"This is how the mountains dance": The female aesthetics of Epirus in Tasia Veneti's work

Authors

  • Demetra Demetriou University of Nicosia

Abstract

This article offers a close reading -both grammatological and text-cantered- of debut author Tasia Veneti’s work, in order to demonstrate its historical and aesthetic correlation with the Epirote literary tradition, as well as with Modern Greek prose writing of the 19 th century, with pretensions that far exceed the expectations of a first work. The paper focuses, in particular, on the writer’s gendered perspective, with respect to the primacy on her part of the female experience and narrative perspective, which significantly differentiates her work from her contemporary Epirote fellow-writers. The female experience of Epirus, based on the cruelty of lived reality, intrinsically linked to space in its physical, historical, and social dimension, forms in Veneti, as I hope to show, a gender-determined ethographic, naturalistic and by definition realistic aesthetic, which is its own.

Keywords:

Epirus, Modern Greek prose, ethography, realism, naturalism, woman, history, Occupation of Greece (Second World War), Greek Civil War, migration, literature and space

Author Biography

Demetra Demetriou, University of Nicosia

Correspondencia: Dr. Demetra Demetriou
Email: demetriou.dm@gmail.com
Adjunct Lecturer. Department of Education, School of Education, University of Nicosia, Cyprus.
46 Makedonitissas Avenue, CY-2417, P.O.Box 24005, CY-1700, Nicosia, Cyprus