Aikaterini Vathrakogianni

Women on Kazantzakis: Biography and Fiction: Reconstruction, Feminism and Misogyny Aikaterini Vathrakogianni

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), an eminent Modern Greek writer, had the advantage of having a number of biographies written about him, four of which were by women writers who were more or less intimately related to him. Taking into account that in Greece biography has not flourished as a genre and that very few Modern Greek writers/ poets constitute an exception to this rule, their biographies still tending to be written by foreign scholars rather than Greek ones, the case of Kazantzakis as a biographee of so many writers, and Greek biographers at that, is something of a phenomenon. The aim of this thesis is to undertake a comparative examination of the four biographies in order to establish the degree of objectivity eventually achieved by each of them. Issues concerning biography and objectivity, the representation of women in Kazantzakis' novels and lastly, (auto)biography and fiction will inform the examination of the biographies and place their analysis in a wider and more theoretical framework. This book is believed to contribute to the existing bibliography on Kazantzakis since for the first time a detailed study of the Kazantzakis biographies written by women is provided.