Audience as a forum for identity

The identity of the champion of the Greek Enlightenment, philologist and doctor Adamantios Korais (1748, Smyrna-1833, Paris) has often been clustered at the junction of Greek and European cultures. While the current scholarship took care to discuss these two cultures as compatible with each other, it has conveniently left out the Ottoman characteristics of Korais’s identity. This conviction is also based on Korais’s own writings, mostly published during his lifetime, which often appeal to anti-Ottoman audiences such as the European philhellenes or Greek revolutionaries. I suggest that, if special attention is paid to his lexicographical output and his mostly posthumously published private correspondence there emerges a different picture in which Korais displays competent knowledge of Turkish and uses references that only someone raised in the Ottoman culture would understand. With a transcultural approach, I analyse the Ottoman aspects of the highly complicated tapestry of Korais’s culture by focusing on his correspondence with a small ‘Ottoman’ audience.

Cultural identity · Identity (music · National identity · Orientalism · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies · Cyprus History, Politics, Society