What modernist poetic technique, heavily utilized by George Seferis in 'Mythistorema', evokes antiquity to illuminate contemporary trauma?

Answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. Mythical method

  1. Step 1: Following T. S. Eliot's formulation, Seferis deployed the 'mythical method', superimposing ancient myths onto modern Greek reality. Ancient figures like Odysseus and Elpenor serve as objective correlatives for the uprooted, wandering refugees of the 1922 Catastrophe. Answer: Mythical method. Why not the others: "Surrealist automatic writing" was practiced by Andreas Embirikos and Nikos Engonopoulos, not Seferis's controlled craft; "Parnassian descriptive meter" aimed at cold formal sculpture rather than Seferis's fragmented modernist consciousness; "Futurist typographical break" celebrated industrial speed and violence, alien to Seferis's melancholic historical consciousness.

Practise more The Generation of the 1930s and Post-War Literature.

Free questions with an explanation for every one, and full timed Panhellenic Examinations (Greece) mock tests.