This thesis explores the poetics of the Greek Post-Symbolists, a group of early twentieth-century poets whose main period of activity falls in the years between the Generation of the 1880s and that of the 1930s. By focussing on Post-Symbolist concepts of the role of poetry and on the way in which Post-Symbolist poems are constructed, this thesis examines the poetic system of a group of poets who occupy a transitional period in the history of Modern Greek literature. The Post-Symbolists question both the nationalism of poets of the Generation of the 1880s and their own place in society. Post-Symbolist poetry focuses on themes related to the interior landscape of the individual. It promotes negation and absence, de-emphasizes external reality, foregrounding a poetic reality created through the acoustic links between words, and it undermines the importance previously attached to metre and rhythm in poetry. In this way Post-Symbolist poetic language constitutes a reaction against the dominant poetic discourse of the time, and a turning-point in twentieth-century Greek poetry. This thesis explores both the internal structure of Post-Symbolist poetry and the relationship between Post-Symbolism on the one hand and the discourses of the Generation of the 1880s and of the Generation of the 1930s on the other, placing this in the historical, socio-political and ideological context of time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:314998 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Philokyprou, Elli |
| Contributors | Mackridge, Peter |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e5a2e75a-c272-4f79-aafe-b2af905fb250 |
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