Rethinking Hellenism: Greek Intellectuals Between Nation and Empire, 1890–1930

Abstract:The concept of Hellenism featured extensively in modern Greek political and cultural life in the period from the turn of the twentieth century to the early 1930s. These four decades mark the transition from the national-imperial expansion of the modern Greek state to the management of the failure of the Greater Greece project. A systematic analysis of the writings of influential public intellectuals reconstructs the overlapping and contested political, cultural, and aesthetic languages of Hellenism that were mobilized to imagine Greece’s place in Europe and the world. The study of the permutations of Hellenism reveals the complexity of its meanings and highlights its multiple legacies throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.