Loci of Literature
Kastaniotis Publications & Hellenic Authors’ Society | 2015
The aim of this publication by the Hellenic Authors’ Society (HAS) is to underscore the relationship between our contemporary literature and geography. The topic is approached as a kind of “knowledge homeland”; as a modern geography of our contemporary writers, having as its axis not necessarily their place of origin, but rather some other Greek longitude and latitude that defines them (or stimulates them) as creators. With this book, HAS has created an atlas of personal wanderings, regardless of the writer’s generation or ideological orientation.
Through original texts or excerpts from their published works, 134 authors mark their presence in these collected works. Despite rapid urbanization and abandonment of the Greek countryside during the inter-war period, the loci and landscapes continue to play an important role in the authors’ works, for they function as a living point of reference, as a source of memories, as places of paternal narratives, as a location for revisiting and inventing the past. The diversity of writing styles, as well as the use location (ranging from the place of origin of a narrative hero or backdrop for a story) is apparent, and it offers a fresh spatial dimension to Greece’s dynamic literary scene.