During the nineteenth century many non-Greeks visited Greece, however, and wrote interesting though usually impressionistic travel essays. Most of them wanted to learn at first hand if four hundred years of Turkish enslavement had left in the Greeks any traces of their classical greatness. Stephen A. Larrabee’s excellent Hellas Observed (1957) documents these reports as well as many other works, including those that reflect the “Greek fever” of support for the Greek revolutionary cause. A valuable extension of Larrabee’s pioneering research is the more recent American Poets and the Greek Revolution (1821-1828) by Alexander Papas and Marios Byron Raizis. Subtitled A Study in Byronic Philhellenism, the book records how American poets celebrated in verse the rebirth of modern Greece.

The writings cited by Larrabee, Papas, and Raizis help to illustrate the impact of Hellenism on the early years of our republic. They form a useful intellectual background for the contribution made by Greek ethnics to American literature. By “ethnics” I mean any Greek writers, regardless of place of birth, who have lived and worked in the United States, and by “Greek” I mean any person who has at least one Greek parent and does not deliberately flee from his or her heritage by change of name


CHAPTER IN
ETHNIC PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
New York: Modern Language Association, 1983 65-89

By

Alexander Karanikas
Professor of English Emeritus University of Illinois at Chicago