Alexandros Pallis and the English Poetry for Children: An Intertextual Reading

Abstract

The present article focuses on the relationship between Alexandros Pallis (1851-1935), a Greek poet who lived in Liverpool, and the English Poetry for Children of the 19th century. After briefly defining the historical context of the poet and his works, an intertextual reading of both his poems for children and the poems of English poets who were either earlier than or subsequent to Pallis is attempted. The need for such a reading is dictated mainly by the fact that a large number of Pallis’s poems have an indication showing that they are based on foreign models, in their majority English and Scottish. Although the aim of the present article is to correlate Pallis’s poetry with the English poetic tradition for children rather than identify his poems with their foreign sources, the comparative reading leads to the accurate identification of only one English poem, which Pallis actually recomposes, as well as to the very possible connection of several of his poems with English poems for children, including the verses written by Scottish R. L. Stevenson. After this comparative consideration, the European orientation of Pallis’s poetry along with his particular contribution to the renewal of the Greek poetry for children is largely emphasized.