Greece in British Women's Literary Imagination, 1913–2013

Description

Greece in British Women’s Literary Imagination, 1913–2013 offers a comprehensive overview of British female writing on Greece in the twentieth century and beyond. Contributors cover a vast array of authors: Rose Macaulay, Jane Ellen Harrison, Virginia Woolf, Ann Quin, Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, Olivia Manning, Mary Stewart, Victoria Hislop, Loretta Proctor and Sofka Zinovieff formed special ties with Greece and made it the focus of their literary imagination. Moving from Bloomsbury to Mills & Boon, the book offers insight into the ways romantic literature has shaped readers’ perceptions about Greece. Why have female authors of such diverse backgrounds and literary orientations been attracted by a country burdened by its past and troubled by its present? What aspects of the country do they choose to highlight? Are female perceptions of Greece different from male ones? The book examines these and many more exciting questions. Given its focus and diversity, it is addressed to audiences in English and Greek studies, Classical reception, European modernism, cultural studies and popular fiction, as well as to non-academic English-speaking readers who have an interest in Greece. Cover Contents Introduction: British Women Writing Greece (Semele Assinder / Eleni Papargyriou) 1. Beginnings and Endings in Rose Macaulay’s The Empty Berth (Semele Assinder) 2. Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of Greek Form (Vassiliki Kolocotroni) 3. “In a Different Light”: Imagining Greece in Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym (Rowena Fowler / Rose Little) 4. Olivia Manning and the Longed-for City (Deirdre David) 5. A Place “We All Dream About”: Greece in Mills & Boon Romances (Laura Vivanco) 6. Mary Stewart’s Greek Novels: Hellenism, Orientalism and the Cultural Politics of Pulp Presentation (James Gifford) 7. Fire and Futility: Contemporary Women Novelists and WWI in Greece (David Wills) 8. Victoria Hislop’s The Island (2005): The Reception and Impact of a Publishing Phenomenon in Greece (Kelli Daskala) 9. “Perfidious Albion”: Axis Occupation and Civil War in Sofka Zinovieff’s The House on Paradise Street (Eleni Papargyriou) Contributors Index