The last modernist wave: a metamodernist approach to Greek literature of the 1960s
<p>This thesis discusses the peculiar cultural landscape of Greece in the ‘long 1960s,’ arguing that this period, extending from around 1956 to 1974, constitute a case of metamodernism. Metamodernism, defined as a structure of feeling, emerges from the interplay between established modernist f...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | Greek, Modern (1453- ) English |
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2023
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| Summary: | <p>This thesis discusses the peculiar cultural landscape of Greece in the ‘long 1960s,’ arguing that this period, extending from around 1956 to 1974, constitute a case of metamodernism. Metamodernism, defined as a structure of feeling, emerges from the interplay between established modernist figures and emerging intellectuals, set against a backdrop of intense political instability and rapid economic growth.</p>
<p>The thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One delves into the cultural production of the Greek 1960s, eliciting in the intellectual debates the ‘condition of the boundary,’ an affect linked to a diffused sense of crisis stemming from societal and cultural transformations. These elements converge in metamodernism, adopted from English Studies and retroactively adapted for the Greek long 1960s. The next three chapters examine four literary works that engage with classical mythology, a hallmark of modernism, and used in this thesis as a catalyst for discussing broader issues regarding metamodernism and the Greek 1960s. Chapter Two examines Yannis Ritsos’s <em>Τέταρτη διάσταση</em>, exploring the role of the boundary-affect in the collection’s development and reinterpreting the concept of the ‘fourth dimension’ as a Bergsonian <em>durée</em>. Chapter Three centres on Stelios Xefloudas’s novel <em>Οδυσσέας</em> challenging the conventional use of the mythical method and delving into the violent cyclicality of history through Walter Benjamin's historiosophy. The final chapter explores Margarita Liberaki’s screenplay for Jules Dassin’s film Phaedra and her later play <em>Το μυστικό κρεβάτι ή Τηλέγονος</em>, problematising the question of Greekness from the standpoint of diasporic subjects and through a feminist lens, underscoring the performative nature of national identity and the transformation of the desire for nostos, shifting from the diaspora to Greece itself.</p>
<p>The major contribution of the thesis is the re-evaluation of the relationship between Greek modernism and the 1960s, as well as the more localised contribution to the contemporary theorisations of metamodernism, revealing its flexibility and productivity.</p> |
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