XII CONGRESSO INTERNACIONAL ABRALIC

XII CONGRESSO INTERNACIONAL ABRALIC

Resumo:909-1

Oral (Tema Livre)

909-1	Controversy between imperial centers and their subjects: ਀爀攀瀀爀攀猀攀渀琀愀琀椀漀渀猀漀昀琀栀攀匀瀀愀渀椀猀栀愀渀搀琀栀攀伀琀琀漀洀愀渀攀洀瀀椀爀攀猀 in the Colombian and the modern Greek novel.
Autores:	Maria Kalantzopoulou (UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 8 - Université Paris 8 (exchange student in CUNY and USP))

Resumo

Nineteenth-century novel has been widely viewed as a place of consolidation of the national discourse. Nation has often been seen as an imagined community whose internal ties are enforced by its opposition to other entities. Contemporary theory has underlined the controversy between colonizers and colonized, and novels have been increasingly studied from a postcolonial perspective. This paper proposes a comparative study of the modalities of being against in two novels that deal with the encounter of a European and a non-European imperial center with their respective subjects. The purpose of the paper is to observe how the Spanish and the Ottoman empires are represented in literature of their subjects who came to gain their independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century, namely in the Colombian and the modern Greek novel.਀ Yngermina (1844) by Colombian author Eugenio Diaz, depicts the foundation of the Colombian port of Cartagena in the sixteenth century, the novel focusing on the civilizing character of the conquistadors' interests when dealing with the indigenous peoples. The latter are represented by the author by means of the rousseaunian conception of an idealized savage, and the emphasis is put on the civilizing project launched by the Spanish. In Ali-Hourshid Bey (1882), by Greek author Vasileios Nikolaidis, the main character is a Greek young child given as a gift to the Ottoman pasha during the Greek war of independence. Brought up in the environment of the powerful pasha, the child embraces Ottoman culture, and manifests his aversion to Greeks. When, some years later, he is recovered by his mother, he aggressively resists the teaching of Greek values. After a tough process of hellenization, the protagonist finally accepts Greek culture, and asserts, from the mature author's point of view, the superiority of the Greek over the Ottoman culture. ਀ The two novels are representative of the overall tendencies of Colombian and Greek literatures, as far as the encounter between the empire and the local peoples is concerned: Colombian literature features a high amount of novels which focus on, and stress the importance of, the conquest, while liberation from the Spanish empire appears in only one novel; on the contrary, Greek literature features various novels which are interested in the war of independence, and no novel dealing with the relations with the Ottomans in the pre-independence times. These characteristics suggest, I argue, that, for reasons which have to do with the different history and character of the two empires, Colombian literature articulates a national project based on the encounter with the Spanish, while Greek literature proposes one that seeks its origins in the ancient past, while rejecting the Ottoman imperial factor.਀

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