Books by Eleni Papargyriou
How is play constituent in the formation of the Greek modernist novel? Reflecting competition wit... more How is play constituent in the formation of the Greek modernist novel? Reflecting competition with European and North American models as well as internal antagonism with more established literary genres and conservative literary cliques in Greece, some novelists during and after the 1930s employed playfulness as a means to demonstrate — or even perform — the genre’s novelty. These innovators unexpectedly came from the Greek periphery rather than Athens, and their work swiftly exchanged a passively understood realism for complex communicative patterns that actively involve the reader and educate him into bringing scraps of plot into a meaningful synthesis. Covering the formative years between 1930 and 1975 and featuring key Greek authors such as Yannis Skarimbas, Stratis Tsirkas and Nikos Kachtitsis, this is a comprehensive and innovative study of Greek modernist prose fiction and the first of its kind to appear in English.
Papers by Eleni Papargyriou
"A country founded in 1830, modern Greece grew hand in hand with photographic modernity" (p. 3). ... more "A country founded in 1830, modern Greece grew hand in hand with photographic modernity" (p. 3). This very first sentence of the introduction to Camera Graeca: Photographs, Narratives, Materialities indicates, almost programmatically, the scope and aim of the volume that assembles the papers from a conference held in 2011 at the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College. The opening phrase defines the time and place at which both the new medium and the new state, now beginning the process of nation-building at the margins of Europe, reflect and inform each other. Beyond that establishment of a parallel development and rapport between imaging technique and political founding act, the book explicitly begins with a statement of "origins." It is from this point onward that the volume unfolds its meticulous historical account. It identifies the first person who photographed the Acropolis in October 1839 (the Canadian Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière); it dates previously undated images; it determines termini post and ante quem of certain photographic practices (as in the case of Pascal Sébah), and it lists the conceptual and aesthetic features of "generations" (the "New Greek photography of the 1980s"). In doing so, the volume remains indebted to, or-as Walter Benjamin would have it-"haunted" by history. Almost everywhere one finds historical landmarks, dates and turning points, major
Journal of Greek Media & Culture
Journal of Modern Greek Studies
Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2020
Christos Chrissopoulos's trilogy of literary photobooks Flashlight between the Teeth (2012), The ... more Christos Chrissopoulos's trilogy of literary photobooks Flashlight between the Teeth (2012), The Flâneur's Consciousness (2015), and Land of Anger (2018), portray the demise of Athens during the years of financial repression. The photographs in these books, taken by the author himself, depict material remnants of former affluence, homelessness, and destitution, as well as mundane objects of city life, in a manner that is not documentary. In what ways do photographs in these books narrate the crisis? In what ways do they pin down the historical moment in which they were taken? The theoretical perspectives of Walter Benjamin and Eduardo Cadava show how the written word here energizes the past and future of the images, thus constantly bringing them into actuality and impacting their meaning. The pedagogy of reading images in the context of the Greek financial repression depends on their narrativization in terms that are not purely imagistic: their interdependence with text brings about the image's multilayered temporality. Whereas conventional perceptions of ruins exemplify their finality as a permanent state of destruction (the word wreckage is a telling example), looking at ruins through the Benjaminian lens brings out their nuanced texture as a state in the present which haunts us with its past and looks out to the future.
Reading Games in the Greek Novel
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2007
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2016
Journal of Greek Media and Culture, 2019
Journal of Greek Media and Culture 5.1, 2019
Journal of Greek Media & Culture, 2015
Journal of Greek Media & Culture, 2015
This article offers a critical discussion of photographic projects based on Cavafy's poetry. It b... more This article offers a critical discussion of photographic projects based on Cavafy's poetry. It begins with an overview of the theoretical implications of photographing poetry within the wider framework of photography and literature as fields interconnected in their narrative concerns. To establish the link between photographic and other visual adaptations, the article goes on to discuss Cavafy in painting; this dicussion proves that gay agendas that framed the project of such photographers as Duane Michals or Dimitris Yeros, had already appeared in the work of painters, notably David Hockney. In its second part, the article examines in detail the most important photographic adaptations of Cavafy's work from 1978 to the present day, placing them in two large categories: the 'gay' adaptations, which focus on issues of body, sexuality and LGB rights, and those (more recent ones) that identify Cavafy with modernity, aestheticism and memory. The proliferation of photographic projects based on Cavafy points to his transformation from literary figure to a creative field inviting artists to self-expression.
Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, 2012
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Books by Eleni Papargyriou
Papers by Eleni Papargyriou