Faculty of Philology

Dimitris Angelatos

The course is organized into three parts (A-C), each of which consists of a number of sections. In this course will be systematically analyzed the six axis of reference of the science of Modern Greek Literature (terminology, object, methods of approach, work tools, research, teaching), as well as the three fundamental objectives of the science: the publication, analysis and interpretation of the texts of Modern Greek literature.

The first part (A) concerns the basic terms used in the science of modern Greek literature, its subject, consisting of the texts of Modern Greek literature, and the methods of approaching this subject. The second part (B) focuses on acquainting with the tools of the work of science in order to achieve its three fundamental objectives and on the other hand the correct use of these tools in literary research and teaching. The third part (C) is connected with the way of organizing all the previous ones and their application both in scientific writing and in the teaching approach of the texts of Modern Greek literature.

The exact terminology, the adequacy of methods of approach, the effective oversight of Modern Greek literature and its contexts (historical, aesthetic and wider cultural), the acquisition of the research infrastructure with regard to the tools of work and the proper way of using them, the appropriate organization of scientific writing and teaching approaches, they mark the suitable scientific specifications of Modern Greek scholars, capable of meeting the requirements for the editing, analysis and interpretation of literary texts, both in the field of research and in that of teaching.

Through scientific research and teaching, philologists learn how to use the approach methods and work tools of their science, moving on the axis precisely defined by the object, that is, Modern Greek literature. They learn therefore: how to make reasonable working hypotheses, how to correctly delimit the scope of research and teaching, how to locate, process and critically “store” the bibliography relevant to each issue -based on an autopsy on them and respect for the research efforts of previous and modern scholars-, how to finally design and accomplish the approach of their object, drawing up scientific papers and teaching in the secondary and higher education.

Stefanos Kaklamanis

The historical and cultural background of the Cretan Renaissance. Vitsenzos Kornaros’s Erotokritos as a representative work of the Cretan Literature of the Renaissance. The romance Erotokritos: manuscripts and early printed editions, authorship, dating, the Italian model, secondary sources, reception. Dramaturgical analysis. Characters, themes and motives. Aesthetics of language and versification. The ars poetica of Vitsentzos Kornaros.

Maria Nikolopoulou

The objective of the course is an introduction to the main European aesthetic currents to the 19^th and 20^th centuries (romanticism, realism, naturalism, symbolism, parnassicism, aestheticism, modernism, surrealism) and their reception in Modern Greek Literature. Indicative literary texts  will be examined, in parallel to the theoretical examination of the aesthetic trends.

Tina Lentari

Modern Greek Literature, 12th-17th c. (I). Medieval and Early Modern Vernacular literature, 12th-15th c.

The course examines central aspects of the narrative fiction of the late medieval and early modern period, with special emphasis on the epic and romance genre, as well as satirical poetry, through the examination of representative texts. It focuses on major interpretative issues, evolution of genres and generic conventions, central themes, ideology, as well as central questions of history, poetics, language and style.

Yannis Xourias

The course deals with the Modern Greek literary production during 18th c. and the first decades of 19th c. until the eruption of the Greek Revolution (1821). Ideological, linguistic, aesthetic, social and political factors influencing the literature of this period are examined through the analysis of selected texts.

Tina Lentari

Cretan Literature of the Venetian period

The course offers an overview of the literary production of Venetian Crete, with emphasis on the drama and romance of the Renaissance period. It is based on the close reading of major texts and focuses on major historical and interpretative issues, evolution of genres and generic conventions, central themes, ideology, poetics as well as language and style of the texts under examination.

Dimitris Angelatos

The topic of the course is the mature poetic work of D. Solomos (1829/ 1830-1849/1850), based on the editions by L. Politis of the Complete Works and the Autographs Works of the poet.

The originality of the mature work of Solomos, not only for the Greek but also for the European 19th century, is of a generic order and is associated with the drastically combined way the poet succeeded in exploiting, existing poetic genres, deepening them or inventing new ones.

The interest of the approach will be focused on the connection of (generic and supra-generic) achievements of the mature work of the poet with the literary (Fr. Schiller, Novalis, W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge) and artistic –mainly in painting (C. D. Friedrich, Th. Gericault, E. Delacroix, J. M. W Turner)‒ realizations of  Romanticism in Germany, England and France (1790-1850). It will also turn to the connection of the work of Solomos with the aesthetic ideas of the critical philosophy of Imm. Kant ‒especially in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790)‒ of German Idealism (Fr. Schiller, Novalis,  Aug. and Fr. Schlegel, Fr. W. J Schelling: 1790-1810) and of G. W. F. Hegel (1817-1829).

These aesthetic, literary and artistic/ painting connections that will occupy us, identified either as influences or as analogies, will be associated with the poetic works of Solomos such as the Cretan (1833-1834), the Free Besieged (1833-1849/1850), the Porphyras and the Carmen Seculare (1847-1849).

The analysis and interpretation of the above mature poetic works of Solomos will also take into account the particular relationships that Solomos's poetic art generally develops both with the European artistic and literary tradition (Enlightenment and Neoclassicism, respectively), as well as with Modern Greek literary tradition (17^th- late 18^th c.).

Dora Menti

The aim of the course is to analyze aesthetically and to integrate into their historical and grammatological context poetic texts of Greek poets of the 20th century, who appear after the 1930 generation (George Seferis, Odysseas Elytis, Giannis Ritsos, Andreas Empirikos, Nikos Engonopoulos etc.), that is, after the emergence of modernism in Greek poetry. I have chosen to examine with a greater emphasis some poets instead of others judging on the one hand, the literary quality of their work, on the other hand, the fact that they represent basic versions of the evolution of Greek poetry after the generation of 1930 and up to the present day. These poets are the post-war poets: Takis Sinopoulos, Manolis Anagnostakis, Markos Meskos,  M. Sachtouris, Μ. Κatsaros, Ν. Κarouzos, Τ. Patrikios, N.A. Αslanoglou, Κ. Dimoula, D. Christianopoulos, and the younger generation of the '70s: M. Ganas, K. Angelaki-Rook, K. Gogou, etc. In the context of the course, the co-examination of the work of the above poets will be attempted, in order to understand their parallel response to the aesthetic flows and the historical and social conditions of their time.

 Lito Ioakimidou

After a general introduction to the discipline of Comparative Literature, the course presents its principal directions of research. Then, it analyses its scientific interest in Literary Genres and focuses on the study of the short story, through its main generic features on a theoretical level, but, at the same time, through specific examples. The course also includes an account of the evolution of the short story in western literary production, from Renaissance to contemporary expressions, insisting on the landmarks of its history and progression. The selected literary texts develop questions of the realistic, naturalistic and modernist short story in Modern Greek and in some foreign literatures.

Peggy Karpouzou

Introduction to Theory of Literature. The concept of literature. Overview of Modern Literary Theories of the 20th Century: Formalism, New Criticism, Structuralism, Semiotics, Reading Theories, Marxist Criticism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Cultural Criticism. The basic terms and concepts of each theoretical school are critically examined through theoretical texts (R. Barthes, U. Eco, R. Jakobson, M. Bakhtin, V. Shklovsky, C. Levi-Strauss et al.). Indicative application of G. Genette’s narrative typology in Stratis Tsirkas novel, Drifting Cities.

Maria Rota

The course examines the trends in the poetry of the post-war period (the most important poets of the first and the second post-war poetic generation, the thematics and the style of the representative poems of this period). 

Maria Rota

The course examines the innovative trends in prose writing from 1880 to 1900 (the previous literary tradition, the stream of ethnography, the new literature forms, the basic characteristics of this prose).

Lito Ioakimidou

The course aims to the specialization of the students in one of the various fields of research in Comparative Literature (literary genres/themes/motives, literary myth, intermediality, movements in modern Greek and foreign literatures etc.) It includes a detailed description of the direction of research chosen for the purposes of the study, as well as a definition of the specific field and a presentation of the main literary texts to be examined. For the academic year 2023-2024, the course aims to the study of the prose poem, as a poetic genre connected with the expansion of modernity and literary modernism and whose development and different forms can be followed through the evolution of modernist movements. Starting with Little Poems in Prose or The Spleen of Paris (1869) by Charles Baudelaire, the course examines some of the most important representatives of the prose poem in Modern Greek and in the foreign literatures.

Thanassis Agathos

The work of Grigorios Xenopoulos and its reception

The aim of the seminar is to explore the multifaceted work of Grigorios Xenopoulos and its reception. Reference axes will be the prose and theatrical production of the author, his atricles in the daily press, his activity in the magazine I Diaplasis ton Paidon, the critical reception of his work and the cinematic and television adaptations of his novels and plays.

Tina Lentari

Early Cretan Literature (14th-16th c.)

The seminar offers an in-depth study of the literary production of Venetian Crete from the 14th to the 16th century (satire, edifying poetry, love poetry, narrative works etc), and will also cover comparative angles relating to the production from other areas of the Greek-speaking world.

Yannis Xourias

Sentimental literary prose at the time of Modern Greek Enlightenment

The seminar examines the modern Greek sentimental prose (original or in translation) in the late 18th c. (Σχολείον των ντελικάτων εραστών, Έρωτος αποτελέσματα, Ιστορία ερωτική) with regard to narrative, thematic and ideological aspects of the literary genre.

Anna Tzouma

MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984) or The History of Systems of Thought
•    The discourse of Power in the development of human practices.
•    The importance of verbal strategies as means for the covert enforcement of control on the subject.
•    The examination of institutions as instruments of dominance and oppression that impede free participation to the social becoming.
•    The use of Discourse as rhetorical persuasion, as determinant factor of behavioral limits, as “objectified” verbal mechanisms that disguise particular ideological directives.
•    The formation and transformation of the systems of knowledge and the enforcement of “regimes of truth”.
•    The interrogation and analysis of the “obvious” and the “commonplace” as constructed regimes of truth that obstruct the emergence of new forms of subjectivity.
 S. FREUD (1856-1939) Psychoanalytic Criticism 
•    Creative writing is the product of unconscious processes.   Literature (and what closely relates to it: language, rhetoric, style, narration, poetry) is fundamentally intertwined with the psyche.
•    Biographical approach: the work of art as a symptom of repressed impulses, of complexes and defensive attitudes of the artist towards love, paranoia and fear of death.
•    Approach of fictional characters: psychopathological analysis of fictional characters through dreams, visions, delirium or repeated situational motifs, for instance the double motif in the legend of Narcissus or in Oscar Wilde’s The portrait of Dorian Gray.
•    The shift from content to form: unconscious dexterity to transform impulses, hidden motives, instictive forces into verbal and visual forms. The meaning of a psychical manifestation is now placed on the way the work of art is constructed. Unconscious mechanisms, such as displacement, distortion, condensation turn out to ressemble an ars poetica: they produce aesthetical effects (The interpretation of Dreams, 1900, The Psychopathology of Every Day life, 1901).

Olympia Tachopoulou

Man, Nature, and the Environment in 20th century Modern Greek Poetry

The seminar aims to explore the relationship between humans and the natural world, as well as the wider anthropogenic environment, as reflected in 20th century modern Greek poetry. Research will concentrate on the thematic, aesthetic and ideological functions of the representation of the natural environment in 20th century poetic texts. More specifically, the seminar will focus on how human interaction with nature is represented in the poetry of Kostis Palamas, Angelos Sikelianos, Kostas Karyotakis, Odysseus Elytis, George Seferis, Takis Sinopoulos, Eleni Vakalo, Markos Meskos, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, and Argyris Chionis. In addition, students will become familiar with the methodology of scientific research through the writing of essays on topics related to the subject of the seminar.
 

Dimitris Angelatos

The topic of the course is the mature poetic work of D. Solomos (1829/ 1830-1849/1850), based on the editions by L. Politis of the Complete Works and the Autographs Works of the poet.

The originality of the mature work of Solomos, not only for the Greek but also for the European 19th century, is of a generic order and is associated with the drastically combined way the poet succeeded in exploiting, existing poetic genres, deepening them or inventing new ones.

The interest of the approach will be focused on the connection of (generic and supra-generic) achievements of the mature work of the poet with the literary (Fr. Schiller, Novalis, W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge) and artistic –mainly in painting (C. D. Friedrich, Th. Gericault, E. Delacroix, J. M. W Turner)‒ realizations of  Romanticism in Germany, England and France (1790-1850). It will also turn to the connection of the work of Solomos with the aesthetic ideas of the critical philosophy of Imm. Kant ‒especially in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790)‒ of German Idealism (Fr. Schiller, Novalis,  Aug. and Fr. Schlegel, Fr. W. J Schelling: 1790-1810) and of G. W. F. Hegel (1817-1829).

These aesthetic, literary and artistic/ painting connections that will occupy us, identified either as influences or as analogies, will be associated with the poetic works of Solomos such as the Cretan (1833-1834), the Free Besieged (1833-1849/1850), the Porphyras and the Carmen Seculare (1847-1849).

The analysis and interpretation of the above mature poetic works of Solomos will also take into account the particular relationships that Solomos's poetic art generally develops both with the European artistic and literary tradition (Enlightenment and Neoclassicism, respectively), as well as with Modern Greek literary tradition (17^th- late 18^th c.).

Lito Ioakimidou

The course aims to the specialization of the students in one of the various fields of research in Comparative Literature (literary genres/themes/motives, literary myth, intermediality, movements in modern Greek and foreign literatures etc.) It includes a detailed description of the direction of research chosen for the purposes of the study, as well as a definition of the specific field and a presentation of the main literary texts to be examined. For the academic year 2023-2024, the course aims to the study of the prose poem, as a poetic genre connected with the expansion of modernity and literary modernism and whose development and different forms can be followed through the evolution of modernist movements. Starting with Little Poems in Prose or The Spleen of Paris (1869) by Charles Baudelaire, the course examines some of the most important representatives of the prose poem in Modern Greek and in the foreign literatures.

Peggy Karpouzou

Introduction to Theory of Literature. The concept of literature. Overview of Modern Literary Theories of the 20th Century: Formalism, New Criticism, Structuralism, Semiotics, Reading Theories, Marxist Criticism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Cultural Criticism. The basic terms and concepts of each theoretical school are critically examined through theoretical texts (R. Barthes, U. Eco, R. Jakobson, M. Bakhtin, V. Shklovsky, C. Levi-Strauss et al.). Indicative application of G. Genette’s narrative typology in Stratis Tsirkas novel, Drifting Cities.

Euripides Garantoudis

The aim of the course is to analyse aesthetically and to integrate it into the historical-grammatological context, poetic texts of Greek poets of the late 19th and early 20th century, who lived and created until the interwar period. I have chosen to put greater emphasis on certain poets over others, on the basis of both the literary quality and acclaim of their work, on the one hand, and the fact that they represent basic versions of the development of Greek poetry during the period under consideration. The poets examined are first and foremost C.P. Cavafy and, secondarily, Kostis Palamas, Angelos Sikelianos and K.G. Karyotakis. In the context of the course, an attempt will be made to co-examine the work of the abovementioned poets in order to understand the, lesser or greater, depending on the case, parallel response of these poets to the aesthetic movements and the historical and social conditions of their time.

Dora Menti

The course focuses on contemporary theories and practices that can be applied in classroom to promote the interest of high school students in literature. The curriculum involves a number of methods and model teaching sessions that attracted students' interest and promoted their relationship with the linguistic course. Taking examples from the function of reading groups and from creative writing experimentations we will bring forward the possibilities for renewing the teaching of literature in secondary education. 

 Lito Ioakimidou

The Modernist Prose in Greek and Foreign Literatures (20^th century)

The course has a double aim: a) The main themes and stylistic innovations of the prose of the “high modernism” in the European world (James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust) with regard to the Greek Modernism in prose literature (George Seferis, Melpo Axioti, Kosmas Politis, N. G. Pentzikis). It analyses, particularly, the integration of themes and techniques like the diffused, predominant interiority, the problematic, elliptical and fragmented making of characters and of exterior reality, the option of an “open structure” for the novel and its consequences on the identity of the heroes and the narrators, the new experience of temporality and of the fictional “fact”, driving to a radical transfiguration of the notions of “realism” and “mimesis”. b) Through all these questions and the study of specific literary examples, the course systematizes the methodological procedure of the research and the composition of a scientific essay from the students.

Dora Menti

Athens in Literature

Picturing a city or tracking its appearances in literature is a practice that gradually gains currency in literary studies. Although the historical city of Athens occupies an important place in world literature, its role in Greek literary production needs to be further investigated. We will focus on the various developmental phases of the city, placing special emphasis on its changing outline throughout the 20th century. We will use representative texts (poems and prose) to review landmarks, urban itineraries, literary heroes and (sometimes) wander into the city either with the company of modern Athenian authors or through the memories of old Athens that provide access to Kostis Palamas' era.

Maria Nikolopoulou

Ηistorical experience in 20th century Modern Greek fiction

The seminar’s objective is dual: On one hand, it introduces the students to research methodology and academic writing. On the other, it examines the ways in which 20th century Modern Greek prose fiction represented traumatic historical experiences. Students are expected to explore the genres, aesthetic and ideologic tendencies connected with a thematic trend which remained strong throughout the period examined.

Olympia Tachopoulou

Aspects of Modern and Postmodern Poetics in the Work of Odysseus Elytis

This seminar will examine the poetry of Odysseus Elytis and the literary movements that influenced the development and evolution of his work. The seminar aims at developing students’ understanding of the modernist and surrealist aspects of Odysseas Elytis's early poetry and the views of postmodernism that can be found in his late work. Issues of identity, ideology and history will be examined in the poet's journey from the inter-war to the post-dictatorship period. At the same time, students will become familiar with the methodology of scientific research through the writing of essays on topics relevant to the subject matter of the seminar.

Thanassis Agathos

Focus on Modern Greek prose writing of the first decades of the 20th century and the various currents that influenced prose production, with parallel examination of representative texts of the period (Xenopoulos, Theotokis, Chatzopoulos, Kazantzakis).

Euripides Garantoudis

The aim of the course is the presentation of representative texts of Greek poetry of the 19th century and more specifically of the period 1820-1880. Specifically, representative poetic texts of the main poets of the Ionian and Athenian poetic tradition will be analyzed from a historical-grammatological and aesthetic point of view, with emphasis on the work of Dionysios Solomos and Andreas Kalvos. Secondarily, the poetic texts of Aristotle Valaoritis, Panagiotis Soutsos, Alexandros Rizos Ragavis, etc. will be examined.

Thanassis Agathos

The course focuses on the Modern Greek prose fiction of the first decades of the 20th century and the various trends that influenced the prose production. Representative texts of the period (by Xenopoulos, Theotokis, Chatzopoulos, Kazantzakis) are discussed.

Νέος επιστήμων

Στόχος του μαθήματος είναι να κατανοηθεί η θέση της ποίησης της γενιάς του 1930 ως ιστορικογραμματολογικού σταθμού στην Ιστορία της Νεοελληνικής Λογοτεχνίας, ενώ ενδιαφέρει ειδικότερα ο χαρακτηρισμός του έργου της ως νεοελληνικής εκδοχής του υψηλού μοντερνισμού. Τα χαρακτηριστικά της ποίησης των βασικών εκπροσώπων της γενιάς θα μελετηθούν με άξονα τον ορισμό του μοντέρνου στην ποίηση από τον Νάσο Βαγενά, και αναφορές στα χαρακτηριστικά της ποίησης του μοντερνισμού στη λογοτεχνία της Δύσης. Παράλληλα θα τεθεί ο προβληματισμός της σύγχρονης φιλολογικής έρευνας για τον «μύθο» της γενιάς του ’30, ενώ θα μας απασχολήσουν οι βασικές έννοιες που η φιλολογική κριτική χρησιμοποιεί για την περιγραφή της ποιητικής παραγωγής της (απελευθέρωση της μορφής, «δύσκολη τέχνη», μυθική μέθοδος, διακειμενικότητα, ελληνικότητα, υπερρεαλιστικά στοιχεία). Τέλος, θα εξετάσουμε τις επαφές του έργου των ποιητών της γενιάς του 1930 με τις άλλες τέχνες (ζωγραφική, κινηματογράφος, μουσική), με ιδιαίτερη έμφαση στις μεθοδολογικές προϋποθέσεις των διακαλλιτεχνικών προσεγγίσεων. Τα κειμενικά παραδείγματα που θα μας απασχολήσουν προέρχονται από το έργο των Γιώργου Σεφέρη, Οδυσσέα Ελύτη, Αντρέα Εμπειρίκου, Νίκου Εγγονόπουλου και Γιάννη Ρίτσου.

Thanassis Agathos

The course investigates the ideological and aesthetic orientations of the Greek prose fiction writers of the Generation of the 1930s, provides analysis of representative texts (by Myrivilis, Theotokas, Terzakis, Politis, Venezis, Karagatsis, Nakou and others) and, finally, examines their critical reception and position in the Modern Greek literary canon.

Maria Rota

The course examines the innovative trends in prose fiction writing during the post-war period, with emphasis on literary forms and themes, ideological tendencies, parallel artistic movements, as well as the impact of recent historical events (the German occupation, the resistance movement and the civil war). Within this framework, representative texts (by A. Kotzias, D. Chatzis, G. Ioannou, M. Alexandropoulos and M. Chakas) will be analysed. 

Yannis Xourias - Dimitris Angelatos- Lito Ioakimidou

The main goal of the course is dual: a) the verification of reading by students, of a series of readings that were taught according to the curriculum of the Department of Modern Greek Philology during the previous years of their studies and b) secondarily the knowledge of historiography of these projects. The reading and studying will be completed via the course file in e-class, where there will be a large part of the corpus of literary works, in digitized form, according to the examined material of the courses of the Department of Modern Greek Philology during the last academic years. The examination of the course will be oral and will be done by the examiner of the course with the presence of two other members of the Department of Modern Greek Philology.