Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity

Perhaps because of the fact that modern Greece is through the Orthodox Church inextricably linked with the Byzantine heritage the precise meaning of this heritage in its various aspects has hitherto been surprisingly little discussed by scholars. This collection of specially commissioned essays aims to present an overview of some of the different and often conflicting tendencies manifested by modern Greek attitudes to Byzantium since the late eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The aim is to show just how formative views of Byzantium have been for modern Greek life and letters: for historiography and imaginative literature on the one hand and on the other for language law and the definition of a culture. All Greek has been translated and the volume is aimed at Byzantinists and Neohellenists alike.