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Loading... The Greeks: A Global Historyby Roderick Beaton
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 When the Greek poet George Seferis rose to give his speech on being awarded the 1963 Nobel prize for literature, he asserted that the Swedish Academy's honour was not so much for him as for the language in which he wrote: "A language famous through the centuries, but not widespread in its present form." The peoples who have spoken it in one version or another over the past 3,500 years are the subject of Roderick Beaton's magisterial new book. He writes: "The Greeks of the title and the pages that follow are to be understood as speakers of the Greek language." ... His focus on language has us happily roaming beside Greek speakers across a vast geography and chronology, and plays to the author's strength as an expert in its many forms and dialects. But the book's real engine is perhaps Seferis himself, on whose life and writings Beaton is the greatest living authority. The poet, who spent a lifetime pondering the meaning of the modern Greeks and their connection to the ancients, wrote the famous words: "Greece is travelling, always travelling." This image of constant wandering, but also of protean dynamism, is captured well by Beaton. ... Beaton's language-based definition of the Greeks is far more than a narrative frame. It goes to the heart of a longstanding academic question, and one of the most charged debates among contemporary Greeks themselves: what "counts" as Greek? The current Greek nationalist answer – which generally invokes Orthodox Christianity alongside a relatively recent ancestral connection to the lands that today constitute Greece – is distinctly modern, inflexible and constrained. Beaton's work restores multiple identities to the Greeks, reflecting the depth and complexity of all that they have been over their long history.
"When we think of the Greeks, what comes to mind first is likely to be the artistic and scientific achievements of the group of city-states led by Athens and Sparta around two and a half thousand years ago-a civilization that laid foundation for much of the arts, science, politics, and law throughout the developed world today. But the story of the Greeks is far more than the story of this classical civilization alone. Greek is one of only three languages, along with Chinese and Hebrew, that have been continuously spoken and written for more than 3000 years. The Greeks traces the story of Greek-speakers all the way back to the beginning of recorded history, and all the way forward to today. As historian Roderick Beaton shows, the Greeks produced a series of civilizations that were both deeply interconnected and characterized by constant reinvention, fighting different enemies, trading with different partners, worshipping different gods, and even calling themselves by different names. While they continuously inhabited the same southeastern corner of Europe, Greeks again and again ranged widely across the globe. Bronze Age Mycenaeans were warriors and traders who built fortresses at home and far-reaching trade routes abroad. Alexander the Great, a pupil of Aristotle, spread classical art and learning across Eurasia through his conquests. Greeks living under Roman rule produced their own distinct version of Roman civilization, and pious Byzantines for nearly a thousand years sought to export Christianity worldwide. Today Greece's debt makes its future in the E.U. uncertain, while its diaspora flourishes on five continents. Drawing upon Beaton's decades of research, The Greeks maps out this millennia-spanning story, revealing how Greek speakers developed a shared sense of identity and how they forever influenced the world"-- No library descriptions found. |
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