Abstract

This chapter's central concern is the search for the imprint of medieval and modern Greece in the high-culture British periodical press from the 1870s to the beginnings of the twentieth century through a case study of the Academy (1869–1916). Drawing on its progressive spirit and intellectual authority, the Academy displayed a serious scholarly interest in contemporary research on the language, literature and history of the Greeks beyond classical times to the present. A systematic investigation of its contents demonstrates the role exercised by a few of its contributors in the dissemination to the British educated public of such new knowledge. From this standpoint, the Academy served as a vehicle of late philhellenism: it promoted the idea of the continuum of Greek culture since ancient times while showing a considerable interest, distinct from that devoted to classical Hellas, in the study of the post-antique and contemporary Greek worlds.

Keywords: Medieval and modern Greek literature, Hellas, British periodicals, cultural mediation of modern Greece, philhellenism and philhellenes

[N]ow that questions relating to that country [modern Greece] occupy such a large part in the public mind, and are so freely discussed in the newspapers, there are many persons who will be glad to learn something more about its antecedents, to receive trustworthy information about its present condition, and to be able to judge for themselves whether the Greek kingdom is really the ‘spoilt child of Europe’, and whether the enthusiasm of fifty years ago in its favour, which was aroused throughout Europe by the War of Independence, was anything more than a fit of unreasoning sentiment.