Re-imagining 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. This book aspires to offer new insights into the modern Greek reception of antiquity and includes a number of chapters with a comparative perspective. It also aims to move beyond the dominant perspectives on the Greek past by shifting attention to the ways this past has been constructed, performed, (ab)used, Hellenized, canonized, and ultimately decolonized and re-imagined. For the contributors to this volume, re-imagining the past is an opportunity to critically examine and engage imaginatively with various approaches to the ancient past that can be traced as far back as the twelfth century. 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, ranging from literature to education and from politics to photography. This book explores both the role of antiquity in texts and established cultural practices and its popular, material, and everyday uses by charting the transition in the study of the reception of antiquity in modern Greek culture from an emphasis on the continuity of the past to the recognition of its diversity.