Topics in Modern Greek Literature

This class will examine the concept of responsibility through selected Modern Greek fiction by writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. We will look at responsibility and its confrontation, evasion and abdication. We will also examine the focus of responsibility toward the self, toward the law, and toward the other.

As always, the literary material will be placed in a historical context and it will be enhanced by a theoretical framework. In The Gift of Death (Donner la Mort), translated by David Wills, Jacques Derrida deconstructs the concept of responsibility by beginning his process of examination with one of the Heretical Essays on the Philosophy  of History by the Czech philosopher Jan Patocka. This is Derrida’s most comprehensive engagement of religion in deconstruction and in its relationship to responsibility. The questions that Derrida raises are  amplified in the second edition of the Gift of Death by the inclusion of another of his essays, Literature in Secret:An Impossible Filiation. This essay deals with the secret covenant between God and Abraham and its link to the “secret” of that which we call literature. This volume also includes Derrida’s reading of Kafka’s Letter to his Father.

However complex and multivalent Derrida’s questions are, they are also some of the most insistently present in the literary material selected for this class. For example, what is the relationship between responsibility and religion? Responsibility and historicity? Can responsibility be historicized? Is there a history of responsibility? In Kazantzakis’ novels, for instance, the question will rise again and again.What is the gift of death? “What are the relations among sacrifice, suicide and the economy of this gift?” In death, says Derrida (after Heidegger) we are unique, singular, subjects. No one can give or take someone else’s death. Here, we are confronted with the human’s singularity and uniqueness fully maximized.  These are the qualities that center the subject and they are bound to the gift of death.

Even though Derrida engages religion in deconstructing responsibility and ethics, his is not a metaphysical, or conventionally ethical, but a postmodern perspective. It will be interesting to explore the Greek texts in order to see if they share some of this philosopher’s visions.

All the foreign materials for the class, including Greek history and novels, will also be available in English translations. Films are either in English or with English subtitles.

The instructor is preparing readers for this course.