Η αρχαία Ελλάδα ως «εαυτότητα» στην ελληνική παιδική λογοτεχνία και ως «ετερότητα» στα εικονογραφηγήματα του Ντίσνεϋ

Abstract

The construction of the Greek national identity was based on the inalienable right of modern Greeks to assert their place as legal heirs of their ancient culture, against the Europeans, who questioned it. Literature in general and children's literature in particular are inscribed on the sphere of the enforcement and authenticitation of any national identity and consequently of the Greek one. Ancient Greece, either in a straight-out way or ambiguously present, haunts the greek cultural and literary production and constitutes an organic component of it. The myth of greekness on children's Literature, even on an iconographie level, is portrayed through a specific "indigenous popular classicism". The crucial argument for almost the most part of greek children's literature has always been the enhancement of the Greek identity and the unification of the national characteristics on a way that praises the homogeneity and the continuity of the greek virtues. Children's literature and national identity are cross-fertilized through a mutual solidarity.

On the other hand , Disney uses ancient Greece in order to diffuse imperceptibly his own -and his social class'- ideals and beliefs, by attributing them to the outmost and sanctificated past. Through certain mechanisms (fetishization, misappropriation and manipulation) he imposes his re-reading of the past and he distorts ancient Greece's status to justify the American Dream (from rags to reaches). By forging history and by camouflaging his intentions, through his friendly and familiar Comics "for children", he manages to subvert ancient Greece's principles and to place it on a contrapuntal position, making Greece the "other" against which the American identity is being formulated. Furthermore, at the same time, ancient Greece is being obliterated through its americanisation.