The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History - Softcover

Sayer, Derek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069105052X ISBN 13: 9780691050522

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

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 only in the margins of other people's stories. In The Coasts of Bohemia, Derek Sayer reverses this perspective. He presents a comprehensive and long-needed history of the Czech people that is also a remarkably original history of modern Europe, told from its uneasy center. Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theater of European conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of the Counter-Reformation; an Austrian imperial province and a proudly Slavic 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. The Coasts of Bohemia draws on an enormous array of 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 intimate contact with the ever changing details of daily life-the street names and facades of buildings, the heroes figured on postage stamp

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"This is a beautifully written cultural history of the Czech people. There is no comparable work available in English, and certainly not one of such sensitivity and breadth."--Andrew Lass, Mount Holyoke College

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 069105052X
• ISBN 13: 9780691050522
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 462
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar