Yearbook 1990—Southeastern Europe (review)

Abstract

Reviews 275 European romanticism that exerted such a profound and fertile influence on modern Greece's intellectual output. P. D. Mastrodimitris University of Athens Translated by Peter Bien Hellenic Foundation for Defense and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), Yearbook 1990—Southeastern Europe. Athens: ELIAMEP. 1991. Pp. 426. This is the third annual volume of the Yearbook published by the Hellenic Foundation for Defense and Foreign Policy in Athens. The volume is dedicated to the late George Tenekides, Greece's pioneer scholar of international relations , member of the Athens Academy, and member of the Human Rights Commission of the Council of Europe. The Hellenic Foundation for Defense and Foreign Policy, a non-profit, independent policy-research institute, was established in Athens in 1988 to promote the understanding and study of defense and foreign policy issues relating to Greece. Starting in 1990, the Foundation broadened its focus to include international economic relations, European studies, and other related topics. It sponsors conferences and seminars on these topics and publishes a regular series of proceedings, research papers, etc. The first two volumes of the Yearbook were of somewhat uneven quality, as is often the case with such collections. The 1990 volume is considerably improved. This impressively large volume focuses on Southeastern Europe, offering a wide range of contributions by major European and Japanese scholars and diplomats. The volume also includes a useful documentary section and a chronology of events in the Balkans during 1990. Among the documents the reader will find the full text of the 1990 Defense Cooperation Agreement between the United States and Greece. The 1990 volume of the Yearbook opens with the annual ELIAMEP lecture, "Germany and the New Balance in Europe" by Michael Stürmer. There are six articles grouped under the general heading "New Patterns of Global Politics" by German, Japanese, Greek, and Norwegian scholars and diplomats, including an article by NATO's Secretary-General. Eleven more articles have been contributed by a wide array of Greek and other experts on Greek foreign policy and Eastern and Southeastern Europe. In view of the crisis in Yugoslavia, the reader will find of particular interest the articles by Anton Bebler on "U.S. Strategy and Yugoslavia's Security" and by Vladimir Veres on "Yugoslav Foreign Policy in a Changing World." There are two other interesting pieces on Greece, one by Evangelos Kofos on Greece and the Balkans in the 1970s and 1980s, the other by Robert McDonald on the prospects for the Greek economy. 276 Reviews This volume is strongly recommended for libraries with European and Mediterranean collections, and for anyone interested in political, security, or economic issues in Eastern and Southern Europe. Van Coufoudakis Indiana University—Purdue University at Fort Wayne Roderick Beaton, TL· Medieval Greek Romance. Cambridge Medieval Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989. Pp. ix + 261. $49.50. The medieval romance is a genre of Greek literature definitely in need of a fresh critical réévaluation. This comprehensive study intended for both the specialized and the nonspecialized reader, and possessing an excellent bibliography, addresses such a need. The problem with the medieval Greek romances is not simply that they went critically unnoticed until the nineteenth century but also that such a delayed acknowledgment contributed to their disconnection from the tradition of the novel of antiquity and consequently to the loss of their rightful place in the history of medieval European fiction. If we were to isolate a background historical argument as a basis for Beaton's endeavor, it would go something like this: The fiction that flourished in the form of the novel in later antiquity with authors such as Chariton, Achilles Tatios, and Heliodorus became submerged under the more pervasive Christian religious culture. The world-view projected by the ancient fiction, where the individual was totally at the mercy of passion and the irrational forces of fate, was hardly compatible with the Christian one. Nevertheless, during the period of the novel's absence, the need for excitement and for stimulation of the imagination found some outlet, at least in part, in other genres that demonstrated novelistic qualities, genres such as chronicles and hagiography. The reappearance of the romance in the twelfth century rather than at an apocalyptic moment seems...