Bouboulina and the Greek Revolution: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Heroine of 1821 ed. by April Kalogeropoulos Householder (review)

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

• Bouboulina and the Greek Revolution: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Heroine of 1821 ed. by April Kalogeropoulos Householder
• Michalis Sotiropoulos (bio)

April Kalogeropoulos Householder, editor, Bouboulina and the Greek Revolution: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Heroine of 1821. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023. Pp. xix + 381. 46 illustrations, 1 map. Cloth $120.00.

As expected, the bicentenary of the start of the Greek Revolution of 1821 was an incentive for scholars to revisit the topic. The book under review is one of the many new studies that were published as a result—for example, the recent volumes edited by Kitromilides (2021), by Kitromilides and Tsoukalas (2021), and by Cartledge and Varnava (2022). What makes the volume under review stand out are, first, the interdisciplinary perspective it adopts in approaching its subject matter, and, second, the subject matter itself—the book's concentration on none other than Laskarina Bouboulina, one of the "heroines" of the Revolution. Among many recent books (including monographs) touching on key protagonists of the Revolution, this is, to my knowledge, the only one that focuses on a woman and that therefore gives due weight to gender as a category of analysis—this in itself is a very important addition to the literature on 1821. The volume is also interdisciplinary in nature, bringing together historians, [End Page 121] art historians, scholars of film and literary studies, and ethnomusicologists, as well as archivists and other professionals. Indeed, the volume focuses less on Bouboulina herself than on the heroine's afterlives; on the ways in which she has been commemorated or forgotten; on how she has been depicted in art, film, songs, and poems both in Greece and elsewhere; and on how these depictions have been used and received by philhellenic movements around the world.

These themes are brought together by the editor, April Kalogeropoulos Householder, in the introduction to the volume and in a following chapter on the available primary and secondary sources on Bouboulina. These two introductory essays contain important theoretical and historiographical insights, especially on the main tropes that have characterized Bouboulina's depictions, on the significance of adopting an interdisciplinary perspective in order to make sense of these depictions, and on the reasons why Bouboulina has been marginalized in the historiography of the Greek Revolution. But these two essays also contain, here and there, claims that some may disagree with, one key example being some formulaic arguments about the backwardness of Greek society under the Ottomans and the role of women in this society—a line of argument that goes back to the 1960s–1970s and to studies of Greek society informed by the modernization paradigms prevalent at the time. But, as many other studies (both recent and older) have shown, Greek society around the time of the Revolution was much more complicated, and much less homogeneous, than such views would have us believe. Such works as Asdrachas (2003) and, especially, Doxiadis (2012) demonstrate not only that the Greek world was quite fragmented but also that this local diversity was reflected in the position of women. I am also not sure if sources that focus on women (e.g., Sotiria Aliberti's writings) should all be treated as feminist works.

Part 1 of the volume includes two essays on Philhellenism. The first is a fascinating essay by Maureen Connors Santelli which looks at newspapers, books, and pamphlets, as well as congressional and diplomatic reports, to explore the controversial reception of Bouboulina, the Greek heroine, in the United States. The next essay, by Alexander Grammatikos, is more historiographical in nature, as it seeks to explain the absence of female figures from accounts of the Revolution. Grammatikos puts the blame on Romantic Philhellenism and its "heteronormative conceptions" of the Revolution, drawing on recent trends in cultural studies that see a correlation between Philhellenism, Orientalism, and colonialism. He focuses, however, more on Byron than on Bouboulina, and one can only wait for a fuller treatment of the latter. [End Page 122]

The three essays in Part 2 discuss particular representations of Bouboulina. A masterful essay by Sharon Gerstel discusses the various ways Bouboulina has been depicted—as young and feminine, as a militant leader, as a kapetanissa, as a...