ABSTRACT
In the Greek literature of the 1930s, the Byzantine heritage is almost entirely elbowed aside by the dominant western-orientated agenda of that time. By contrast, in the decades after the Second World War, many of the same writers pay belated and productive homage to Byzantium.1 This is not just a matter of a writer's choice of themes. What gives the topic a place in this volume of essays, I believe, is the role that Byzantium comes to play in the construction of Hellenism in the 1950s, and particularly of the way in which the Greek artistic and cultural tradition comes to be perceived at that time. This postwar role for Byzantium in Greek literature is the more striking by comparison with its almost total neglect (often by the same writers) during the interwar period.
