Kazantzakis's Odyssey: A (Post)modernist Sequel

Abstract:Recent studies acknowledge modernist and even postmodernist elements in Nikos Kazantzakis's novels and thought, and Kazantzakis's Odyssey (1938), conventionally regarded as an old-fashioned nineteenth-century poem, can instead be viewed as a (post)modernist work. Aspects of Kazantzakis's Odyssey have parallels in the works of modernist writers such as Joyce, Pound, Mann, and Seferis, and the Nietzschean influences on the poem may be seen as the source of the author's later postmodernism. Thus, it may be appropriate to redefine the place of the Odyssey within Kazantzakis's oeuvre. Doing so raises broader questions, such as that of the definitions of literary modernism and postmodernism beyond the scope of modern Greek literary studies.