AFTER THE FALL: THE REBIRTH OF GREEK LEARNING (TRAILER)

1.The Fall of Constantinople. The millennia-long history of the Byzantine Empire comes to an end, and the Byzantines who flee to Venetian-ruled territories and cities become bearers of the Renaissance spirit then flourishing in the West. 2.The renewing spirit of the Renaissance influences the regions of Latin-dominated Hellenism, especially Crete, where-after an early transitional phase-the Cretan literature of the late 16th and 17th centuries becomes a golden age in the history of modern Greek letters, with brilliant examples of pastoral poetry, tragedy, and comedy. According to Dimaras, this is the moment when religious humanism is inaugurated within Greek education. 3.In the early 18th century, the long-standing dominance of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy begins to be challenged by Newtonian Physics. Yet Aristotelian thought retains strong resistance for several more decades. By the late 18th century, a partial flowering of poetic expression emerges with two poles: on one side, poets influenced by the Phanariot milieu, and on the other, the Ionian (Eptanesian) poets who are considered pre-Solomian. 4.Efforts to renew education in the early 19th century face obstacles. The new progressive schools and their teachers introduce changes that not everyone is ready or willing to accept. In the first decades after the Greek Revolution, poetry develops along two axes: the Ionian Islands and Athens. The demotic tongue—the simple language of the people championed by Katartzis, Rigas, and Solomos—had already found openings and supporters, but with Giannis Psycharis the movement of Demoticism becomes firmly established.