1. JSIS A 239/CLAS 239 GREECE: ANCIENT TO MODERN

2. Modern Greek Folk Songs
Orally composed and transmitted in different performative contexts
Writing and literary techniques have played no role in formation and transmission of modern Greek folk songs
Main genres and themes of modern Greek folk songs
Modern Greek folk songs lack epic genre

3. Collections of Greek Folk Songs
Modern Greek folk songs were collected and published in the 19th century, initially by Western European collectors (Cl. Fauriel, N. Tommaseo, et al.) and then by Greek collectors (A. Manousos, N. Politis, et al. )
N. Politis, Selections from the Songs of the Greek People (1914)

4. Ritual Lament
A subgenre of Greek folk songs performed by women moiroloyistres (μοιρολογίστρες): female lamenters of the dead

5. Components of ritual lament
Vocal lamentation
Dramatic bodily movements: tearing the face and hair, beating the breast, rending one’s garments
The mourners’ personal ‘sufferings’ / ‘ponoi’:
Isolation
Widowhood
Loss of social status
Desertion by male realatives
Sufferings from childbirth or child-raising
Grievances against war and death

6. Functions of ritual lament
Expression of ‘pain’ – both personal and interpersonal
Expression of individual and collective female voice
Social bonding of female lamenters against patriarchal village culture
Protest of female lamenters against patriarchal culture and against social injustice
Lamenter as mediator between living and dead

7. Parallels between modern and ancient Greek laments
Laments in ancient Greek tragedy and modern Greek oral traditions share parallels in function, theme, agency and verbal art
Euripides’ Suppliants: laments of mothers of warriors who died fighting against Thebes
Mothers of dead warriors form a community of mourners

8. Exceptionalism
Belief that a country or national culture has developed politically, economically or socially along unusual lines
Country or national culture are interpreted within categories that are different from a generally accepted model
E.g. ‘American exceptionalism’ or ‘the French exception’

9. Modern Greek Exceptionalism
Claims that modern Greek culture, society and national building processes are somewhat unique
Positive Greek exceptionalism: e.g., Hellenic continuity; unique position of modern Greece in world history due to its relationship to classical and Byzantine Greek civilization
Negative Greek exceptionalism: e.g., modern Greek literature as belated in relation to other cultures

10. European Exceptionalism
(West) European model of a secular modernity (old secularization paradigm)
USA (with its vibrant religiosity) was seen as deviation from European model of secular modernity
From alleged universality of European model to a ‘European exceptionalism’: European secular modernity is the exception to the norm – religion persists in Eastern Europe and most other parts of the globe

11. Greek Orthodoxy: An Exception in Europe’s religious landscape?
Does Greece, a predominantly Orthodox country, fit into the general secular pattern of Western Europe?
Greece has been called ‘an anomaly, the Orthodox outsider in Western organizations’
Orthodoxy continues to play a role in Greek public life

12. Greek Orthodoxy: An Exception in Europe’s religious landscape?
There are aspect of historical religious development that differentiate Greece from Central and West European countries (e.g. lack of Reformation) and other patterns of religious life presenting similarities (Italian and Greek forms of ‘diffused religion)

13. From Greek ‘exceptionalism’ to Greek specificities
Instead of talking about a Greek ‘exceptionalism’ it is more accurate to speak of Greek specificities or particularities relative to the historical religious development of Greece and to the specific ways Greeks practise religion.
The Greek Orthodox situation with its idiosyncrasies supports the idea of a specific ‘West European exceptionalism’ within the overall European and global religious scene