Helen Versus Achilles: Illusions, Individuals and Ideals in Alki Zei's Achilles' Fiancée

Abstract

  This paper discusses the representation of the individual in connection to its social, ideological and family allegiances in Alki Zei's 1987 Achilles' Fiancée. This novel constitutes a milestone in postwar Greek political literature as it shifts the narrative focus on the individual's struggle for self definition despite the surrounding pressure to completely surrender one's personhood to the common cause. This new perspective also involves an interesting reception of the myth of Achilles, which the author deconstructs and reconstructs in a tacit dialogue with the Iliad and its heroic models. The protagonist, Achilles' wife, a middle-aged woman recounting her life from WWII to the years of the regime of the 'Colonels', concentrates on her dramatis persona the categories of gender, age and class, thus creating a matrix of new criteria in the analysis of political literature.