Piperides Triandafillou Marilena
University of Johannesburg
A Semiotic Analysis of Christ Recrucified by Nikos Kazantzakis
Abstract
This article will present a semiotic analysis of Kazantzakis’ novel Christ Recrucified. The methodology used is inspired by Derrida’s method of ‘deconstruction’ and ‘reconstruction’ of the text with the aim to provide new avenues to a literary interpretation of the novel and to Kazantzakis’ ideas on religion. It will focus on a structural analysis which will examine closely features pertaining to internal relations within the text. Intratextual relations such as: the genre of the text; the style and language of the text; the structure of the text; the setting in place and time; the characters and their relationship to archetypical religious or historical characters; use of figurative language; the narrative mode; and the interpretation of ambiguous passages. Furthermore, it will examine features pertaining to intertextual relations: The relationship of the plot of Christ Recrucified to the New Testament account of the Passion of Christ and its similarities.
Biography
Marilena Piperides-Triandafillou was born in Athens-Greece and matriculated from the High school of Philothei (Athens). She is currently a lecturer of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Johannesburg at the Department of Greek and Latin Studies and the course coordinator for the Section of Modern Greek Studies. She teaches Modern Greek literature, language, theory of translation and Byzantine literature since 1995.
She holds the degrees of Bachelor of Arts (Languages-Greek, French, Italian) (Wits) (1994), Honours in Greek (cum laude) (RAU) (1995), Masters in Greek (cum laude) (RAU) (2002), and a diploma in Business Management (Damelin) (1998).
She has participated and delivered papers in national and international conferences and has attended a number of seminars at the University of Crete (Greece) specializing on the methodology and didactic approaches of teaching Modern Greek as a First Language (mother tongue), Second Language and a Foreign Language, and at the Universities of Adelaide and Sydney in Australia (Department of Modern Greek Studies).
She collaborates officially with the University of Crete (Department of Education) and has contributed in the educational programme “Paideia Omogenon” «Παιδεία Ομογενών».
Finally, for the past ten years has acted as an external examiner for the examinations (for a Certificate of Attainment in Greek) required by the Centre for the Greek Language (hereafter CGL) an entity directly supervised by the Greek Ministry of National Education. She has delivered about ten papers nationally and internationally and has attended and organized numerous conferences locally and overseas.
