Dr Anna Fyta, a distinguished scholar in Modernist poetry and the reception of Greek Classics, will present an online-only lecture on Galatea Alexiou Kazantzaki, a prominent Greek female author, on March 9, 2023, at 7pm.
The seminar, which is organised by the Greek Community of Melbourne (GCM) will be conducted in English and will be available through Facebook and Youtube.
Galatea Alexiou Kazantzaki:
Galatea Kazantzaki (nee Galatea Alexiou) (1884–1962), was born in Heraklion, Crete. Daughter to eminent publisher and author Stylianos Alexiou and sister to author, novelist and academic Ellie Alexiou, Galatea was one of the most prolific female authorial voices in Greek Modernism. And yet, to this date, she remains one of the most understudied Greek writers in Anglophone literature.
Her surname, associated with her first husband Nikos Kazantzakis, seems to have had a negative impact on her recognition as a major female author of the 20th century Greek Arts and Letters.
The lecture on Galatea will introduce her first years when, as a fledgling author, she was trying her pen in a largely male-dominated, literary canon. Her emergence and consistent contribution to Greek literature, journalism and political activism was not only heavily debated but it was also often derided as subsidiary to or lacking the rigor of her male counterparts.
The lecture will provide a closer look at her multifaceted, idiosyncratic approaches to poetry, translation, essay, novel and drama.
First conceived during the period of Greek aestheticism and modernism, Galatea’s works span through the decades of interwar years, the German occupation and post-World War II Greece until her untimely death in 1962.
The lecture will attempt to shed new light on an important female author whose impact and artistic value are still pending appreciation and acknowledgement from the global community.
Dr Anna Fyta:
Anna Fyta’s doctoral and comparative literature research work centre on Modernist poetry and the reception of Greek Classics. Her doctoral thesis explores the dialogue of the American Modernist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) with ancient Greek dramatist Euripides.
Parts of her research and academic work involve the interdisciplinary conversations of American women poets with classical Hellenism and Greek mythology. Her essay on H.D.’s “Translation as Mythopoesis: Helen in Egypt as Meta-Palinode,” was published in The Classics in Modernist Translation (2019) by Bloomsbury Academic.
In her article “Dramatic Heterotopias and Transformations of Mythic Space” which appeared in the journal Ex-centric Narratives (Aristotle U., 2020), she interprets Joan Jonas’s post-conceptual project Lines in the Sand alongside H.D.’s epic poem Helen in Egypt. Her essay “Galatea Kazantzaki Alexiou (1884–1962): A Modernist Greek Author’s Decadent Poetics” (2021) appeared in Feminist Modernist Studies.
As guest editor, she is currently working for a forthcoming, special issue of Ex-centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media published by Aristotle University in Thessaloniki. Anna Fyta teaches English and American Literature at Athens College, Greece.
Dr Fyta’s lecture aims to shed new light on an important female author whose artistic value and impact are still awaiting recognition and acknowledgement from the global community.
Event Details:
- Date: Thursday 9 March 2023.
- Time: 7:00 pm
- Location: Online via Facebook, YouTube
