During the last two decades of 19th century deep political, social, financial and intellectual changes take place in the Greek society and the Greek State. The State’s internal restructuring by means of developmental works and infrastructures, the rectification of the economy, the rationalization of political life, the expansion of its borders and many other changes reform the Greek society and lead to new spiritual quests.
Parallel to the state’s reorganization creative efforts are made for changes in the intellectual life. New ideas and new intellectual currents regenerate the realms of art and particularly literature, thus satisfying the emerging needs. The science of folklore, with Nikolaos Politis (1852 – 1921) as its architect, decisively contributes to this regeneration, by turning over to study both current and past folk culture, thus providing the contemporary men of letters with valuable material. At the level of language the struggle to establish the demotic as the written language stands out. The torchbearer of this movement is the linguist Giannis Psycharis, who, with his forerunning work Το Ταξίδι μου (1888) supports the establishment of demotic written language.
In the sector of poetry the new literary movements in Western Europe and especially Parnassism and Symbolism influence Greek poets. Parnassism had emerged in France in the mid 19th century as a reaction to the decayed Romanticism and took its name after a poetic anthology that was published under the title “Current Parnassus”. Parnassism stresses especially the form of poems, since it attempts to process verse and rhyme with accuracy and detail. In terms of content it is inspired from the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, presenting, without any emotional surges, subjects and picturesmythology and history. from
Symbolism had emerged in France in late 19th century as a reaction to romantic poetry and naturalistic prose. Its basic characteristic is the limitation of conceptual content, musicality and evocativeness and the correlation of objects to psychological states. For a symbolist poet reality that we perceive through the senses, that is the external world, has no poetic interest at all. Poetry may utilize the things of this world as mediators, as symbols, in order to reach the expression of ideas and feelings, the internal world of man. Thus, symbolists, by use of symbols, are let to an allusive and suggestive use of language, avoiding clarity and concreteness.
Greek poets, directly inspired from French poetry, tried to apply these themes and ideas onto Greek reality.
Leading representative of the New Athenian School and regenerator of Modern Greek poetry was Kostis Palamas. For almost fifty years he dominated the intellectual life of the country and in his poetry he expressed the new currents and new trends in literature. Also remarkable were his fights for establishing the written demotic language. He was one of the first unreserved defenders of Giannis Psycharis, when the latter published his work Το Ταξίδι μου. Of the same poetic spirit are also the poets Ioannis Gryparis, Georgios Drosinis, Kostas Krystallis, Lampros Porfyras, Miltiadis Malakasis, and others.
Poetry of this time are classified based on their common literary attributes seen in the poets belonging to the Generation of 1880, who were influenced by Palamas to a certain degree.
In the sector of modern prose Greek writers are influenced by the movements of Realism and Naturalism that were eminent mainly in France after the second half of the 19th century, with Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola, who, with his work Νανά, seriously influenced Greek prose writers of the time and became the model for many of them.
Realism is a manner of style by means of which the writer attempts to depictreality in a convincing way, without many expressive ornaments. The realist prose writer tries to objectively interpret the facts by letting them speak on their own. Prose depicts common experiences and selects common themes while at the same time it keeps a critical attitude.
Naturalism has evolved from Realism. As the latter, it attempts to objectively represent reality, especially its negative aspect. Naturalistic prose writers study the moral behavior of people and aim at showing that this is the result of external forces (natural and social), internal impulses and moods of the moment, thus ignoring the power of human will.
Greek prose writers, influenced by the general trend of studying folk culture, turn towards the countryside and aim at describing the life of Greek people. Thus they enter the realm of customs writing, by creating a national prose, and free themselves from the servile imitation of foreign models. By the term Customs writing we generally mean representation, description and interpretation of ethics, customs, ideology and psychology of the people, as configured under the influence of the natural environment and the historical and social conditions, in particular space and time.
Important customs writers of the time are Georgios Vizyinos, Alexandros Papadiamantis, Ioannis Kondylakis, Andreas Karkavitsas, Konstantinos ChatzopoulosKonstantinos Theotokis. The latter two, continuing the tradition of customs writing, developed it and went beyond it, by introducing new genres and new expressional modes to prose writing. Therefore, they will be examined in the following section, that is renewed tradition. and
Theater also grows a lot during this period, influenced mainly by plays by Ibsen and D’ Anuncio. The most important theatre writers of the period were Grigorios Xenopoulos, Pantelis Horn and Constantine Hristomanos.
Criticism is also cultivated during the same period mainly in the columns of the magazines “Noumas” [Ο Νουμάς], “Nea Zoi” [Νέα Ζωή] etc. Most important representatives of this genre were Kostis Palamas, Grigorios Xenopoulos, Aristos Kampanis, Markos Avgeris and Giannis Apostolakis.
The anthology of texts is based on the common characteristics of the works, the time that their writers lived and wrote and the influences they received from their time.
Details of Period’s Anthology
Α. Writers: thirteen (13)
Β. Texts: thirteen (13)
1. Poetry: seven (7)
2. Prose: Three (3)
3. Theater : one (1)
4. Criticism: one (1)
5. Essay: one (1)
C. Text language: Demotic (poetry, theater, essay, prose, criticism) and katharevousa (prose)