Modern greek literature - Essay Example

scribes the change of thoughtfulness and rebellious attitude of the poets and writers in the wake of French Revolution of 1789, and nineteenth century drama narrates the country life of Victorian era. The same is the case with the Modern Greek literature of 19th and 20th centuries, where the utmost longings, of the Greek masses, for seeking freedom from the domination of the Ottoman Empire, appears as the most prominent feature of the literature of that era. Greece had been the center of civilization for centuries, which produced exceptional and outstanding philosophers, poets and writers, including the Seven Sages, Homer, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristotle and others in ancient times, who determined the path of knowledge and wisdom to the world at large for the future centuries to come.

But the Roman invasion during the second century C.E. onwards, eclipsed the intellectual productivity of the Greece to some extent, and the country remained under the clutches of foreign control and alien influence for many centuries, which brought imperative changes in the subject-matter of both poetry and prose of the Greek authors. But the aftereffects of the foreign rule over Greece were not only negative ones; rather, the uneven and untoward political and cultural scenario gave birth to many wonderful works, which serve as the precious asset of the modern Greeks at large.

Modern Greek literature is the amalgamation of divergent cultural identities and different time spans; it is therefore, the poems and prose of that period narrate the story of variety of genres and attitude in them. The works created by different Greek authors of modern times including Solomos, Cavafy, Kalvos, maintain divergent characteristics, though they have some similarities too. Dionysios Solomos is one of the greatest poets of Modern Greece, who produced his masterpiece Hymn to Liberty in 1823 in the aftermath of the Greek revolution of 1821.

Each and every word of the poem reveals the