Lingua e letteratura (neo)greca a Ca' Foscari: 1868-2018. Appunti per una storia del greco e dei greci a Venezia negli ultimi 150 anni

The essay aims to outline the history of the teaching of Modern Greek at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice: it started with its foundation in 1868, with Costantino Triantafillis, and was interrupted for more than a century from 1890. This paper also deals with the history of the discipline from 1868 until today, with an eye on the connection with the political and cultural life of the country and on the relationship with other disciplines (such as Ancient Greek language and literature and Byzantine civilization). After an interval of a century classes of Modern Greek started up again at Ca’ Foscari in 1994-95 thanks to the teaching of Lucia Marcheselli Loukas. Since 1998 the teaching has been revived with a tenured professor and, in the last twenty years, it has trained graduate students and young scholars who today play a cultural and linguistic role of mediation between Italy and Greece.