Literature as National Institution : Studies in the Politics of Modern Greek Criticism.

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This book examines how the practices of criticism establish a particular domain of knowledge, the truth of literature. As a discussion of the ideology and politics of literary knowledge, it concentrates on constitutive elements of its production: the intertextuality of writing, the mediatedness of understanding, the formative role of reading expectations, the enabling presence of relevant literacy, the conditioning horizon of expectations, and the economic character of axiology. The main argument advanced is that criticism, by constructing literature as an ethnic heritage and communal treas.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Toward a Genealogy of "Literature": The Institutionalization of Tradition in C. Th. Dimaras's A History of Modern Greek Literature -- 2. Who has been Reading Masterpieces on Our Behalf? George Seferis, Makriyannis, and the Literary Canon -- 3. The Fictions of Criticism: The "Prolegomena" of Iakovos Polylas as Künstlerroman -- 4. Incompleteness as Damnation: The Poetics of the Romantic Fragment in Dionysios Solomos's The Free Besieged -- 5. The Hermeneutics of Openness in the Novel: The Unsettling Modernism of Yannis Beratis's Whirlwind -- 6. Writing Greek as the Only Language: The Impossible Postmodernism of Renos Apostolidis's "The John of my Life" -- 7. What Makes Good Literature Good and Literature: The Politics of Evaluation Surrounding the Work of Yannis Ritsos -- 8. The Violent Power of Knowledge: The Struggle of Critical Discourses for Domination over Constantine P. Cavafy's "Young Men of Sidon, A.D. 400" -- 9. Encountering the Poststructuralist Challenge, or Beyond Humanism: The Paradigms of Contemporary Greek Criticism and the Languages of Theory -- Postscript: Peri Hermeneias -- Bibliography -- Index -- Backmatter

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