par Dimitris Kalokyris
19891990, in La Revue des revues no 8
Greek literary reviews
Greek literary journals in the 19th century were in reality no more than collections of diverse articles, with a dominant interest in literature. In the last century, during the debate which pitted the purists who favored a scholarly literary language against the demoticists who were partisan to a more popular mode of expression, the journals often acted as a mouthpiece for one group of writers or another. If each literary generation did indeed have its review, the Second World War hardly favored their development. The dictatorship of the colonels also did not encourage their growth, though it could not prevent that through the intermediary of the journals – however fragile they may have been – the writers who had belonged to the conspiracy of silence could maintain a certain contact with the public. After tracing the evolution of Greek literary journals since the 19th century, the author presents a general outline of the editorial direction of literary reviews in Greece today and describes their prominent features.