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Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece by Dimitris Papanikolaou

2008; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 103; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mlr.2008.0024

2222-4319

Peter Hawkins,

Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies

8i6 Reviews Sharrad, thisutilitarian appropriation of qualities-rather than outright imitation or subversive abrogation-is lacking in the postmodern irony or knowing self-parody which distinguishes cosmopolitan fictions such as Rushdie's. The collection occasionally lacks academic rigour in its editing, as when distract ing typographical and syntactical errors threaten toobscure the sense of arguments, and some of the textual readings are rather too pat. Given Dewulf's emphasis on the anthropophagical or hybrid nature of all languages-both European and non European-and the large number of European contributors, itwould have been in teresting toexamine thecase fornon-Anglo hybridities in textsfromEastern orNorth Europe, although Mita Banerjee does touch on the fetishization of 'off-white'Eastern European subjectivities inwhat she labels (p. 309) the 'postethnic postcommunist' texts arising after I I September 200I. As awhole, however, thevolume isneatly structured, pairing essays provocatively inorder tohighlight both thepromises and flawsofhybridity theory.Concluding as it does with Banerjee's pessimistic recognition of a crisis of faith in the epistemological project of hybridity,and perhaps of postcolonial studies itself,thevolume successfully evokes a portrait of a field in transition, inwhich hybridity is increasingly heralded not somuch as a solution to a problem as the symptom of it. UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK SHARAE DECKARD Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music inFrance and Greece. By DIMITRIS PA PANIKOLAOU. (Studies inComparative Literature, i i) London: Legenda. 2007. XiV+ I82 pp. /45. ISBN 978-I-90435042-0. This volume traces a link between the French singer-songwriter movement of the post-war years and comparable developments inGreek popular music in the I960s and I970s. The opening chapter examines theaesthetics of thepoetic songmovement exemplified in artists such as Jacques Brel, Leo Ferre, and in particular Georges Brassens, forwhom claims of literaryand poetic statuswere made in the I96os, em bodied in their inclusion in the Seghers series of volumes of 'Poetes d'aujourd'hui'. Dimitris Papanikolaou discusses the implications of this, relating theirwork inter estingly toBarthes's notion of the 'grain de la voix'. The comparative study of their Greek equivalents concentrates initially on thewell-known 'two composers' Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis, who achieved a popular cult status comparable to theFrench examples during the I96os. The third chapter goes on to examine the role of the singer-songwriter Dionysis Savvopoulos, who draws on the influence of theFrench models, but also thatof theAnglo-American counter-culture represented, among others, by Bob Dylan and theBeatles. Papanikolaou adapts Homi Bhabha's theorization of the process ofmimicry from the postcolonial context to account for the subversive potential of imitation in relation to the global mass media, and ap plies this to the development of Savvopoulos's career. This is a well-informed and satisfying study, although itwould be difficult to appreciate its significance without first-hand familiaritywith thework of the artists concerned: little isdone to explain why figures such as Brassens managed to achieve the status of national cultural icons, and this is rather taken forgranted. For these reasons it is hard to appreciate the appeal of less familiar figures such as Savvopoulos beyond the implicit validation of a sophisticated and theoretically well-informed analysis of their significance. This study does suggest, however, that similar comparative studies could be undertaken in relation to figures such as the Italian Paolo Conte or theCatalan Luis Llach, which would situate the 'poetic song' movement in a genuinely European dimension. UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL PETERHAWKINS ...