Greek women writers have a long history dating back to antiquity with Sappho being considered the world's first female poet. However, from Sappho's time until later years, women's literary production faced great obstacles from men who held the view that writing was a male privilege. Some notable early women writers included Cassiani and Anna Komneni in the 12th century. In modern Greece, women began appearing in literature more in the late 18th and 19th centuries as enlightenment spread. However, critics still considered women's literature inferior to men's well into the early 20th century. Now in the 21st century, women's literary production in Greece is constantly increasing.

1. THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE
PRESENTATION
The history of Greek women writers is very long. It starts
from antiquity and reaches up to modern times. That is,
since the time when, next to the great and famous Sappho
of Lesbos, who is considered to be the world's first female
poet, Irina, Myrtis, Corinna, Theano lived and played the
lyre , all friends and students of Sappho, who were also a
group of lyrical women. Since then, the legacy of these
women has burdened Greek women for the continuation
of this great beginning.

2. However, from the time of Sappho until later years,
women's production was not always uninterrupted, nor, of
course, continuous.

3. On the contrary, it found great obstacles on the part of men. The view had
already prevailed that «women should not be writers because it was a
male privilege». Among the older women writers were interpolated by
Cassiani, whose work shows brilliance and a great personality.

4. Anna Komneni, who lived at about the same time as Cassiani and was for centuries
the first and only female historian, whose fascinating narrative of events in her
work "Alexios", completed in 1148 AD and tells the story of her father the emperor
of Byzantium Alexios I Komnenos, as well as the in-depth analysis of the characters
gives the story a lot of literary value.

5. Women in literature in modern Greece begin to appear in the late 18th century and
especially in the 19th century which is the period of the spread of the Neo-Greek
Enlightenment. Heseling, in the "History of Modern Greek Literature" which was
published in Paris in the late 19th century, explains why there are fewer Greek
women in the art of literature than in the rest of the northern world. He mentions
how women's emancipation in Greece started much later than in the rest of the
Western world, because the long, almost 500 years of Turkish domination in Greece
was preceded.

6. Typical is the case of the Spetsiotian painter Eleni Boukura Altamura, who
dressed as a man in order to study painting in Italy , or the Zacynthian artist
Elizabeth Moujan Martinegou, who, while she wanted to study literature,
was forced to marry, only to die shortly after the birth of her son. A huge
amount of their work was destroyed due to the indifference of their families.

7. In the early 20th century, critics continued to talk about female and male
literature, considering that women's literature was inferior to men's literature
because of their gender, while very few women appear in literary stories, always
selected according to the author, to whom more space is devoted and are placed
in separate chapters.

8. At the same time, the politicization, the free expression of their opinions, access to
higher education and the exploration of individuality prompted them to publish their
works.
However, the work of women who has been published is not treated in the same
way as the work of men. For example, for a woman to be included in the History of
the Literature or the Athens Academy - which aims to promote the writing art and
science –is only when she must have done something extraordinary.

9. In contrast, the Histories of Literature include many not so outstanding men literary
figures. And this is the problem that women of Greek literature face: the
continuation of women's voices is lost, the links between the women's voices are
lost and only the voices of those noticed women, who managed to stand out,
remain.
The good news is that women's literary production in Greece is
constantly increasing and is evolving in the 21st century.

10. THANK YOU FOR YOUR
PATIENCE
Production by Sotiris Kitsos &
Efthymios Stavridis