Synopses & Reviews
Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire explores two key historical episodes that have generally escaped the notice of modern Greece, the Near East, and their observers alike. In the midst of the highly charged context of West-East confrontation and with fundamental cultural and political issues at stake, these episodes prove to be exciting and important platforms from which to reexamine the age-old conflict. This book reaches beyond the standard sources to dig into the archives for important events that have fallen through the cracks of the study of emerging modern Greece and the Ottoman Empire. These events, in which French travel writing, literary fiction, antiquarianism, and nineteenth-century western and eastern geopolitics merge, invite us to redraw the outlines of mutually dependent Hellenism and Orientalism.
Review
The breadth of scholarship that Van Steen commands is truly impressive. There are few other books that demonstrate such mastery over so many different bodies of scholarship (history, theater studies, literary criticism, etc.) in so many different languages. Just as impressive is her command of critical theory. The book takes on the literatures on the Balkan Enlightenment, on travel in an imperial context, on Orientalism, and on the cultural history of imperialism. Through her sophisticated analysis of them, Van Steen opens up new ways of thinking about the contest between the expanding western European empires and the emergent state of Greece for proprietorship of the legacy of ancient Greek culture. In sum, this is an exceptionally important book: erudite, sophisticated, and innovative.”Thomas W. Gallant, Nicholas Family Endowed Chair of Modern Greek History, University of California-San Diego
Review
“Gonda Van Steens immensely learned and engaging Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire uses these travelers tales of Marcellus as a platform to reinvestigate age-old and newly urgent West-East conflicts. . . . She deftly works with Romanticism, art and theatre history, performance studies, political science, literary and cultural theory, and travel and tourism; throughout, she figuratively picks up an artifact, analyzes it from one perspective, arguing persuasively for the view captured in that perspective, then turns the object and analyzes it yet again, from a different disciplinary perspective. This layered analysis gives the study its satisfying feeling of thoroughness while it illustrates the complications involved in trying to understand a text or event and the potential blindnesses of staying rigidly within our disciplinary boundaries.”--Bryn Mawr Classical Review
“The breadth of scholarship that Van Steen commands is truly impressive. There are few other books that demonstrate such mastery over so many different bodies of scholarship (history, theater studies, literary criticism, etc.) in so many different languages. Just as impressive is her command of critical theory. The book takes on the literatures on the Balkan Enlightenment, on travel in an imperial context, on Orientalism, and on the cultural history of imperialism. Through her sophisticated analysis of them, Van Steen opens up new ways of thinking about the contest between the expanding western European empires and the emergent state of Greece for proprietorship of the legacy of ancient Greek culture. In sum, this is an exceptionally important book: erudite, sophisticated, and innovative.”—Thomas W. Gallant, Nicholas Family Endowed Chair of Modern Greek History, University of California-San Diego
Synopsis
Drawing on new historicist principles, this book examines literary and historical narratives, legal statutes and records, sermons, lyric poetry, and biblical exegesis circulating in England between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Timothy Scott Jones theorizes the figure of the outlaw in medieval England and uncovers the legal, ethical, and social assumptions that underlie the practice of outlawry.
About the Author
Gonda Van Steen is the A. N. Cassas Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida. She is the author of Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece, which was awarded the John D. Criticos Prize from the London Hellenic Society. She has written many articles and chapters on Greek drama, both in antiquity and in its modern performance histories and receptions. She is currently completing a book on drama productions staged by the political prisoners of the Greek Civil War.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Enter the Intrepid Traveler * The Venus de Milo: The Abduction from the Imbroglio and Tales of Turkish Nights * Rehearsing Revolution: Aeschylus Persians on the Eve of the Greek War of Independence * Remaking Persian War Heroes * Epilogue