The Bohemian Body examines the modernist forces within nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe that helped shape both Czech nationalism and artistic interaction among ethnic and social groups—Czechs and Germans, men and women, gays and straights. By re-examining the work of key Czech male and female writers and poets from the National Revival to the Velvet Revolution, Alfred Thomas exposes the tendency of Czech literary criticism to separate the political and the personal in modern Czech culture. He points instead to the complex interplay of the political and the personal across ethnic, cultural, and intellectual lines and within the works of such individual writers as Karel Hynek Mácha, Bozena Nemcová, and Rainer Maria Rilke, resulting in the emergence and evolution of a protean modern identity. The product is a seemingly paradoxical yet nuanced understanding of Czech culture (including literature, opera, and film), long overlooked or misunderstood by Western scholars.

Author: Thomas, Alfred
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Illustration: N
Language: ENG
Title: The Bohemian Body: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Czech Culture
Pages: 00284 (Encrypted PDF)
On Sale: 2007-06-01
SKU-13/ISBN: 9780299222802
Category: Literary Criticism : Eastern European
Category: Social Science : Gender Studies
Category: Literary Criticism : Gay & Lesbian