ABSTRACT
The name of Adamantios Korais has become almost synonymous with attempts to reform the Modern Greek language in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Born in Smyrna in 1748, Korais spent the greater part of his life in Paris, where he died in 1833. Under the name of Coray, he was a reputed classical scholar in France; under various pseudonyms he wrote patriotic tracts and verses in Greek; he also left a rich correspondence in that language. Probably Korais’ most lasting legacy is the series of prefaces, written in his own preferred, ‘corrected’ form of Modern Greek, to editions of Ancient Greek texts in the original. Through this venture, Korais sought to raise the educational level of the Greeks of the Ottoman empire, and it seems that, thanks to inexpensive subsidized editions, these were widely read and respected. By the late nineteenth century, Korais was regularly hailed among Greeks as ‘father of the nation’. One consequence and proof of this esteem was that when a new chair in Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature was established at King’s College London in 1918 by a triumvirate consisting of Eleftherios Venizelos, the Greek Minister in London Ioannes Gennadius, and Ronald Burrows, Principal of King’s, it was named after Adamantios Korais.1
