No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
George Thomson and the Dialectics of Hellenism*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Extract
When I think of G. Thomson one question which immediately springs to mind is: why was he, and why is he still, so popular in Greece, a country he visited only four or five times? Was it his scholarly work, his Marxist beliefs or his emphasis on the continuity of Greek culture that bestowed on him respect and acclaim among Greeks? It seems to me that it was a combination of all these three factors which resulted in the fact that Thomson is one of the few classical scholars whose major studies have been translated into Greek and enjoyed wide publicity. He is now considered in Greece not only an exception among classicists but an exception among those who have studied the historical development of Greek culture and vehemently stressed its continuity. Despite the fact that his views were largely ignored during the debate of the 1960s and early 70s concerning the question of continuity, and which centred around Byzantium, Thomson’s views on the subject must seriously be taken into account.
- Type
- Short Notes
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright ©The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1989
References
1. For a review of this debate see Vryonis, Sp. Jr., ‘Recent Scholarship on Continuity and Discontinuity of Culture: Classical Greeks, Byzantines, Modern Greeks’, in The ‘Past’ in Medieval and Modern Greek Culture, ed. Vryonis, Sp. Jr. (Malibu 1978) 237–256.Google Scholar
2. Thomson, G., The Greek Language (Cambridge 1972) xii.Google Scholar
3. G. Thomson, 
(Athens 1962) 43–45.
4. Thomson, G., ‘The Continuity of Hellenism’, Greece and Rome 18 (1971) 18–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Ibid., 26.
6. Palamas, K., The Twelve Lays of the Gipsy, translated with an introduction by Thomson, G. (London 1969).Google Scholar
7. Thomson, G., The Continuity of Hellenism, 29.Google Scholar
8. G. Thomson, 
, Nea Estia 91 (1078) (June 1972) 719–27.
9. Thomson, G., The Continuity of Hellenism, 18.Google Scholar
10. My conversation with O. Thomson, recorded on 10 December 1986, has been transcribed by Dr. Stephen Halliwell.
11. Bachtin taught Modern Greek at the University of Birmingham (1938–1950) and was the editor of a journal called The Link (1938–39) whose main object was ‘to interpret the past of Greece through its present and its present through its past, and thus to reveal the basic unity of Greek civilization in all its manifestations and throughout its whole development’.
12. Bachtin, N., Introduction to the Study of Modern Greek (Cambridge 1935) 6.Google Scholar
13. Ibid., 12.
14. Ibid., 12.
15. G. Seferis, 
, 1 (1936–1947) (Athens 1974) 257.
16. Ibid., 40.