The century of the Enlightenment was a landmark in the intellectual history of Macedonia: its ideological content in combination with the economic growth of the Greek community, particularly in western Macedonia, and the tightening of the bonds with Greek centers abroad, created the preconditions for the abundant flow of scholars and the extensive foundation of schools observed in Macedonian towns.
The poetry of the era, marshalled towards the ideological battles of the Enlightenment, combines neoclassicism and early Romanticism with intensely didactic elements. However, the greatest interest was focused on education, which had begun to loosen its dependency on the Church, while within the context of the Enlightenment, education and particularly knowledge of the Classics, came to be directly linked with the fight for independence.
"The love of education," writes Adamantios Korais in his Memoirs, "has been propagated and spread with all the symptoms of a communicable disease. . . At this moment, the old colleges are beginning to be reformed and new ones are about to be added.
Young men are leaving the country in order to learn languages and take the light from the enlightened nations of Europe; as soon as they return they place themselves at the head of national education; with their oral teaching and their translations of various foreign books, the nation is being educated and is feeling an ever greater need for education. All these things are happening slowly, but without interruption.".
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