Description
Book SynopsisFifty-one texts illustrate the evolution of modernism in Eastern Europe. Essays, articles, poems, or excerpts from longer works offer new opportunities of possible comparisons of the respective national cultures. The volume focuses on the literary and scientific attempts at squaring the circle of individual and collective identities. Often outspokenly critical of the romantic episteme, these texts reflect a more sophisticated and critical stance than in the preceding periods. At the same time, rather than representing a complete rupture, they often continue and confirm the romantic identity narratives, albeit with "other means". The volume also presents the ways national minorities sought to legitimize their existence with reference to their cultural and institutional peculiarity.
Table of ContentsEditorial Note Chapter I. Cultural modernization: Institutionalization of “national sciences” Chapter II. The “Critical turns”: Subverting the Romantic narratives Chapter III. Literary representations of the “national character” Chapter IV. Aesthetic modernism and collective identities Chapter V. Regionalism, autonomism and the minority identity-building narratives
