'Truth is Stranger than Fiction': Representations of Greece in the Wide World Magazine

Abstract

This paper examines visual representations of Greece as presented in two articles in the Wide World Magazine (1898-1965) in 1908. The Wide World Magazine was a British illustrated magazine with almost exclusive male authorship and a powerful slogan: ‘truth is greater than fiction’. By means of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, the paper focuses on both photographs and illustrations in order to analyse the British gaze towards Greece at the time. At the same time, through representations of Greeks as the Other, the British travellers engage in their own identity construction. The material demonstrates a shift from the travellers’ preoccupation with the country’s classical past to what they think of a more authentic Greece. It also reveals a change in the attitude of the travellers, who distinguish themselves from tourists and see themselves rather as ethnographers. Finally, considering the complex relations between Greece and the United Kingdom, these representations of Greece will be linked to British political interests.