The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History - Couverture rigide

Sayer, Derek

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0691057605 ISBN 13 : 9780691057606

Editeur : Princeton University Press, 1998

Synopsis

In "The Winter's Tale", Shakespeare gave the landlocked country of Bohemia a coastline - a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of foreigners' ignorance of the Czech homeland. Although the lands that were once the Kingdom of Bohemia lie at the heart of Europe, Czechs are usually encountered in the margins of other people's stories. In this book, Derek Sayer reverses this perspective. He presents a history of the Czech people that is also a history of modern Europe, told from its uneasy centre. Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theatre of European conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of the Counter-Reformation; an Austrian imperial province and a proudly Slavonic national state; the most easterly democracy in Europe and a westerly outlier of the Soviet bloc. The complexities of its location have given rise to profound (and often profoundly comic) reflections on the modern condition. Franz Kafka, Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek and Milan Kundera are all products of its spirit of place. Sayer describes how Bohemia's ambiguities and contradictions are those of Europe itself, and he considers the ironies of viewing Europe, the West and modernity from the vantage point of a country that has been too often ignored. It draws on literary, musical, visual and documentary sources, ranging from banknotes to statues, museum displays to school textbooks, funeral orations to operatic stage-sets, murals in subway stations to censors' indexes of banned books. It brings us into contact with the ever changing details of daily life - the street names and facades of buildings, the heroes figured on postage stamps - that have created and recreated a sense of what it is to be Czech.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Derek Sayer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He is the author of several books, including (with Philip Corrigan) The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Princeton University Press
• Date d'édition: 1998
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0691057605
• ISBN 13: 9780691057606
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 408
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible