Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (review)

260 Reviews ing the book on a note of tangible, visual human dramas. Missing is a statement by Tsiaras himself on his role in Potamia and his emotional and intellectual relationship to the material. In spite of a few awkward moments of imbalance between theory and ethnographic data, this book emerges as a sensitive and important ethnographic study, blending theoretical approaches with the subtle nuances of daily life in a community, social context with expressive culture, objectivity with compassion, written with visual sources. It is a work that greatly enhances our understanding of death rituals in rural Greece by expanding the content and context of ritual performance to include a world often undervalued—from informal interaction to the world of dreams—and by fleshing out the impact of death on all facets of an entire community. Last but not least, Danforth is to be commended for his command of both fieldwork methodology and scholarly sources, as well as for the clear, often moving, prose of his book. Anna Caraveli Smithsonian Institution Michael Herzfeld. Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. Pp. χ + 197. $17.50. "This book," according to the author, "is an attempt to show how Greek scholars constructed cultural continuity in defense of their national identity. It is not intended to suggest that they did so in defiance of the facts. Rather, they assembled what they considered to be the relevant cultural materials and used them to state their case. In the process, they also created a national discipline of folklore studies , providing intellectual reinforcement for the political process of nation building that was already well under way" (4). In a painstaking , remarkable way Herzfeld accomplishes what he set out to do. Two competing ideologies—the Hellenist and Romeic—influenced the selection of relevant ethnological materials. These are fully described in Chapter 1: "Past Glories, Present Politics." Those embracing the Hellenist ideology sought to mold the new Greek state in the Hellenic ideal as put forward by a few Greek intellectuals and by Reviews 261 the European philhellenes enthusiastic about the glories of Classical Greece. This is the outward-directed imported model based on the Greeks' perception of the international expectations about their national image. In contrast, the Romeic ideology conforms more to the Greeks' image of themselves; it is introspective, nativist. . . . the self-designation of the Greeks had long been that of Romii, a name which echoes the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire and hence also the Orthodox Christian tradition to which the overwhelming majority of Greeks still adhered; the Greeks ordinarily called their spoken language romeika ("Romeic"), a usage which was even adopted by some of the travelers who visited their country while it was still under Turkish rule (19). Herzfeld does not pass judgment on the relative merits or accuracy of either ideology but uses this dichotomy effectively in the difficult analysis he has undertaken. After a review of the writings of Greek intellectuals prior to and subsequent to the Greek War of Independence he concludes that in the first century of statehood the Hellenist model was dominant politically and academically. By the end of the first century of independence other events allowed the Romeic model to develop more freely. The story of the development of Greek folklore begins with the intellectuals of the Ionian Islands, who spoke Italian along with Greek and who were culturally oriented to Western Europe. Their activities are included in Chapter 2: "Extroversion and Introspection ." Corfu had a flourishing literary tradition, of which Dionisios Solomos was a part. These educated men were familiar with the work of Western Europeans interested in Greek folksongs, including that of Claude Fauriel, who published the first collection of such songs in 1824 and 1825. But Fauriel represented the Romeic model: a view of the peasantry as it saw and expressed itself. He and the Greeks siding with him became the target of attacks by Hellenists such as Spyridon Zambelios and George Evlambios. These critics disagreed too with Andonios Manousos, who espoused the Romeic cause. But in the end, according to the author, Zambelios "regained the Greek past," establishing the Hellenist position. One of the important features...