The Greek novel of the "long" 19th century now constitutes a distinct scientific domain. Among the new directions of research, the issue of its relationship with the so-called "cultural industry," as referred to by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, or otherwise "mass" or "popular culture," gradually comes to the forefront. The term 'paraliterature' has been coined to express this in the literary field. In the 19th century, paraliterary intentions are partially recognized in the Greek novel, which for this reason is identified as "popular" in accordance with the conceptualization of "popular culture."

This collective volume brings together studies by distinguished researchers in modern Greek literature, folklore, and history, who, although starting from different theoretical starting points, converge on the acknowledgment that during the last decades of the 19th century, there exists a Greek "popular" novel both in the urban environment of Greece and in the diaspora.

Contents:

• Foreword: The research of the Greek "popular" novel of the 19th century
• Introduction: From the research of Greek prose of the Romantic era to the study of the "popular" novel of the 19th century
• Unraveling the thread of the Greek novel of the 19th century: issues of terms and definitions in their international and national context
• (Inter)references about the novel in the standalone Greek popular novels of the 19th century
• For a definition of the Greek popular novel of the 19th century: narrative patterns and reader reception
• The "industrial philology": critical positions on "paraliterature" in the newspaper To Asty (1890-1907)
• Mystery mania in Greece: historical and theoretical approaches to the mass culture of the 19th century
• The Greek urban occult novels of the 19th century: a "popular" genre of novel?
• On ideology in three "popular" novels of the 19th century
• Journalistic relevance and popular novel in the 1890s
• The popular novels and their folkloric "reading"
• Dress in Greek occult novels of the 19th century
• Odyssean themes and patterns in The King of Hades by Konstantinos Megareos: elective affinities/convergences or mere coincidences?
• The short story collections of Georgios Vizyinos and the novel of the 19th century. The transition from romanticism to realism
• The historical and archaeological elements in the "Historiographical Notes" of the novel Thracian Scenes (1891) by Sarantis I. Sarantidis
• The popular novel and the promotion of social and political ideas: The Jewess of Epameinondas Kyriakidis
• History as drama in the historical popular novel. N. Dosios, The Victims of Vagia
• Our Athens by Spandonis (1893) and its audience. Thoughts on the flourishing of paraliterature at the end of the 19th century
• Our Girls. An original Athenian novel (1893) by Kosti Neapolitis
• The headless corpse: generic hybridity and mental polyphony in a police narrative of the Occult of 1895
• The Phanariot world of Bucharest in the novel Ciocoii vechi și noi [= Old and new landowners] by Nicolae Filimon
• From Polypathos by Grigorios Palaiologos to Tamasaï Dounia by Evaggelinos Misaelidis
• The Occult novels of Konstantinos Gousopoulos and Epameinondas Kyriakidis: (re)constructing the collective identity of the Greeks of Constantinople at the end of the 19th century?
• The authors of the volume
• Index of persons and works