Πεζογραφική Aνθολογία (2 τόμοι) [An anthology of prose (2 Vols)]

This two-volume anthology presents a wide selection of approximately 250 Modern Greek narrative texts dated between the 14^th century and 1830/31, and aspires to meet the need for a modern textbook which provides a satisfactory, in volume and range, picture of the variety and the linguistic, thematic, ideological, social and cultural interests of earlier Modern Greek discourse which crystallized into written form.

The main objective of the book, which includes biographical notes and an interpretive glossary, is to present the evolution, but also the delays or setbacks, of written Modern Greek literary, religious, historiographic, reflective etc. narrative, in an order that follows the time of writing or emergence of these works in manuscript or print form as close as possible. This narrative is examined both in its ‘original’ version and in the wealth of transliterations, translations, paraphrases, variations and imitations from the earlier Greek tradition and from a wide range of eastern and western literatures. At the same time, the anthology seeks to initiate the reader into the linguistic and expressive pluralism of the folk, but also of the scholarly and archaistic Greek-speaking narrative production of an era that exhibits more divergent than unifying features; it also seeks to demonstrate the major stylistic, thematic and other quests, likes and dislikes of a great number of authors, who create in a wide historical context not always conducive to political, economic and educational progress.

The book begins with the politically turbulent period of the late Greek Middle Ages, moves on to the flawed Renaissance, continues with the distant echoes of the Reform and the even more powerful impact of the moody as well as traumatic baroque period, and presents several hues of the periods of classicism and neoclassicism, which proved beneficial as to national conscience, but oppressive with regard to language and literary creation. The book ends with the favorable yet polarizing Enlightenment, sentimental pre-romanticism and the first awakenings of romantic and patriotic romanticism as well as those of satirical and adventurous realism. The action unfolds in an equally wide geographical space, which allows for the interplay with the East and the West, but, at the same time, hinders or precludes the desired national, cultural and literary mobilization and formation: from Cyprus to Corfu, and from Russia to Holland and Paris, with Constantinople, Venice, Mount. Athos, the Danubian Principalities and Austria-Hungary as leading writing and publishing hubs, along with Crete, the Ionian Islands, the Aegean Islands and continental-Balkan Hellenism.