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Palgrave Macmillan

Cavafy's Hellenistic Antiquities

History, Archaeology, Empire

  • Book
  • © 2024

Overview

Authors:
  1. Takis Kayalis

    1. School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University, Patras, Greece

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  • Offers new insights into C. P. Cavafy’s use of Hellenistic antiquity in his poetry
  • Reappraises Cavafy’s historical poetics within nineteenth-century and twentieth-century contexts
  • Uses of historical sources and new readings that foreground the material culture of antiquity

Part of the book series: The New Antiquity (NANT)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Takis Kayalis
    Pages 1-18

  3. Cavafy Reads a Coin

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19
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    2. Orophernes. Lessons from a Golden Coin

      • Takis Kayalis
      Pages 21-41

    3. How to Read an Ancient Coin in the Early 1900s

      • Takis Kayalis
      Pages 43-76

    4. What Is a “Poet-Historian”?

      • Takis Kayalis
      Pages 77-98

  4. Cavafy Reads Inscriptions

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 99-99
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    2. “Caesarion” as Palimpsest

      • Takis Kayalis
      Pages 101-136

    3. Reading As Writing: “Athyr”

      • Takis Kayalis
      Pages 137-167

  5. Cavafy’s Contexts: Antiquity, Desire, Empire

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 169-169
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    2. Antique Desires

      • Takis Kayalis
      Pages 171-208

    3. At a Slight Angle to the British Empire

      • Takis Kayalis
      Pages 209-267

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 269-282
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Keywords

About this book

This book reinterprets C. P. Cavafy’s historical and archaeological poetics by correlating his work to major cultural, political and sexualized receptions of antiquity that marked the turn of the 20th century. Focusing on selected poems which stage readings of Hellenistic and late ancient texts and material objects, this study probes the poet's personal library and archive to trace his scholarly sources and scrutinize their contribution to his creative practice. A new understanding of Cavafy's historicism emerges by comparing his poetics to a broad array of discourses and intellectual pursuits of his time; these range from antiquarianism, physiognomy and Egyptomania to cultural appropriations of the classics which sought to legitimate British colonial rule as well as homoerotic desire. As this volume demonstrates, Cavafy embraced antiquarianism as an empathetic and passionate way of relating to the past and shaped it into a method that allowed his poetry to render modern meanings to Hellenistic antiquities.

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University, Patras, Greece

    Takis Kayalis

About the author

Takis Kayalis is Professor of Modern Greek Literature at the Hellenic Open University, Greece. He has published extensively on nineteenth-century prose and modernist poetry and co-edited Teaching Literature at a Distance: Open, Online and Blended Learning (2010) and Cavafy as World Literature (forthcoming). In 2019 he co-curated the Cavafy Archive’s Digital Collection (Onassis Foundation).

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