Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-06T05:06:36.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of Criticism: Deconstruction, Kazantzakis, ‘Literature’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Gregory Jusdanis
Gregory Jusdanis*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Life and Manners of Alexis Zorbas is Kazantzakis’ most popular and successful novel: in Greece it has been reprinted repeatedly, while abroad it has been the subject of many translations, having been adapted also for the stage and screen. In Europe and North America Alexis Zorbas perhaps ranks as the most widely read Greek novel and is widely perceived as the literary work which best represents the essence of Greece. A number of studies have been devoted to it in Greece and overseas, a fact which also attests to the novel’s strong appeal.

Most critics read the novel in biographical terms, that is, they see the narrator as Kazantzakis, and Zorba as the real peasant the author met in Macedonia. They account for the novel’s popularity by pointing to the legend of Zorba that Kazatzakis created, of the man who had a tremendous zest for life and who moved relentlessly towards the radiant path of freedom. Zorba and the entire novel come to be understood as a mythopoiesis of the life force and a parable of its immediate fulfillment on earth. The novel is thus an affirmation of life and the élan vital. It celebrates life’s struggle against inertia and decay.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 9 , 1985 , pp. 161 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barthes, Roland (1968). Writing Degree Zero, trans. Lavers, A. and Smith, C. (New York).Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry (1983). Literary Theory, An Introduction (Oxford).Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques (1975). ‘Purveyor of Truth’, Yale French Studies 52, 31-113. (1977). Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak, G. (Baltimore). (1978). Writing and Difference, trans. Bass, A. (Chicago). (1981a). Positions, trans. Bass, A. (Chicago). (1981b). Dissemination, trans. B. Johnson (Chicago).Google Scholar
Flaubert, Gaustave (1980). Correspondence II, ed. Bruneau, J. (Paris).Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley (1980). Is There A Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge/Mass.).Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1972). ‘The Discourse on Language’, in The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. Smith, A. (New York). (1973). The Order of Things (New York). (1979). ‘My Body, This Paper, This Fire’, trans. Bennington, G., Oxford Literary Review 4/7, 9-28. (1983). ‘On the Generalogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress’, in Dreyfus, H., Rabinow, P., Michael Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd. ed. (Chicago).Google Scholar
Havelock, Erick (1963). Preface to Plato (Cambridge/Mass.).Google Scholar
Kazantzakis, Nikos (1973). (Athens). Leitch, Vincent (1983). Deconstructive Criticism. An Advanced Introduction (New York).Google Scholar
Mallarmé, Stéphane (1945). Oeuvres Complétes, eds. Mondov, H., Jean-Aubry, G. (Paris).Google Scholar
McLuhan, Marshall (1962). The Gutenburg Galaxy (Toronto).Google Scholar
Miller, , Hillis, J. (1980).-‘The Figure in the Carpet’, Poetics Today I, 3, 107-118.Google Scholar
Norris, Christopher (1982). Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London).Google Scholar
Ong, Walter (1982). Orality and Literacy (London).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plato, (1973). The Phaedrus and Letters VII and VII, trans. Hamilton, W. (Harmondsworth).Google Scholar
Riddel, Joseph (1979). ‘Re-doubling the Commentary’, Contemporary Literature 20, Spring, 237-250.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard (1982). Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis).Google Scholar
Said, Edward (1978). ‘The Problem of Textuality: Two Exemplary Positions’, Critical Inquiry 4/4, 673-714.Google Scholar
Sprinker, Michael (1980). ‘Textual Politics: Foucault and Derrida’, Boundary 2, 8/3, 75-98.Google Scholar
Steiner, George (1969). ‘On Reading Marshall McLuhan, in Language and Silence (Harmondsworth).Google Scholar