ISBN:
9780197538296
Language:
English
Pages:
137 pages cm
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als Weir, David Bohemians
DDC:
303.48/4
Keywords:
Bohemianism History
;
HISTORY / Social History
;
LIT024040
;
LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory
;
Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900
;
Literary theory
;
Literaturtheorie
;
Literaturwissenschaft: 1800 bis 1900
;
Social & cultural history
;
Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte
;
Bohème
;
Literatur
Abstract:
"The Romantic myth of Bohemia originates in the early nineteenth century as a way of describing the new economic and cultural conditions artists and writers faced as the system of aristocratic patronage collapsed in the wake of republican revolution. This book analyses the bohemian myth likening the artist's vagabond career to the "gypsy" life by discussing its various fictional manifestations; its historical presence in different bohemian communities; its political implications as a counter to the ascendancy of a bourgeois, commercial class; and its role in the development of both modern art and popular culture. It concludes by discussing the legacy of the bohemian myth today, arguing that the political and cultural conditions that originated that myth no longer obtain, rendering the idea of "contemporary Bohemia" problematic"--
Abstract:
The Romantic myth of Bohemia originated in the early nineteenth century as a way of describing the new conditions faced by artists and writers when the previous system of aristocratic patronage collapsed in the wake of the Age of Revolution. Without the patron system, the artist was free to move around, to seek an audience wherever fortune beckoned. This marketing model likening the artist's vagabond career to the "gypsy" life helps to explain part of the bohemianmyth, but not all of it. Most bohemians have scant interest in commercial gain and are not so itinerant after all, confining their movements to down-market urban neighbourhoods where the rent is cheap and the morals are loose.This Very Short Introduction traces the myth of Bohemia through its various fictional manifestations, from Henry Murger's novel Scenes of Bohemian Life (1851) and Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème (1896) to Aki Kaurismäki's film La vie de Bohème (1992), and Jonathan Larson's musical Rent (1996). It goes on to examine the history of different bohemian communities, including those in the Latin Quarter of Paris, the Schwabing section ofMunich, and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York. David Weir also considers the politics of Bohemia and traces the careers of the artists Gustave Courbet and Pablo Picasso and the great chanteuses Yvette Guilbert, Fréhel, and Edith Piaf in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris, where a rich tradition of popular culture indebted to Bohemia alsodeveloped. Weir concludes with a discussion of the legacy of Bohemia today as something outworn and dying, an exhausted tradition that somehow continues
Description / Table of Contents:
Fictional Bohemians -- Historical Bohemians -- Political Bohemians -- Artistic Bohemians -- The death of Bohemia.
Permalink
