In this Book
- Eastern Questions: Hellenism and Orientalism in the Writings of E. M. Forster and C. P. Cavafy
- Book
- 2005
- Published by: ELT Press

summary
What is the relationship between E. M. Forster’s quintessentially British novels, stories and essays and the abstrusely historical and
erotic musings of the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy? The answer is both complex and illuminating.The apparent differences are bridged by
Forster’s penchant for antiquities and interest in matters Oriental, by Cavafy’s Anglophilia and British education. While these facts have
generated comparative criticism that places novelist and poet in a Hellenistic continuum, the scholarly discussion to date has overlooked
the ideological tensions that separate these two important modernists along a cultural divide. Hellenism is a way into their shared
interests in the classical past, yet it also marks a point of dissension regarding the essence of Greek civilization. Similarly, their
Orientalist visions led them to radically diverse configurations of the East. Dr. Jeffreys’s parallel reading of Forster and Cavafy
explains not only how Forster and Cavafy were both rooted in Western Hellenism, but also how their suppositions about it diverged
significantly and how the two confronted the Orient in quite different ways. New light is also cast on their friendship; their different
political views may have impeded its development. Eastern Questions: Hellenism and Orientalism in the Writings of E. M. Forster and C. P.
Cavafy makes use of unpublished documents, newly edited unfinished poetry (here made available for the first time to an English
readership), and lesser-known texts, both fictional and nonfictional. The exchange between literary and non-literary texts, prose and
poetry, focuses the ideological center of Forster’s lifelong engagement with Greece and India and identifies the essence of Cavafy’s
prolonged fixation on matters Hellenic. In the process Jeffreys’s New Historicist study applies contemporary critical trends in modern
Greek studies to Forster criticism, producing an incisive, fresh reading of the relationship and the Cavafy and Forster canons.
Table of Contents

- Acknowledgments
- pp. viii-ix
- Introduction
- pp. 1-4
- 1. A Mutual Hellenism
- pp. 5-31
- 2. The Road from Colonus
- pp. 32-51
- 3. The Eastern Question
- pp. 52-87
- 4. Cavafy's Orientalizing Hellenism
- pp. 88-114
- 5. Forster and the Eclipse of Hellenism
- pp. 115-139
- Conclusion
- pp. 140-142
- Abbreviations
- pp. 143-144
Additional Information
ISBN
9780944318348
Related ISBN(s)
9780944318195
MARC Record
OCLC
794702358
Pages
224
Launched on MUSE
2012-04-16
Language
English
Open Access
Yes