The Metrical Structure of the Oral Decapentasyllable

Abstract

What Milman Parry saw as his ‘historical method’ in Homeric criticism has paradoxically relieved students of the Greek folk song from the obligation to approach their subject of study from an exclusively genetic or ‘etymological,’ – in a word, historical – viewpoint. Instead of having to search for – or rather to speculate about – the origins of Greek oral poetry in the mists of antiquity or to assess the extent to which a song can provide reliable historical evidence concerning past events, we are free to turn our attention, as scholars such as Roderick Beaton (1980) and Grigoris Sifakis (1988) have done, to a synchronic study of the folk-song tradition, concentrating as much on the rules that generate the songs as on the significance of actual samples collected in the field (or in the scholar's study or the recording studio).     

A Reasonable Senselessness: Madness,Sovereignty and Neoliberal Reason in Horacio Castellanos Moya's Insensatez

Through a reading of Horacio Castellanos Moya's novel Senselessness and Guatemalan dictator Efrain Ríos Montt's counterinsurgency discourse, I argue in this article that madness, banished from the realm of reason with the rise of capitalism, resurfaces nowadays as a conceptual category able to disrupt the neoliberal manufacturing of bare life. I first examine how subversion was discursively constructed in Guatemala as a mental disease. I then discuss the narrator's behavior in the novel as a reasonable senselessness that by welcoming madness, understood as the moment of extreme doubt, both reveals and reacts against a shift in the locus of sovereignty ensuing from neoliberal reason's tightening grasp of the biopolitical sphere. This shift, I further argue, is increasingly placing most of the population in a relation of exception that resembles the zone of indistinction between life and death in which bare life is caught. I conclude by suggesting that Castellanos Moya's novel ultimately invites us to ponder the possibility of an other reason able to move beyond the extreme moment of certainty that the merging of state and neoliberal reason represents neoliberalism, sovereignty, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemala.     

Muscles,Nerves, and Sex: The Contradictions of the Medical Approach to Female Bodies in Movement in France, 1847–1914

From the early nineteenth century in France, the treatment of hysteria was connected to both physical and moral development. As a result, therapeutic treatments envisaged by medical practitioners were influenced by and related to the formulation of precepts of medical gymnastics. This article considers how ‘physical education’ for women became part of medical discourse, specifically the elaboration of ‘body treatment’ as a remedy against nervous disorders including hysteria. From the Second Republic (1848) to the years of the belle epoque (1914), the discourse concerning the medical cause of ‘hysterical madness’ is marked by the progressive discrediting of reflections that located the causes of pathology in the genitals. However, the shaping of a neuro‐cerebral etiology did not fully replace discussions of the relationship between hysteria, female bodies and the uterus. While the current historiography emphasises the participation of doctors in the production and legitimation of physical exercises in the nineteenth century, some aspects of this process are not yet fully explored. We examine the ambivalences of medical discourse, between the rhetoric of the eternally wounded woman and the need to develop women's abilities (intellectual, moral, and physical) to ensure healthy children. And despite the shadows that still obscure the etiology of nervous disorders, there is, in our period, a genuine dynamic favouring experimental therapeutics. The ‘movement disorders’, such as chorea, hysteria or neurasthenia, were handled by increasingly well‐established regimes utilising physical exercise. The introduction of gymnastics in the hospital played a fundamental role in this process; it enabled experimentation and lent legitimacy to physical exercise as therapy.     

The Influence of Katharevousa on the Phonology of Modern Greek

Abstract

Much has been written on Greek diglossia and the language struggle (between katharevousa and dhimotiki ). Defenders of katharevousa have emphasized the importance of the language's roots in ancient Greek, opponents of katharevousa have emphasized the idea that the Greek language should be first and foremost ‘the language of the people’. More recently, the focus of the discussion has shifted to what constitutes ‘true’ dhimotiki and the extent to which certain katharevousa elements are acceptable to the modern language; see for instance G. Babiniotis, <inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in1.tif"/><inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in2.tif"/>(Athens 1979) and A Linguistic Approach to the ‘Language Question’ in Greece (BMGS 5, 1979), E. Kriaras' reactions to Babiniotis' views in his ‘<inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in3.tif"/><inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in4.tif"/>(Athens 1979) and Mesevrinos' H <inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in5.tif"/><inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in6.tif"/>(Nicosia 1973). All of these writers are more concerned with determining what should be considered correct or acceptable to the modern language than with analysing actual usage. In general, very little of the discussion is concerned with the spoken language. M. Setatos' article (<inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in7.tif"/><inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in8.tif"/>1973) is particularly interesting because it sets out to analyse the place of katharevousa in the modern language (both written and spoken) rather than arguing for or against katharevousa. Setatos has also written the most detailed analysis of modern Greek phonology (<inline-graphic href="splitsection5_in9.tif"/>, Athens 1974). Other interesting articles on katharevousa elements in the spoken language have been written by Philippaki-Warburton, Tsopanakis, and Petrounias. However, there has in fact been scarcely any empirical research on modern Greek phonology and the extent to which spoken Greek has been influenced by katharevousa. It is perhaps understandable, given the social and historical context, that there has been so much emphasis on theory; the priority has been establishing norms on an acceptable theoretical basis, in the midst of the confusion caused by diglossia, and the question ‘what is actual practice in spoken Greek now, at the end of the twentieth century?’ has had to wait.     

Mapping "Romeic" and "Hellenic" Same–Sex Desire: Articulating Heteropatriarchy and Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Greece

This study of the articulation of heteropatriarchy and male homosexuality in contemporary Greece questions the widely accepted paradigm that male same–sex desire in modernity is both ontologically and ritually divorced from ancient Greek practices. Drawing on Herzfeld's (1982) ethnographic model of the dual construction of modern Greek identity as "Romeic" ( qua actual, vernacular, rural–rooted, and "oriental"), and "Hellenic" ( qua constructed, idealized, cosmopolitan, and occidental), the study explores the similarly dual sociosexual construction of male homosexuality following the creation of the modern Greek state in 1830. The study concludes that the Greek national project required desexing the ancient Greek past in the process of crafting a sanitized, heteronormative, and patriarchal polity in line with its Victorian–era counterparts in Western Europe. Furthermore, modernity reordered the extensive diasporic Greek communities in the Europe, the Middle East, and the Black Sea region in ways that promoted the fertilization of metropolitan Greece with a variety of rural and immigrant sexual imaginaries.     

Originality and Eroticism: Constantine Cavafy and the Alexandrian Epigram

Abstract

Although it has become generally accepted by critics that Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) was influenced greatly by the Hellenistic epigram ‘in attitude, subject matter, and technique’, a close comparison of that poetic tradition and Cavafy's poems reveals interesting differences as well as similarities. We know that Cavafy was familiar with Hellenistic literature and that he had a copy of J. W. Mackail's Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology in his personal library. His reading, however, ‘was much more extensive than his library’. More significant than this is the evidence to be found in his poems, which range from an actual mention of ancient epigrams to obvious imitations of them. Cavafy's poems for the most part, however, are quite original in their tone and erotic stance when compared directly to the Alexandrian epigrams.     

Neuroscience and Greek mythology

This article highlights the major reflections of ancient Greek mythology in modern neuroscience. An analysis of ancient Greek texts and medical literature using the MeSH term mythology was performed to identify mythological references pertaining to neuroscience. The findings are discussed in relation to etymology, early conceptualization of the nervous system structure and function, incipient characterization of neuropsychiatric disease, and philosophical stance to the practice of medicine in ancient Greece. The search identified numerous observations in clinical neurology (e.g., stroke, epilepsy, cognitive and movement disorders, sleep, pain and neuromuscular medicine, neuroinfectious diseases, headache, neuroophthalmology, and neurourology), neurosurgery, and psychiatry, as well as basic neurosciences (e.g., anatomy, embryology, genetics, pathology, and pharmacology) concealed in ancient myths. Beyond mere etymological allure and imaginative reflections in science, these fables envisage philosophical concepts that still tantalize our protean medical practice today.     

Mugwort Lore

I examine Gaelic ‘folk’ cures for insanity in the Highlands, first reflecting on the fact that this is an under-researched subject and then examining the cures described in various collections of Highland folklore. The paper looks at two of the most popular sites in the Highlands for curing madness, St Fillan's Well in the south-east Highlands and Loch Maree in the north-west, discussing the similarities and differences in the accounts of cures taking place in these locations. The nature of these accounts suggests a fluid and socially negotiable oral tradition that existed until at least the late nineteenth century. The power of these particular geographical locations in a narrative framework of curing and healing madness persisted for several centuries, even as specific practices changed over time and older supernatural belief systems faced shifting paradigms of medicine and psychiatry.     

The Constantinopolitan Greek Factor during the Greco-Turkish Confrontation of 1919–1922

Abstract

The traditional Greco-Turkish antagonism culminated in the bitter military confrontation which took place in Anatolia immediately after the First World War. While the Greeks fought for the establishment of a foothold in western Anatolia and Thrace, the nationalist Turks resisted vigorously the invasion of what they considered to be their indisputable fatherland. The crux of the problem lay in the Greek determination to bring the entire Hellenic race under a single Greek state. This Hellenic Megali Idea (Great Idea) envisaged a future Greater Greece which was to include Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace, western Anatolia and the Aegean islands. The ultimate fulfilment of the Megali Idea would be achieved with the incorporation of Constantinople (istanbul), the most important administrative, religious, commercial, and cultural centre in the Near East, into the future Greek state. According to Greek nationalists, such a state was to materialise with the final dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, a process which they regarded as inevitable. Deeply rooted in Greek national and religious consciousness, the Megali Idea had for one hundred years inspired official Greek foreign policy.     

Evidence for Migration Influx into the Ancient Greek Colony of Metaponto: A Population Genetics Approach Using Dental Nonmetric Traits

Ancient Greek colonies were founded by Greek seafarers all along the Mediterranean coast as early as the eighth century bc . Despite extensive archaeological and historical research, the population structure of the inhabitants of Greek colonies and their relationship to indigenous populations are still debated. Here, we perform a biodistance analysis to reconstruct migration and gene flow between the ancient Greek colony of Metaponto (southern Italy) and indigenous groups in the surrounding hinterland (900–250 bc ). We collected dental nonmetric trait data of 355 human skeletons from the indigenous Italic sites of Santa Maria d'Anglona, Incoronata and Passo di Giacobbe. This data set is compared with an urban and rural sample of the Greek colony of Metaponto comprising 351 individual dentitions. The R‐matrix approach is used to estimate inter‐population relationships and F _ST. The resulting kinship coefficients indicate that the three indigenous groups exhibit greater similarity to each other and possess lesser similarity to the two Metapontian samples. Interestingly, the two samples of Metaponto are least similar to each other, although they are geographically very close. The F _ST estimates confirm this pattern and reveal greater biological variation between the two nearby Metaponto samples (F _ST = 0.0603) than between the three geographically fairly distant indigenous groups (F _ST = 0.0389). We conclude that the Greek colony of Metaponto included large numbers of people with diverse geographical origins, whereas the indigenous Italic communities of the surrounding hinterland exhibited high levels of homogeneity and cohesion. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recovering Republican Eloquence: John Cheke versus Stephen Gardiner on the Pronunciation of Greek

Abstract

The controversy over Greek pronunciation at Cambridge University in 1542, principally between university chancellor Stephen Gardiner and regius professor of Greek John Cheke, marked the emergence of not only the linguistic but also the political agenda of the mid-Tudor Cambridge humanists. This important group included future statesmen and political thinkers such as William Cecil, later Elizabeth's famous minister, Thomas Smith, author of De republica anglorum, and John Ponet, leading exponent of ‘resistance theory’. In the 1542 Greek controversy Cheke and his allies advocated the restoration of an ancient pronunciation they saw as having been the medium of eloquence in the Athenian republic. Their concepts of language provide a template for their political concepts: both language and political structures are generated by the community, reflective of the community's particular character, susceptible to change and capable of improvement. Throughout their subsequent careers and especially in the reign of Edward VI, when their influence was at its height, these humanists fostered a ‘monarchical republican’ politics; it involved rhetorical persuasion as the main mode of political action, programmes of religious and economic reform, and popular consent as an important factor in the good governance of the commonwealth.     

Memorial soliloquies in post-colonial Rhodes and the ghost of Mediterranean cosmopolitanism

This paper is based on a close reading of Greek and Rodesli (Rhodian Jewish) narratives focusing on the time when Rhodes was under Italian (1912–1943) and then German (1943–1945) rule, the last period when religiously diverse communities coexisted in the island. While Greek historiography seeks to vindicate the island’s final integration into the Greek national space, Rodesli memory is meant to preserve the heritage of a community destroyed by the Nazis. Notably, these corpuses make no references to one another. This phenomenon of soliloquy, the article argues, is illustrative of a competitive memory characteristic of recollections of the past in the eastern Mediterranean and challenges nostalgic invocations of a pre-national, “cosmopolitan” Mediterranean. Broadening the discussion to other post-Ottoman settings, the article draws attention to property redistribution in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing as a major factor in the separation of memory along communal lines. Noting the omnipresence of the figure of the “ghost” in the literature on the region, the paper finally explores the heuristic potential of hauntology to conceive histories of the region that would be inclusive and yet attentive to the differences in the nature, purpose and reciprocal indifference of the sources and of the asymmetrical relations of power in which they were produced.     

The politics of ‘forgetting’ as poetics of belonging: between Greek self‐narration and reappraisal (Michaniona, 2000/3)

ABSTRACT. The repressive mechanisms of collective memory have received due attention in the social sciences, with scholars examining the ethics of remembering and forgetting and their political implications. This study focuses on episodes that took place in a Northern Greek town in 2000 and 2003, when an Albanian student was twice denied the right to hold the Greek flag during a commemorative national parade. It is argued that this line of action against the student, representative of Greek attitudes towards immigrants in Greece, asserted the locality's participation in the Greek ‘imagined community’. This was made possible through a process of ‘forgetting’ the locality's history and the analogies this presents with the experience of contemporary immigration. Questioning the ethical implications of this collective decision, the article links regional micro‐politics to nationalist discourses that originate in the European project itself.     

On the blue and green pigments of post-Byzantine Greek icons

In the framework of a large-scale investigation of post-1453 ce icons, the blue and green pigments on more than 50 works were investigated. Studied works date from the mid-15th to the mid-19th centuries and originate from various modern-day Greek regions. Results indicate the use of both natural and artificial pigments; among the latter, the very poorly documented in Greek icons artificial Cu-based blue is included. A shift as regards the use of specific pigments is reported and local trends are compared with the contemporary Western European ones. Relevant terms found in the renowned Hermeneia craftsman's handbook are also discussed in an attempt to restore pertinent misconceptions.     

‘They shut them out the road’: Migration,mental health and the Scottish highlands

There is a small literature tackling migration and mental health, but less is said about the migration of people with mental health problems (incipient or diagnosed). The present paper considers what might be claimed about such migration, particularly when entailing movement into rural and remote areas where lack of anonymity, high social visibility and certain differences in how ‘locals’ and ‘incomers’ are treated may have serious consequences for those displaying psychological and behavioural differences. Drawing upon qualitative evidence from in‐depth interviewing of in‐migrants with mental health problems living in the Scottish Highlands, light is thrown on the connections between their problems and the decision to relocate to this predominantly rural region. Attention also focuses on dissonances between expectations regarding their new situation and their actual experiences of it in terms of both natural landscapes and, more importantly here, social milieux. There are further implications for changing regional attitudes towards mental health, suggesting certain impacts that arise not just from the in‐migration of people themselves who have mental health problems, but also from the ideas and practices that they often carry with them.     

Partial cranial trephination by means of Hippocrates' trypanon from 5th century BC Himera (Sicily,Italy)

The paper deals with a new case of partial cranial trephination found in one of the necropolises of the Greek colony of Himera in Sicily. It is one of the very few cases of cranial trephination of Greek classical age. Macroscopic as well as radiological investigations prove that the operation was perimortal as no growth of new bone could be detected, SEM‐EDS microanalysis of the piece revealed the traces left by the tool used during trephination. The review of ancient Greek and Latin medical and surgical texts permitted us to establish that the tool used in Himera was a (trypanon) mentioned by Hippocrates and named terebra by Latin authors. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Particle γάρ: From Ancient Greek Sentence Connector to Blatant Line Filler? A Case-study on the Late Medieval Greek Chronicle of Morea

Ancient Greek is widely regarded as a language with an extraordinary number of so-called “Wackernagel P2 particles” such as γ?ρ, δ(?), and μ?ν, which serve a multitude of discourse functions. From the post-Classical period on, however, these small words gradually lose their importance in discourse and die out. This is reflected in the interest of scholars: while there are many studies on particles in older stages of Greek, not much research has been conducted on the particles in late medieval Greek (LMG; twelfth to fifteenth centuries). At this stage of the Greek language, the P2 particles are acknowledged to no longer be part of the living spoken language. Nonetheless, some of these small words still turn up in texts written in the vernacular. Since most LMG vernacular literature is composed in the metre of the 15-syllabic πολιτικ?? στ?χο? (vernacular prose being extremely scarce in this period), these occurrences are traditionally explained by appealing to metrical and/or stylistic reasons: the particles constitute archaizing relics merely inserted to give a classicizing flavour to the text, or are even used “metri causa”, simply to achieve the required number of syllables. In this note, I present a case-study on the “explanatory” particle γ?ρ (“for”) in the Chronicle of Morea, the best-known verse chronicle of the Greek Middle Ages. I show that γ?ρ is more than a blatant line filler. First, γ?ρ is not at all distributed at random, but consistently occupies P2 and thus obeys the so-called “Law of Wackernagel”, as the particles in Ancient Greek do. Moreover, γ?ρ can still exert a clear discourse function, albeit often a different one than in Ancient Greek.     

La Donna é Mobile: Constructing the irrational woman

This article explores the ways in which disorders that have historically been attributed to women, and that pathologise the feminine as irrational, form an intertwined genealogy; that is, they affect and contribute to the histories of one another. In linking the 'hystories' of hysteria and agoraphobia, it is argued that the image of the hysterical woman as unstable and deviant is traced within the experiences of interview subjects diagnosed with panic disorder with agoraphobia (PDA). Because of this, it is argued that panic disorder with agoraphobia can be understood as a fear of the hysterical image, that is, the hysterical woman. The fear of the hysterical woman is a fear of being perceived by others as excessively feminine, out of control, and slipping into madness; therefore it is also a fear that one's experiences will not be taken seriously and that one is 'acting up'. This fear is described by the women interviewed as a fear of alienation and abandonment; of losing control in front of others; of becoming a spectacle and being gazed at; and of being perceived as hyperfeminine, for which they are disciplined and punished. The fear of the hysterical woman is also a fear that implies that madness or deviance is rendered visible on and through the body. Thus, PDA can be situated within a 'logic of visibility' that has bifurcated men and women's bodies, spheres and spaces from one another.     

Rentiers,teachers and workers: Greek women in late nineteenth-century Odessa

Abstract

This article sheds light on a neglected aspect of the Greek paroikia of Odessa, its female component, in the late imperial period. By revisiting the 1897 All-Russian Census, it offers an insight into the demographic and social features of Greek women, and depicts their occupational position. It shows that middle-class and working women formed the majority of the Greek female workforce and suggests that their participation or non-participation in the labour market depended on the ability of the male breadwinner to support his household financially.     

Polis and Oikos: The Art of Politics in the Greek City-State

ABSTRACT

The Greek city-state has traditionally been viewed as an entity that was divided into two distinct spheres (oikos and polis) and governed by two distinct arts (oikonomia and politikê technê). The aim of this article is to show that this image of the Greek city-state is not very accurate. The relationship between the oikos and the polis was not exclusive in classical poleis. Particularly in Athens during the democratic period, the polis was depicted as a family writ large, and to the extent that oikos was seen as an entity of its own, it was a part of the polis, not excluded from or opposed to it. My aim is to show that the art of the household and the art of politics were not distinct arts as has been claimed in modern political theory. Furthermore, although the collapse of the classical city-state during the Hellenistic era entailed a privatization of the household, it was not until modern times, from the late eighteenth century onwards—when the concept of the natural right to life and property became firmly established in juridical and political discourses—that the private sphere attained genuine autonomy.