Altered States: Space, Gender, and the (Un)making of Identity in the Short Stories of Georgios M. Vizyenos

Abstract

Georgios M. Vizyenos's short stories were written during the mid to late 1880s, a period that saw the birth of demoticism and increasing interest in folkloric movements, as well as an investment in self-representation and the establishment of a coherent national identity. The Athenian critical establishment categorized Vizyenos as a Tourkomerítis , a term that constructs identity by contrasting geographic location and nationality. The discomfiture reflected in this epithet may also issue from the way Vizyenos's stories problematize the notion of an inherent, homogeneous, and unitary concept of identity: they complicate spatial categories and relations and result in a concomitant reworking of gender roles, national identifications, and genres.