The University of Wisconsin Press

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Cultural Studies / Slavic Studies / Literature & Criticism / Gender Studies

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The Bohemian Body Gender and Sexuality in Modern Czech Culture Alfred Thomas A path to understanding modern Czech literature 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 Milan Kundera, 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. "Thomas's book is remarkable for its scope and intellectual coherence. He notes that the oscillation between the parochial concerns of a small nation under threat of cultural extinction, and a cosmopolitan impulse that is no less powerful, is evident in Czech literary scholarship. The Bohemian Body's novel point of view is bound to stimulate discussion across the field of Czech literary criticism."–Maria Nemcová Banerjee, Smith College, author of Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera "Through a series of careful readings of modern Czech-language literature and film, Thomas deploys gender analysis to reveal a consistent interplay within the texts between the personal and the political, as well as between local and European identities. Wary of strict categorizations, he celebrates complexity and plurality. Engagingly written and well-argued, The Bohemian Body will challenge historians and literary critics alike to rethink how we interpret Czech works of art."–Chad Bryant, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Alfred Thomas is professor and head of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of several books, including Anne's Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310–1420. He is also coeditor of Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves. For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu Of related interest Erotic Utopia The Decadent Imagination in Russia's Fin de Siècle Olga Matich

June 2007 LC: 2006031796 PG 304 pp. 6 x 9 Cloth $75.00 s ISBN 978-0-299-22280-2 e-book $16.95 ISBN 978-0-299-22283-3   Adobe Digital Edition (PDF) About our e-books No restrictions on printing or copying, access on six different devices. ADD TO CART       Click here for a further explanation of the shopping cart feature.

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