Abstract
Chapter 5 focuses on the role of fiction literature in shaping national narratives, especially through the historical novel. The chapter gives a short introduction to the ways in which the Ottoman legacy has been represented in Greek literature but also for comparative reasons in Turkish literature. The last part of the chapter addresses the role of contemporary fiction writers—through interviews with authors and analysis of authors’ notes—with a view to gaining an insight into their positions and attitudes vis-à-vis the writing of historical fiction about the Ottoman period.
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Notes
- 1.
From the 1980s one might say that the function of literary representations of the past has increasingly been taken over by national TV series; something which, again, is changing with the demise of national broadcasting companies and the introduction of Netflix and other global streaming services.
- 2.
Megáli Idéa [Μεγάλη Ιδέα] in Greek. This was the official national irredentist ideology from the 1840s until the 1922 military defeat to Mustafa Kemal’s military forces in Asia Minor.
- 3.
Greek Romanticism has paradoxically also been termed ‘Greek neo-classicism’ (Beaton 1999: 48), because the worship of indigenous folk culture—characteristic of European (national) romanticisms—in the Greek context was turned into a worship of the classical Greek culture which, logically enough, was interpreted at the time as the indigenous national Greek culture—despite the fact that this ancient culture was no longer a part of the living folk culture (even if attempts were made to discover such traits of surviving ancient customs in contemporary Greek culture, e.g. Lawson 1910).
- 4.
At the time of Greek independence (1828), 90–95 per cent of Greek men were illiterate, in 1840 the number was 87.5, while in 1870 ‘only’ 71.38 per cent of the adult male population were illiterate and in 1907 just half of the male population were illiterate (while illiteracy among women was still as high as 82.55 per cent) (Tsoukalas 1977: 393, 165, cited in Jusdanis 1991: 171 n. 8).
- 5.
In Greek historical and political discourse, the 1922 crushing defeat of the Greek army, the subsequent capture of the city of Smyrna by Kemal Atatürk’s forces, and the burning down of the Armenian and Greek city quarters putting tens of thousands of Christians on flight, goes under the designation the ‘Asia Minor Catastrophe’.
- 6.
In Greek: Ματωμένα Χώματα; the 1996 English translation was titled in less ‘bloody’ and more nostalgic terms: Farewell Anatolia.
- 7.
Millas (2006) has also analysed the image of Greeks and Turks in novels of this period, and comes to the conclusion that ‘Turks appear as negative personalities whenever they are portrayed as abstract/historical characters and as potentially positive individuals when presented as concrete/experienced persons’ (p. 47). The same applies to Ottoman rule, which ‘is depicted negatively as a historical event, but positively in personal memories’ (p. 47).
- 8.
This phrase calls to mind the recent case of Albanian intellectuals protesting at alleged Turkish demands for a rewriting of Albanian history (school)books referred to in the Introduction (p. 13).
- 9.
‘με το βούρδουλα’ (cited in Kosmas 2002: 176).
- 10.
http://www.critique.gr/index.php?&page=article&id=587 (accessed 16 September 2015). The link is no longer valid, and I have not been able to locate the interview at any other Internet site. A copy of the original interview is preserved in a word document in my files. Here the interview is not dated but since the author refers to his subsequent novel the interview must have taken place between 2008 and 2010.
- 11.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Personal written interview, 22 March 2017.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Personal written interview, 22 March 2017.
- 19.
The original review which was posted on the publisher’s website (http://www.metaixmio.gr/products/1071--.aspx) is no longer available. The review was signed ’Κώστας Τραχανάς, ΠΡΟΤΑΣΗ, Ιανουάριος 2009’. An almost identical wording was posted on 21 May 2015, but without the signature, here: http://www.maxitisartas.gr/maxitis_old/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11753:politismos&catid=4:politismos&Itemid=7 (accessed 20 November 2017).
- 20.
This was illustrated in the documentary Kismet: How Soap Operas Changed the World by Nina Maria Paschalidou (2014).
- 21.
On 11 June 2013, the Samaras government shut down the 47-year-old Hellenic Radio and Television (ERT) and fired its entire staff, announcing that a new public broadcasting company (New Hellenic Radio, Internet and Television—NERIT) would replace the old one. The public were alarmed by this attack on the country’s only non-commercial public service company and protesting campaigns, especially those of the ERT employees who continued broadcasting from the occupied headquarters in Athens, focused on the loss of public memory caused by the shutdown of ERT: ‘the black [screen]’ (το μαύρο), as it has become known in daily speech.
- 22.
http://hdermi.blogspot.gr/2013/06/blog-post_4360.html (accessed 20 November 2017).
- 23.
Personal written interview, 22 March 2017.
- 24.
Interview with Maro Douka by Elena Chouzouri: http://users.sch.gr/stcharist/maro_doyka.htm (accessed 19 June 2017).
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
‘Fictional testimonies’ is the term used by Roderick Beaton (1999: 234). See also Katsan’s analysis of Thanassis Valtinos’ work, where the author ‘mixes actual historical documents with fictitious ones so that it is impossible to tell which are real and which are not’ (Katsan 2013: 91), thus presenting in his novels ‘a set of fragmented testimonies that ultimately explode the myths created about the period’ (Katsan 2013: 95).
- 27.
http://www.tanea.gr/news/nsin/article/4651110/?iid=2 (link no longer valid).
- 28.
More than 800,000 copies of his seven novels were sold by the time of his death in 2011.
- 29.
Themelis was a close friend and formal adviser of the Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who represented the modernization and Europeanization of Greek society from 1996 to 2004.
- 30.
Karkavitsas was a military doctor and novelist belonging to the so-called literary generation of the 1880s who introduced naturalism and folkloristic realism (in Greek literary history termed ‘ethography’) in Greek prose literature. His most influential works are The Beggar (1897) and The Archaeologist (1904) along with several collections of short stories (1899, 1900, 1922).
- 31.
Ion Dragoumis (1878–1920) was an intellectual, activist, diplomat, politician, and author. He was involved in the mobilization of Greeks in the struggle over Macedonia (1903–1904) and in 1908, the year of the Young Turk revolution, he was cofounder of the ‘Organization of Constantinople’ that built on a vision of a multi-ethnic federation of all the linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups in the remaining lands of the Ottoman Empire. Interpretations of Dragoumis’ ideological and political agendas as well as the visions of the ‘Organization of Constantinople’ range from seeing them as Greco-Ottoman over ‘Byzantine’ to anti-Bulgarian (Roudometof 2001: 91).
- 32.
The term ‘Hellenism’ [ellinismos/ελληνισμός] is here used to designate the community of Greeks, or a part of that community, namely those living outside the Kingdom of Greece.
- 33.
Such a vision was at the centre of Dragoumis’ and Nikolaidis’ political activities in Constantinople in the first decade of the twentieth century (Roudometof 2001: 91).
- 34.
See the author’s interview with Thanassis Gogadis ‘Ο Μωχαμέτ Αλή είμαι εγώ’ [Mohammad Ali Is Me] retrieved from: http://axiotisd.gr/pase.html (accessed 25 April 2016).
- 35.
‘άνετα και ευχάριστα’ (Axiotis 1999: 58).
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Willert, T.S. (2019). Narrating the Nation and Its (Ottoman) Legacy: The Greek Historical Novel and the Role of Fiction Writers. In: The New Ottoman Greece in History and Fiction. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93849-3_5
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