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The historic myths of a people/nation usually play an important role in the creation and consolidation of the basic concepts from which the self-image of that nation derives. These concepts include not only images of the nation itself, but also images of other peoples. Although the construction of ethnic stereotypes during the "long" nineteenth century initially had other functions than simply the homogenization of the particular culture and the exclusion of "others" from the public sphere, the evaluation of peoples according to criteria that included "level of civilization" yielded "rankings" of ethnic groups within the Habsburg Monarchy. That provided the basis for later, more divisive ethnic characterizations of exclusive nationalism, as addressed in this volume that examines the roots and results of ethnic, nationalist, and racial conflict in the region from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives.
The volume is intended for classical philologists and a broad range of scholars working in the fields of theoretical, historical, and comparative linguistics with Ancient Greek, Latin, or Slavic languages as the primary evidence in their research. The contributions address topics ranging from issues of grammatography in a diachronic perspective to historical and comparative linguistics. They encompass both monothematic case studies and comprehensive analyses that capture a linguistic phenomenon in its entirety as well as within a broader context.
67 texts, including hymns, manifestos, articles or extracts from lengthy studies exemplify the relation between Romanticism and the national movements in the cultural space ranging from Poland to the Ottoman Empire. Each text is accompanied by a presentation of the author, and by an analysis of the context in which the respective work was born.The end of the 18th century and first decades of the 19th were in many respects a watershed period in European history. The ideas of the Enlightenment and the dramatic convulsions of the French Revolution had shattered the old bonds and cast doubt upon the established moral and social norms of the old corporate society. In culture a new trend, Romantic...
With a keen eye for revealing details, Hillel J. Kieval examines the contours and distinctive features of Jewish experience in the lands of Bohemia and Moravia (the present-day Czech Republic), from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. In the Czech lands, Kieval writes, Jews have felt the need constantly to define and articulate the nature of group identity, cultural loyalty, memory, and social cohesiveness, and the period of "modernizing" absolutism, which began in 1780, brought changes of enormous significance. From that time forward, new relationships with Gentile society and with the culture of the state blurred the traditional outlines of community and individual identity. Kieval navigates skillfully among histories and myths as well as demography, biography, culture, and politics, illuminating the maze of allegiances and alliances that have molded the Jewish experience during these 200 years.
Drawing on analyses of the socio-cultural context of East and Central Europe, with a special focus on the Czech cultural dynamics of the Cold War and its aftermath, this book offers a study of the making and breaking of the centrally-controlled system of book production and reception. It explores the social, material and symbolic reproduction of the printed text, in both official and alternative spheres, and patterns of dissemination and reading. Building on archival research, statistical data, media analyses, and in-depth interviews with the participants of the post-1989 de-centralization and privatization of the book world, it revisits the established notions of ‘censorship’ and ‘revolution’ in order to uncover people’s performances that contributed to both the reproduction and erosion of the ‘old regime’.
The volume offers the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe.
With the fall of socialism in Europe, the former East bloc nations experienced a rebirth of nationalism as they struggled to make the difficult transition to a market-based economy and self-governance. The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, in particular, underscored the power of ethnic identity and ancestral loyalties.Hugh Agnew develops the argument that Czechoslovakia's celebrated national revival of the mid-eighteenth century has its intellectual roots in the Enlightenment and defined the nation's character and future development. He describes how intellectuals in eighteenth-century Bohemia and Moravia-the "patriotic intelligentsia"-used their discovery of pre-seventeenth-century history and literature to revive the antiquated Czech vernacular and cultivate a popular ethnic consciousness. Agnew also traces the significance of the intellectual influences of the wider Slavic world whereby Czech intellectuals redefined their ethnic and cultural heritage.Origins of the Czech National Renascence contributes to a renewed interpretation of a crucial period in Czech history.
The Czech Manuscripts is dedicated to one of the most important literary forgeries on the model of Macpherson's Ossianic poetry. The Queen's Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts, discovered in 1817 and 1818, went on to play an outsized role in the Czech National Revival, functioning as founding texts of the national mythology and serving as sacred works in the long period when they were considered genuine. A successful literary forgery tells a lot about what a culture wants and needs at a particular moment. One fascinating aspect of this story is how a successful fake was able to function in an integral way as part of the Czech cultural revival of the nineteenth century, both because it play...
The world's most comprehensive, well documented and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographical index. 145 photographs and illustrations - mostly color. Free of charge in digital PDF format on Google Books.
The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and will illustrated book on this subject. Extensive subject and geographical index. 146 photographs, maps and illustrations - mostly color. Free of charge in digital PDF format on Google Books