimoula's poetry’

In this paper I look at patterns of usage of the grammatical gender (GG) in

the poetry of contemporary Greek poet Kiki Dimoula. I start from the
hypothesis that since every noun in Greek belongs to one of three genders
(feminine/neuter/masculine), the use of a gendered language is compulsory
in grammatical terms. In this paper I examine if this linguistic restriction is
connected to a gendered social experience in Dimoula's poetry. I conclude
with thematic, stylistic and linguistic observations occurring from the
analytical study of grammatical gender in Dimoula's work. I suggest that the
unconventional usage of GG can be read as an attempt to propose new ways
of perceiving gender roles (thematic observation), to suggest new poetical
forms that can work together with traditional meter and rhyme (stylistic
observation); and to expose the linguistic influence of GG in the literary and
social formation of gender specific symbols (linguistic observation). I expect
that this study may shed light in the newly occurring poetic structures that
emerge in Greek poetry and might prove beneficial in modern Greek studies
as well as in feminist translation practice.

SESSION 4: 16.00 – 17.00

6
Late in the afternoon

Nikos Mathioudakis (Univ. of Thrace), ‘The fuzzy areas of accuracy and

confidence while guessing the idiosyncratic vocabulary of N. Kazantzakis
‘Οδύσεια’

In present study, the first pilot in a series, it is investigated whether and to

what extent teenage students have the competence of decoding and
comprehend the language of literature, the poetic grammar, of individual
authors. More specifically, we are interested in Kazantzakis’ language and his
talent of creating new words or bringing idiomatic words of the dialect of
Crete back in use, in his unique epic poem ‘ΟΔΥΣΕΙΑ’. Furthermore, we want
to investigate the learners’ own confidence that they have guessed correct
and they have understood not only the specific word they are asked to
decode but also the underlying meaning of the whole sentence. Moreover,
while trying to decode, are they self dependent using inference, internal and
external cues and so on, or do they ask for help from an authority? These
questions are crucial as they are more likely to influence our attitude towards
the teaching of literature in general but more specifically the teaching of
‘ΟΔΥΣΕΙΑ’, which is concerned to be ‘difficult’. Our research was conducted in
Komotini, Greece, November 2008, with 1st year students selected on purpose
so that they should still be under the influence of High School.

The university students were separated in two groups and each group had to
decode twenty words – ten by multiple choice and ten by free guessing. All
these words were chosen, along with their context, from the Fifth Rhapsody
of Kazantzakis’ Odyssey (‘ΟΔΥΣΕΙΑ’). After they had completed their
guessing, the university students had to specify their degree of confidence
that they had guessed correct, on a bar one end of which, symbolized with 0,
means “absolutely unsure”, while the other end, symbolized with 1, means
“absolutely sure”. We believe that the area between “absolutely sure” and
“absolutely unsure”, is a fuzzy area (Zadeh, 1965) as it is the area between the
“absolutely correct” and “absolutely wrong” guessing. The use of a bar
rather than the usual 3, 4, 5 etc point scales, was introduced in the hope that it
might make the explanations easier and the results better manageable. The
prima vista examination of the results, revealed some very interesting

7
findings. For example, in the first variable, accuracy of answers we haven’t
got unexpected differences between two methods, multiple choice and
guessing. On the other hand, in the second variable, confidence that they
have guessed correct, the method of multiple choice seems to cause low levels
of confidence. The results are still being processed on the SPSS computing
package and we expect some interesting correlations between words, gender,
methods, confidence, area, etc.

8
John Kittmer (King’s College London), ‘Ritsos and Vrettakos: Parallel Lives’

Ritsos and Vrettakos were born three years apart and within thirty miles of
each other in Laconia; their times at the gymnasio in Gytheio overlapped and
they were both attracted into left-wing politics. They share the distinction of
being the only twentieth-century Greek poets to write lengthy, monolithic
autobiographies in verse. In my presentation, I examine and compare Ritsos’
To Teratodes Aristourgima (1977) and Vrettakos’ Aftoviographia (1961), in order
to illuminate their aims and techniques for thinking about and presenting the
self. I consider autobiographical prototypes (e.g. Augustine, Wordsworth,
Aragon), something of the history of the genre(s) in Modern Greek literature
(i.e. apomnimonevmata, aftoviographia), key themes (childhood, politics) and
autobiographical self-referentiality. The work presented is an extract of my
research into Ritsos as reader, and I close the presentation with some
speculation about points of contrast between Vrettakos as a writer of the self
and Ritsos as a reader of the self.