ABSTRACT
Greece and the Balkans explores the cultural relationships between Greece and other Balkan countries in the domains of language, literature, thought, translation, and music, and examines issues of identity and perception among the Balkan peoples themselves. The essays bring together scholars from across a range of disciplines: historians, anthropologists, linguists and musicologists with specialists on literature, translation, the history of ideas and religion. By raising issues of cultural hybridity, and nationalist or pre-nationalist interpretations of culture and history it lays claim to a place in the context of studies on nationalism and post-colonialism. Greece and the Balkans also contributes to a recognition of the Balkans as a site, like some postcolonial ones, where identities have become fused, orientalism and eurocentrism blurred and where religion and modernity clashed and co-existed. By approaching cultural encounters between Greece and the Balkans from a fresh and informed perspective, it makes a substantial contribution to the study of a rather neglected aspect in the history of a region which has suffered in the past from narrow-minded, nationalistic arguments.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|28 pages
Hybrid Identities and Nationalist Anachronisms
chapter 2|46 pages
Relations between Greeks and Bulgarians in the Pre-Nationalist Era
part II|54 pages
National Perceptions and Historical Imagination
chapter 4|16 pages
Christians, Heroes and Barbarians
chapter 5|15 pages
Greece and the Balkans between the World Wars
part III|40 pages
Religious and Ethnic Otherness
chapter 6|13 pages
South Balkan Rabbinic Readings of Ottoman Rise and Decline
chapter 7|13 pages
Aspects of Muslim Culture in the Ottoman Balkans
part IV|38 pages
Cultural Dialogues and Crossroads
part V|44 pages
Musical Encounters and Cultural Politics
chapter 13|16 pages
Negotiating Culture
part VI|42 pages
Challenging The Borders
chapter 16|15 pages
“With a deep craving for Albania in my heart” 1
chapter 17|14 pages
The Representation of the Balkans in Modern Greek Fiction of the 1990s
part VII|8 pages
Rethinking The Balkans