Intercultural Romances in Contemporary Greek Literary Texts: Intersections of Ethnicity and Gender

Abstract

Many are the texts of modern Greek literature in which immigration intersects with gender and sex or romance. Assuming that intimate encounters between a Greek man and an immigrant woman establish a dialogue between identity, otherness, and desire, this paper explores the ways in which the narrative, through its focus on intercultural romances, portrays the immigrant woman character and deals with themes involving the search for identity. Since the texts chosen for study have been written by Greek writers both male and female, I will endeavour to document my view that what such texts seek to harness is not so much the experience of immigration per se, as the anxiety about a larger crisis in the representation of the Self.