Institute for Mediterranean Studies

Archive of Modern Greek prosody

Archive of Modern Greek prosody

The main products of the project are the Archive of Modern Greek Prosody, which is today housed at the IMS and is at the disposal of all interested researchers, and the Bibliography of Modern Greek Prosody (2000). The Archive includes the classified entries of the bibliography either in photocopied or printed form.

Project Director: Nasos Vayenas

Description of project:

Work on the research project "Archive of Modern Greek Prosody" began in January 1990 and was completed in March 1997. The main products of the project are the Archive of Modern Greek Prosody, which is today housed at the IMS and is at the disposal of all interested researchers, and the Bibliography of Modern Greek Prosody (2000). The Archive includes the classified entries of the bibliography either in photocopied or printed form. The Bibliography records the texts which in all or in part refer to Modern Greek prosodic issues in a general way or in a specialised one. That is to say, they either examine generally one or more subjects as such diachronically or in one phase of their development, or they refer specifically to the stylistic and rhythmical function of poetic (metrical) texts of one or more outstanding Greek poets (rarely of foreigners). Modern Greek poetical texts are considered to be those which date from the epic or epic novel of Digenis Akritas up until today. Modern Greek prosodic texts are both those self-contained texts with an exclusively prosodic theme, as well as those with sections of prosodic interest or extracts of texts with a theme which is not exclusively prosodic.

The work of the project was carried out by a group consisting of the project director and three researchers. A total of eight researchers (post-graduate students or philology students who had recently completed their dissertations) were involved. The final bibliographical and metrical examination of the entries as well as the editing of the Bibliography were undertaken by Evripidis Garantoudis. The Bibliography was limited to texts dating up until and including 1995. Subsequently, the IMS funded an extension of the project with the creation of the archive and compilation of the "Bibliography of Modern Greek Prosody 1996-2000" (January 2000-June 2001), of which the bibliographical catalogue was recently published in the journal Palimpsiston (vol. 18, 2003), edited by Evripidis Garantoudis and Olympia Tachopoulou. The fundamental aim both of the Bibliography of Modern Greek Prosody as well as the Archive of Modern Greek Prosody is to support and systematise metric research, which has declined apparently because of the domination of free verse in Greek poetry in the last seventy years.