Dimitris Tziovas Lecture today; Oxford. "The future of the past: Antiquity and modern Greek culture"

Modern Greek Seminar

FACULTY OF MEDIEVAL & MODERN LANGUAGES

SUBFACULTY OF BYZANTINE & MODERN GREEK

Thursday 27 February 2014 5 pm

Venue: ground floor lecture room

47 Wellington Square

Oxford OX1 2JF

Dimitris Tziovas

(University of Birmingham)

The future of the past: Antiquity and modern Greek culture
"Antiquity has often been perceived as the source of Greece’s modern achievements, as well as its frustrations, with the continuity between ancient and modern Greek culture and the legacy of classical Greece to Europe dominating and shaping current perceptions of the classical past. The paper aims to move beyond the dominant perspectives on the Greek past by shifting attention to the ways it has been constructed, performed, (ab)used, Hellenized, canonized and ultimately decolonized and re-imagined. Starting from the premise that the Greeks have customarily been seen as being trapped in and by their past, re-imagining that past could be seen as an act of liberation and an invitation to look at different uses and articulations of the past both in and outside Greece. The paper outlines and maps out transitions, debates and new directions in the reception of antiquity in Greece over the last few decades by looking at a variety of cultural practices and aspiring to offer new perspectives in re-thinking the role of antiquity in shaping modern Greek culture and its institutions. A series of partly overlapping transitions currently taking place in the area of modern Greek classical reception studies are identified, involving shifts from continuity to diversity, elite to popular receptions, texts to performances, traces to uses and eternal glory to critical history".