Topics in Modern Greek Literature

In 1844 the American sculptor Hiram Powers unveiled, in Boston, his nude statue, the first full scale American nude, by the title “The Greek Slave”. The fictional identity given to the subject, as stated in the pamphlet accompanying the tour of the statue in 1848, was that of a beautiful young Greek woman chained to a column, completely naked, ready to be sold in the Ottoman slave market. Since by 1844, the Greek War of Independence, which had effectively ended in 1827, had produced a miniscule, though free, European nation, images of chained bodies, replete with a background of Turkish violence, did not, exactly, represent the Greek historical reality.  The critical responses to the exhibit insisted that the statue, classical in style, reflected pathos rather than seduction. The woman, the newspapers wrote, was, clearly, Greece itself suffering in barbaric hands.  Since the statue continued to be reproduced through the 1860’s, the American public accepted it also as a part of the abolitionist discourse of slavery in the American society of the North, the fledgling feminist movement accepted it as an example of man’s oppression of women, and the Europeans accepted it as an image of the rhetoric of orientalism and Turkish barbarism still hovering about the sad remnants of the erstwhile powerful Ottoman Empire.

Using the above materials as a springboard, this course intends to examine the relationship between the body and politics, between art, sexuality and nation, exemplified by the use of the female body in literature and film. The use of the woman’s body as a trope continues to reflect the national and nationalist politics in Greek literature and film in the 20th century.

Please note:  There are no prerequisites for this course.