Love, War and the Self in Renaissance and Modern Cypriot Poetry

The lectures of this session by Marina Rodosthenous-Balafa and Nikoletta Hadjipavlou will explore two important aspects of Cypriot poetry

Focusing on the anonymous Cypriot Petrarchan poetic Collection of the sixteenth century, Dr Rodosthenous (University of Nicosia) will discuss Cypriot Renaissance poetry and the representation of the lover-poet who experiences unrequited love for his idealized beloved. Through particular figures of speech, such as metaphors, antitheses and paradoxes, the Sisyphean archetype will emerge and reveal connections with the Neoplatonic philosophy and theory of human perfectibility of the time.

With reference to works by Kyriakos Charalambides and Niki Marangou, Dr Hadjipavlou will explore how the two poets reconstruct the past through the lens of the present. Charalambides (b.1940) and Marangou (1948-2013) are two of the most renowned and prolific Cypriot writers of their generation. Born in Cyprus in the 1940s, they experienced important events in the history of their homeland first-hand. They both experienced the Cypriot struggle for liberation of 1955-59 as children and the Turkish invasion of 1974 as adults. Unavoidably, a big part of their work is primarily framed by the political and historical events which have marked the modern history of Cyprus and which are expressed in their poetic work through an overall view of the history of Cyprus and more specifically through a journey to the Frankish Kingdom of Cyprus and the Venetian, Ottoman and British rule on the island.

In collaboration with the Society for Modern Greek Studies