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Period: Oct 24, 1570 to
Greek Women
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Oct 27, 1570
The Grand Tour Begins (Late Sixteenth Century)
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grtr/hd_grtr.htm The Grand Tour begins as a means for young, rich elites to travel and culture themselves. Although travel to the Levant would not become popular until the late 18th century, this evolution was nevertheless necessary to the development of travel literature and the subsequent study of Greek Women -
Roman Disdain
Earlier travelers to Greece, who were raised with Virgil Rather than Homer, and who studied Latin rather than Greek, did not have many favourable things to say about the Greeks. Any Continuity found between the moderns of the time to the ancients was negative.
”Of their ancestors they have retained the worst qualities: namely deceit, perfidy, and vanity” -Du Loir -
Jacob Spon and George Wheler Change the way Greeks are Percieved
They were the first visitors to describe the antiquities with care and they thus established the archaeological basis for the new appreciation of Greece. Spon and Wheler’s works remained the unchallenged guides to Greece for over a century. They also had a much more friendly view of the Greeks than their predecessors. Robert Eisner, Travellers to an Antique Land: The History and Literature of Travel to Greece 1991 University of Michigan Presss, 57. -
A More Positive Account
A quote from George Wheler's 1682 Journey Into Greece, clearly demonstrating the more positive links between the ancient Greeks and thier more modern counterparts (as comparied to those snarky Roman-centric evaluations): “Their bad fortune hath not been able to take from them what they have by nature, that is, much natural subtlety, or wit, of which the serenity and goodness of the air they enjoy may be a great natural cause” -
Emergernce of Romanticism
Romanticism was characterized by a regret of the subjugated state of the Greeks. It has ties to the rise of humanism in the foundation of the learned societies fostered by gentlemen devoted to travel and the collection of antiquities; they often were not historians, but can be defined as a sort of Philistine antiquarians.
Romanticism was mainly a process of the 18th century, wherein to go to Greece was to visit an ideal. -
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Romanticism
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Philhellenism
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Pierre Augustin Guys
A clearly Philhellenic perspective:
"It is to ennoble the Modern Greeks by comparing them to those who made the country they inhabit so famous and tracing the usages they have been able to preserve back to the Ancients” -
Riesdel and Negative Continuation
Some 18th century travel-writers still saw the degradation of the Greeks, Resdel claiming that greek women were no longer "C’est sublime beautes qu’on trouve sur les bas reliefs” -
The Emergence of Philhellenism
During the last third of the 18th century and the first three of the 19th, a pivotal era in the making of the modern Greek nation, philhellenism had the specific focus and objective of the liberation of the modern greeks through the efficacious imitation of their progenitors. To be free was to be in the past. Greeks were seen as being living monuments of the past. -
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Orientalism
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The "Levant Lunatics"
During the Napoleonic Wars, all travel had virtually ceased. Upon Napoleon's conquer of Egypt, however, trvel routes were once again opened, ushering in a period of "Levant Lunatics" who were very interested in the area (beginning of the 19th century). The Gennadius Library in Athens has 860 travel accounts to the mediterranian before 1801, but over 1,200 for the 19th century alone. K.J. Dover, Perceptions of the Ancient Greeks Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1992, 130. -
Francois Pouqenville
A "dissident" Philhellenist view:
"If the Greek women have received from the hand of nature the gift of beauty as their common dower, and a heart that loves with ardor and sincerity, they have the deects of being vain, avaricious, and ambitious…totally destitute of instroction, they are incapable of keeping up a conversation in any degree interesting” -
The Massacre of Chios 1824
Notice the realistic depiction of women in traditional garb. This painting, by French painter Eugene Delacroix, semonstrats how France was clearly on the side of Greece. Looking at the women, we can see individual moments of suffering. -
Two Types of Travelers
After the Greek Revolution, which ended in 1832, there seemed to be two types of travellers. Those who made the best of it, and those who found Greece wanting by sophisticated standards. -
Greek Fugitives (1833)
Painted by Sir Charles Eastlake, this painting, similar to Eugene Delacroix's "Massacre at Chios", also delivers a romantic perspective towards Greek subjugation by the Turks. Notice that here the women are also in traditional garb, demonstrating the Romantic link of the modern Greek to the past. -
Edward Dowdell and the Positive View- Two Types of Travelers
Edward Dowdwell 1834 remarked of the woman in Athens:"Their corpulence, however, is rather an object of desire than of aversion, as is their symmetrical contour and delicate shape" -
Quote From Edmond About- Two Types of Travelers
The Negative Perception, as Demonstrated by Emdond About:
“I have seen maid-servants come from Naxos or Milos, who would have eclipsed all the women in Athens, if they could have been soaked in running water for six months”.
(Clearly a negative depiction of the women as being filthy) -
A Greek Woman (1869)
Yet another painting by the Philhellenist artist Sir LAwrence Tadema, this portrayal of a Greek Woman has clear ties to the ancient Greek image. The woman is in traditional garb, holding plants native to her country. An ancient scene plays out along the back wall. Clearly, the woman is painted in an idealistic way so as to tie her in to the history of her nation. -
Sir Lawrence Tadema- A Favourite Custom
This famous painting by Philhellenist portrays Greek women at the bath. Notice the idealist portrayal of this painting; without the modern amenities such as the vase on the table one might easily assume that this was a portrayal of the greek woman in the past (hence the philhellenist link of tying the modern Greek into the past) -
Robert Byron's "Europe in the Looking Glass" (1925)
"The modern Greek is of less than ordinary height, delicately made, and at first sight, undistinguished. Both men and women, though seldom repulsive, appear mediocre and perhaps dirty. Then, on second view, the traditional type of the ancient Greek statue is often apparent, beneath a thickly-plaited straw hat…The girls, though for the most part commonplace, are sometimes of great beauty"
Once again tying the Greeks into the past, a revival of Romanticism. -
Mona Paiva at the Acropolis (1927)
Yet another photo by famed photographer Nelly, Mona Paiva at the Acropolis captures the spirit of the Greek Woman. Tied to the ruins behind her, Nelly's photography comments not only on her lamentation of the Greek state of Poverty, but also reinforces the spirit and optimism of the poeple. -
Athens
Famous photographer Nelly (Elli Sougioultzoglou Seraidari), a Greek Photographer, caused quite the commotion with this depiction of the Greek woman. Shoking conservatives of the time, this depiction of the Greek woman in her "naked" state, as being tied into the ruins that are her history, provides a unique view from within a Greek Woman herself. -
Flourish in Greek Travel Literature from 1945-1965 (The "Expatriate" Decades)
In the aftermath of WWII, travel routes were established and largely affordable, leading to a "renaissance" in Travel literature. In this period, the lack of good work by and about women in the literature of Greek travel was somewhat made up for. Robert Eisner, Travellers to an Antique Land: The History and Literature of Travel to Greece 1991 University of Michigan Presss 228 -
A Male Perspective- Lawrence Durell
“Her struggle, it seems to me, has always been the same one: to break through the pattern of sexual greed and self-indulgence in order to discover herself, to find a magical identification with the earth rhythms whose slow pulses beat in her blood. (I am thinking of the abstracted faces of Greek women as they join in the age-old dances and beat up the red dust with old soles)" Note how this is much more sexual in nature and less concerned for the well-being than female accounts. -
A Female Perspective
“We passed a woman who could have been either young or old, bent double like an animal under a great load of brushwood strapped to her back....She raised, from her bent, animal position, her sweating seared face, “Good morning”, she said cheerfully”.
This excerpt from Sheelagh Kanelli 's "Earth and Water" (1950) clearly depicts a more realistic and humanitarian view of Greek women, concerned with their social conditions. -
A Female Perspective- Part II
This quote from Charmain Clift's 1956 work "Mermaid Singing" further demonstrates a concern for the social conditions of Greek women. "And since midwifery is on a plane of medieval crudity it is seldom more than a couple of years before her breasts begin to sag, her teeth to fall out, her waist and buttocks to broaden and begin to jelly as she walks. Whatever character she might possess is in this fecund phase submerged beneath her overwhelming, enslaving femaleness” -
Blue Holiday (Travel Film)
http://www.travelfilmarchive.com/item.php?id=12172&keywords=GreeceNote the demeaning mention at 6:26 of how the Greeks do not even seem duly conscience of their Heritage. Again at 17:50.
Greek Woman at 18:15. "Things have not changed much in Crete. The Women continue the work of their mothers, and seem quite content with things as they are." Obviously, a quite disparaging reflection on the modern Greeks. This film shows them as ignorant, and therefore unworthy, of their great past. However, it also ties them into that same past through traditional portraits.
