Myth, Representation, and Identity

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introducion

   • Marilena Papachristophorou

   Pages 1-13

3. On the island of goddess Calypso

   • Marilena Papachristophorou

   Pages 15-25

4. About Origins (And the Story Goes On)

   • Marilena Papachristophorou

   Pages 27-45

5. Demons and Sancta

   • Marilena Papachristophorou

   Pages 47-62

6. Hierophanies and Miracles

   • Marilena Papachristophorou

   Pages 63-79

7. Fertility and Death

   • Marilena Papachristophorou

   Pages 81-107

8. Ordinary Days and Talks

   • Marilena Papachristophorou

   Pages 109-128

9. The Narrative Construction of the Community

   • Marilena Papachristophorou

   Pages 129-144

10. Postface

    • Marilena Papachristophorou

    Pages 145-147

11. Back Matter

    Pages 149-198

    PDF

Lipsi forms a modern construction that has disconnected from its past. Recently, the community has formed a collective identity reconstructed from fragments of collective memory. This book is an ethnographic account of the mythology proposed by the community and examines how history and collective memory tightly interconnect.

• community
• ethnography
• Greece
• history
• identity
• memory

"Papachristophorou is one of a small but growing number of anthropologists who have identified the value of popular cosmologies, the linkages between these cosmologies and official religion, and the symbolic construction of landscape. In this book, we not only attain a sense of how communities generate moral values but also the boundaries between good and evil, the past and present." - Nick Doumanis, author of Before the Nation and Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean

"This exceptional book offers one of the richest accounts of a village Greek cosmology ever assembled. Papachristophorou captures a local orientation to the landscape and the past which weaves together stories about figures such as Calypso, Ulysses, the devil, saints, and recent historical figures. This portrait of Lipsi disrupts the assumption that 'myth', 'legend', 'religion', and 'history' are necessarily discrete categories." - Charles Stewart, author of Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece

Marilena Papachristoporou is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Archeology at the University of Ioannina, Greece.

Policies and ethics