Greek Worlds, Ancient and Modern: To Whom They May (or May Not) Concern

Go forth and . . . punctuate:
"the Neohellenist without her classics is nothing"
The Neohellenist—without her Classics—is nothing.
The Neohellenist! Without her, Classics is nothing.

Not many Classicists have considered what anthropologists know from experience: live informants can be a real pain. At least the dead, as represented in our texts, do not correct you, take you off-track, or exhibit the annoying habit of poking holes in your preconceptions.

(an ironic Richard Martin)

Relations between ancient and modern Greece: do they exist as a viable object of study? Who may be studying them? Who are these scholars talking to? What approaches prove both productive and "sexy"—if that's what's needed? This special issue of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies presents papers by scholars from a wide variety of disciplines and academic backgrounds, yet from not-so-diverse geographical backgrounds (Canada, Greece, Flanders). Does one have to be on the periphery to be attracted to the periphery? This introduction also reflects on some of the broader issues at stake in conjoining Classics and Modern Greek Studies and presents a case for a true multiculturalism, to which both fields can confidently belong and contribute. In the second half of this introduction, a few classicists whom I interviewed contemplate the relationships between ancient and modern, and highlight that the time is ripe, indeed, for reconnecting Classics and Modern Greek.

When Susan Buck Sutton, the editor of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, and I first issued a call for papers for this special issue, we encouraged papers that would introduce new research or research approaches, as well as emerging trends and developments in any aspect (theory and practice) of the Greek tradition. We were and are convinced that the field of Modern Greek Studies, or of Hellenic Studies at large, opens up a historical and cultural perspective exceptional in its duration and diversity (including postclassical, Byzantine, and Ottoman Greece). Hellenic Studies encourages a diachronic consideration of Greek themes, from ancient through modern and back, as well as critiques of synchronic assimilations, conscious or not of their existence in a mixed-up world with mixed-up identities. We were and are still convinced that Hellenic Studies is an ideal field of play or a fertile dialogic domain not just for Neohellenists and classicists who study Greek language and literature but also for anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, political scientists, philosophers, etc. We wanted to create an awareness and highlight concrete examples of how ancient and modern Greek cultures, as well as the cultures adjacent or in-between, have interacted; how each one of them may become more intelligible in the light of the other or an other; and how they can productively be compared in academic discourse, whether focusing on language, literature, theater, art and architecture, folklore and popular culture, history, anthropology, sociology, education, politics, economics, sciences, and so on.

This special issue's topic, "Greek Worlds, Ancient and Modern," has indeed attracted a wide-ranging variety of fields and also a great methodological diversity: the selected papers concentrate on cultural transmission and mediation and illustrate, for instance, the gathering, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge concerning aspects of the ancient, Byzantine, Ottoman, and contemporary Greek worlds in interdependent relationships. At first sight it may appear as if some of the selected papers have brought the Acropolis back (cf. Tziovas 2001:213). However, these papers challenge established views, deconstruct common stereotypes, and, indeed, "move beyond the Acropolis" (Tziovas, ibid.). They present new perspectives of theory and criticism on the very search for connections and continuities between classical and modern Greece. They reexamine the modern Greek search for ancestry and authority but also for philological acumen and factual knowledge in classical antiquity through perspectives of individual and collective memory, of eclectic compilation and mutual exposure, and of radical (leftist) inversion of the power dynamics of canonization...