Δικτατορία, πόλεμος και πεζογραφία 1936-1944 (review)

140 Reviews cases, i.e., in both the core and the periphery, Jusdanis sees as central to the nationalizing agenda the institutionalization and criticism of literature. His first chapter, "Criticism as National Culture," builds on Comparative Literature as precisely that "discipline concerned with the literary traditions of the 'nation' of Europe" (2); the chapter proceeds to articulate the political reciprocity between U. S. academic structures and global geographies. Chapter 2, "From Europe to Nation-State," using world-systems theory, goes on to examine Greek expectations as the Ottoman Empire dissolved and possibilities for realignment emerged, a situation that created the "tilt toward Europe" but that also generated both the internal conflict pitting demotic against katharévusa and the need to form a canon. Chapter 3, under the same name, examines the development of canonicity beginning with the classical κανών of the fifth century B.C. as a rule for excellence, proceeding to the Hellenistic age when the canon already hearkened back to previously consecrated predecessors as the "best" or as representative of a given style, moving thence to the Bible as canonical, then onward to the making of literary canons by, for example, anthologizing exemplary works, and finally to the γλωσσικό ζήτημα. This contrapuntal account of literary history is punctuated by political crises such as the War of Independence and the Asia Minor Disaster until, in Chapter 4, "The Emergence of Art and the Failures of Modernization," and in Chapter 5, "Spaces of a Public Culture," Jusdanis elaborates on (a) the Greek resistance to an imposed historical narrative of modernization and (b) the consequences of ksenolatria and arheolatria (113). Greece may still be the only Balkan nation to enjoy (so to speak) status as an official member of twentieth-century European configurations such as NATO and the EU, but the Balkans themselves, owing to their struggle for and against conflicting nationalisms, are placing pressure on the accepted definitions of Europe and on European spheres of influence. As the Exchange Rate Mechanism persists in eliciting the competitiveness inherent in the "Union," as military intervention at the edge of Europe continues to be possible , as peripheral nations like Greece, Ireland, and Denmark persist in their challenges to the Euro-core, as other geopolitical areas from the Maghreb to the Pacific Rim attempt to reconscript trading blocs and to redraw political alliances on the map, and as academics in Europe and the United States negotiate over curricula and canonicity, "inventing national literature" must remain an important way to understand structures of dependence and identity , as well as culture's role in their making and unmaking. Barbara Harlow University of Texas at Austin K. A. Dimadis. K. A. Δημάδης, Δικτατοϕία, πόλεμος και πεζογϕαφία 1936— 1944. Athens: Gnosi. 1991. Pp. 548. 2500 drachmas. In this interesting book, K. A. Dimadis attempts to analyze the reactions of the Venizelist prose writers Theotokas, Karagatsis, Myrivilis, Petsalis, Prevelakis, and Terzakis to the successive crises of the Metaxas dictatorship, Reviews 141 the second World War, and the German occupation of Greece. He does this in the framework of the conflicting ideological currents within the bourgeois παϕάταξη. The main point is that these Venizelist writers tried to reformulate their program of modernization and adaptation to Western Europe as a return to the past, to the national and popular traditions, in order to find the spiritual and historical roots of a Greek national ideology in the resurrection of 182 L In this way, confronted in 1936 by political and moral deadlock, they came to accept the Metaxist coup. Dimadis argues here in partial opposition to Mario Vitti's account of the Venizelist writers in his well-known book H γενιά του τϕιάντα: ιδεολογία και μοϕφή (Athens: ErmÃ-s, 1977). The experience of the war years and the ensuing civil strife led most of these writers into anticommunism , apology for the dictatorship, and, finally, into oblivion and loss of contact with the real world. Karagatsis is given as an obvious example of this development in his Ta σϕνοϕα του μίσους (The Frontiers of Hate), which appeared during the Civil War and was heavily influenced by the Manichean view of the world that dominated official culture at the time. Dimadis gives a very interesting analysis of the Venizelist writers' discussions about Greek culture, society, and ideological issues. The treatment of Terzakis...