Absent Women, the Modern Greek School Canon and – Maybe? – Communist Nostalgia in Greece
Absent Women, the Modern Greek School Canon and – Maybe? – Communist Nostalgia in Greece

Summary/Abstract: Although Greece was not incorporated into the Soviet Bloc and the beaten Communist partisans were forced to leave or to remain silent – and obedient, nevertheless contemporary Greek culture is permeated by nostalgia for Communism, by the thought: how it would have been if we had shared the Communist dogma with our northern neighbours? There is no 1989 milestone in Greece, but there is another transformation, that of 1974, with the fall of the ultra-rightist junta. Then the leftist political scene was finally un-gagged. Since then, the Communist sentiments – expressed through ideology, motives, and aesthetics – have been present in public life and in the literary canon. The text explores how the position of women is represented in the canon and how this may also be attributed to the nostalgia for Communism. Women are often depicted as if they came from Communist times: working-class, efficient, belligerent, with the stress put on their usefulness towards the society and not on their physical attributes, achievements or other personal traits. The source material is contemporary school literary texts, starting with the ballad about the enwalled wife in the folk song The Bridge of Arta.

• Details
• Contents