Unit:
Κατεύθυνση Ανάγνωση, Φιλαναγνωσία και εκπαιδευτικό υλικόLibrary of the School of Education
Author:
Zerntitska Viktoria
Supervisors info:
Μαλαφάντης Κωνσταντίνος, Καθηγητής, ΠΤΔΕ, ΕΚΠΑ
Γαλανάκη Ευαγγελία, Καθηγήτρια, ΠΤΔΕ, ΕΚΠΑ
Original Title:
Η ποιητική της Μελισσάνθης: Μια υποθήκη φιλαναγνωσίας και εισαγωγής στην ποίησή της
Translated title:
Poetics of Melissanthe
Summary:
The present Μ.Α. thesis situates Melissanthe (pseudonym of Eve Koughia-
Scandalaki, 1907-1990) within the context of Modern Greek literary genre-typology
under an aimer lire prism, interprets her poetics alongside contemporary and modern
criticism, and makes important connections to her spiritual experience and her
unpretentious lyricism, which constitute a reading challenge in the Interwar and later
Postwar period. Apart from presenting the possible influence foreign writers such as
Emily Dickinson have exercised upon her, M’s poems are able to illuminate religious
difficulties even as those difficulties often seem intensely relevant to her own poetic
identity and quest and this is because she understood poetics to be engaged in a
similar kind of epistemological enterprise as religious modes of thinking. This is why
her poetry is sometimes able to structure existentialist problems as well as render the
many tones and emotions contained within religious narratives and practice. Her best
poems test the reach of human experience and knowledge, exposing the uncertainties
and gaps at the heart of her poetic endeavour, through their engagement with religious
themes and stylistic symbols. Since religion is more than a context in which to read
M, it gave her the conceptual and emotional vocabulary with which to stage and
explore contradictional problems at the core of her own aesthetic. Like the inhabitants
of the Platonic cave, ‘nurtured in the dark’, the flickering shadows of the reality
cannot be fully comprehended unless depicted towards the archetypal forms of
divinity. The apprehension of existence in its concreteness and as free from
conceptual abstraction is crucial to the fundamentally existentialist approach to life
and knowledge underlying Christian and theodicy attitudes alike in her procession of
poetic arguments. We have also insisted on literary indicators of her poetic creativity,
which make her work poetic and demonstrate the constant thematic expression of her
interests: her views on poetry, human beings and humanity, religiosity or metaphysics
and Christian existentialism, ancient mythological and folk traditions, nature and the
environment, in combination with feminine writing mode and unconstrained
sensitivity.
Main subject category:
Language – Literature
Keywords:
the aimer lire readership, literary studies, écriture feminine, religiosity, poetics, reception, Christian existentialism, Melissanthē, Emily Dickinson
Number of index pages:
101-103
Number of references:
391
