Inventing Ruritania

Author : Vesna Goldsworthy
Publisher : Hurst & Company
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Balkan Peninsula
ISBN : 1849042527

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Inventing Ruritania by Vesna Goldsworthy Pdf

First published in 1998, 'Inventing Ruritania' achieved a rare combination of critical success, broad readership and enduring academic influence. It is now recognised as a key contribution to the study of Balkan and European identity. Offered by Hurst in a long-awaited and updated paperback edition, 'Inventing Ruritania' is just as topical in the context of Europe's current turmoil as it was when it first appeared. Vesna Goldsworthy explores the origins of the ideas that underpin Western perceptions of the Balkans, the 'Wild East' of Europe. European and Oriental at the same time, the Balkans are tantalisingly ambiguous: simultaneously attracting and repelling outsiders, an exciting alternative to the familiar ennui of the West, both completely different from 'us' and exactly as 'we' used to be. Writers and filmmakers in Western Europe and America have found in the peninsula a rich mine of images for literature and the movies. In her prodigiously researched but very readable volume, Goldsworthy shows how this lucrative exploitation of Balkan history and geography by the entertainment industry has affected attitudes toward the region. She considers the religious, national, and sexual taboos and fears projected onto Balkan lands, and discusses the political exploitation and media uses of the Balkan archetypes.

Author : Barbara Korte,Eva Ulrike Pirker,Sissy Helff
Publisher : Rodopi
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2010-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9789042030497

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Facing the East in the West by Barbara Korte,Eva Ulrike Pirker,Sissy Helff Pdf

Over the last decade, migration flows from Central and Eastern Europe have become an issue in political debates about human rights, social integration, multiculturalism and citizenship in Great Britain. The increasing number of Eastern Europeans living in Britain has provoked ambivalent and diverse responses, including representations in film and literature that range from travel writing, humorous fiction, mockumentaries, musicals, drama and children's literature to the thriller. The present volume discusses a wide range of representations of Eastern and Central Europe and its people as reflected in British literature, film and culture. The book offers new readings of authors who have influenced the cultural imagination since the nineteenth century, such as Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad and Arthur Koestler. It also discusses the work of more contemporary writers and film directors including Sacha Baron Cohen, David Cronenberg, Vesna Goldsworthy, Kapka Kassabova, Marina Lewycka, Ken Loach, Mike Phillips, Joanne K. Rowling and Rose Tremain. With its focus on post-Wall Europe, Facing the East in the Westgoes beyond discussions of migration to Britain from an established postcolonial perspective and contributes to the current exploration of 'new' European identities.

Author : John S. Bak
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2009-03-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781443807463

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Post/modern Dracula by John S. Bak Pdf

“Post/modern Dracula” explores the postmodern in Bram Stoker’s Victorian novel and the Victorian in Francis Ford Coppola’s postmodern film to demonstrate how the century that separates the two artists binds them more than it divides them. What are the postmodern elements of Stoker’s novel? Where are the Victorian traits in Coppola’s film? Is there a postmodern gloss on those Victorian traits? And can there be a Victorian directive behind postmodernism in general? The nine essays compiled in this collection address these and other relevant questions per the novel and the film at three distinct periods: (post)modern Victorianism, post/modernism, and finally postmodernism. Part I on (post)modernist issues in Stoker’s novel establishes the link between Victorian themes and postmodern praxes that begins with colonialist concerns and ends with poststructuralist signification. Part II looks at the post/modernist traits in Stoker’s Dracula, those obviously influenced by modernism but also, with the help of the novel’s plasticity vis-à-vis the media over the last century, by postmodernism. Part III examines more closely the novel’s postmodern characteristics, particularly with respect to Coppola’s 1992 film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Dracula defies time and promises to undermine any critical study of it that precisely tries to situate it within a given epoch, including a postmodernist one. Given its relationship to late-capitalist economy, to post-Marxist politics, and to commodity culture, and given its universal appeal to human fears and anxieties, fetishes and fantasies, lusts and desires, Stoker’s novel will forever remain post/modern—always haunting our future, as it has repeatedly done so our past. Though scholars of Dracula and Gothic literature in general will find some of the essays innovative and engaging per today’s literary criticism, the book is also intended for both an informed general reader and a novice student of the novel and of the film. As such, a few essays are highly specialized in postmodern theory, whereas others are more centered around the sociohistorical context of the novel and film and use various postmodern theories as inroads into the novel’s or the film’s study.

Author : Nikolina Bobic
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2019-03-25
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781351667142

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Balkanization and Global Politics by Nikolina Bobic Pdf

Balkanization (territorial fragmentation) is becoming a significant urban and geopolitical pursuit in contemporary times. Countries, cities and regions are ever increasingly voicing the desire for independence and balkanization from the nation or union they are a part of. This monograph generally maps the historical and theoretical emergence of balkanization, as well its more recent spread into fields as far ranging as law, medicine, data and security studies, sociology, architecture and the urban. The spatialization of balkanization is particularly addressed in terms of destruction and renewal through a detailed sociopolitical interrogation of architecture and the urban, including their changing symbolic, ideological and functional forms. The spatial connections between balkanization, violent remaking (destruction and renewal) and global politics have predominantly been analyzed via the former Yugoslav context and the Balkans, however, spotlight has also been directed to the current political climate of the UK, Australia and the Anglo-Saxon geopolitics. The analysis helps in understanding broader emergent patterns of sociospatial polarization across various scales, and in respect to global geoeconomic and geopolitical restructuring. This is particularly important because drawing connections between balkanization, economics, law, media and technology is to gain an awareness of - and engagement with - the emerging implications of spatial remaking and global politics. This monograph is a valuable resource and will be relevant to academics and students interested in spatial politics; including architecture, urbanism, geography, sociology, politics, international development, conflict, and cultural studies.

Author : Alex Drace-Francis
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2013-07-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004252639

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The Traditions of Invention by Alex Drace-Francis Pdf

Based on hundreds of primary sources in a wide range of languages, this book offers a reevaluation of Romanian images of self and other, as well as of foreign images of the country and people. A nuanced and historically-grounded contribution to the lively debates over Balkanism, Orientalism and identities in Romania and in Europe as a whole.

Author : Cynthia J. Miller,A. Bowdoin Van Riper
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2023-06-06
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781476684352

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Journeys into Terror by Cynthia J. Miller,A. Bowdoin Van Riper Pdf

Since ancient times, explorers and adventurers have captured popular imagination with their frightening narratives of travels gone wrong. Usually, these stories heavily feature the exotic or unknown, and can transform any journey into a nightmare. Stories of such horrific happenings have a long and rich history that stretches from folktales to contemporary media narratives.This work presents eighteen essays that explore the ways in which these texts reflect and shape our fear and fascination surrounding travel, posing new questions about the "geographies of evil" and how our notions of "terrible places" and their inhabitants change over time. The volume's five thematic sections offer new insights into how power, privilege, uncanny landscapes, misbegotten quests, hellish commutes and deadly vacations can turn our travels into terror.

Author : Cosmin Cercel,Alexandra Mercescu,Mirosław Michał Sadowski
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2023-12-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781003812951

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Law, Culture and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe by Cosmin Cercel,Alexandra Mercescu,Mirosław Michał Sadowski Pdf

Mirosław Michał Sadowski is Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland; Affiliated Researcher at the Centre for Global Studies, Alberta University in Lisbon, Portugal; Postdoctoral Researcher at CEBRAP – Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning in São Paulo, Brazil; Research Assistant at the Institute of Legal Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.

Author : Denis Š. Ljuljanovi?
Publisher : LIT Verlag
Page : 444 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2023-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9783643964465

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Imagining Macedonia in the Age of Empire by Denis Š. Ljuljanovi? Pdf

During the tumultuous age of empire, Ottoman Macedonia became a blank canvas onto which Great Powers and neighboring states projected their aspirations, grievances, ambitions, and state-building endeavors. This manuscript aims to elucidate these constructs and imaginaries, employing a theoretical framework encompassing entangled history, post-colonial theory, and subaltern studies. It will examine both (inter)state and local examples to shed light on the multifaceted nature of this complex issue.

Author : Eugene Michail
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2011-08-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780826422682

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The British and the Balkans by Eugene Michail Pdf

Author : Neil Diamond,Marija Knežević
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2017-01-06
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781443862707

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Images of Montenegro in Anglo-American Creative Writing and Film by Neil Diamond,Marija Knežević Pdf

This book observes images of Montenegro in Anglo-American creative writing and films from the late eighteenth century until 2016. Like the Balkans as a whole, Montenegro usually reappeared in the West’s consciousness with the outbreak of wars, but remained marginalized on the larger Balkan map because of its peripheral political influence and, therefore, remained little known. In the past, Montenegro was experienced as almost unapproachable, barren, and wild. Its people, like their mountains, were seen as massive and fierce, while their primitivism equally delighted and repulsed visitors. Even today, when one searches the Internet for “Montenegro,” one finds titles mostly containing modifiers circling around “undiscovered,” “magical,” and “mysterious.” The book follows these vignettes chronologically to point out how the rhetoric they share dangerously builds a caricature of the country. However, they also provide a very lively mosaic of landscapes, history, people, their costumes, houses, and everyday life, which are sometimes distorted. No one can claim that these descriptions were not influenced by the ideologies the travellers inherited at home and were not filtered through their own cultural grids, but, significantly, they evoke places that are now forever lost – destroyed in wars, by earthquakes, faulty development planning, or, simply, by time.

Author : Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2021-05-10
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781351034401

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Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe by Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius Pdf

Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe puts images centre stage and argues for the agency of the visual in the construction of Europe’s east as a socio-political and cultural entity. This book probes into the discontinuous processes of mapping the eastern European space and imaging the eastern European body. Beginning from the Renaissance maps of Sarmatia Europea, it moves onto the images of women in ethnic dress on the pages of travellers’ reports from the Balkans, to cartoons of children bullied by dictators in the satirical press, to Cold War cartography, and it ends with photos of protesting crowds on contemporary dust jackets. Studying the eastern European ‘iconosphere’ leads to the engagement with issues central for image studies and visual culture: word and image relationship, overlaps between the codes of othering and self-fashioning, as well as interaction between the diverse modes of production specific to cartography, travel illustrations, caricature, and book cover design. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, visual culture, and central Asian, Russian and Eastern European studies.

Author : Samuel Foster
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2021-06-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9781350114616

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Yugoslavia in the British Imagination by Samuel Foster Pdf

Despite Britain entering the 20th century as the dominant world power, public discourses were imbued with a cultural pessimism and rising social anxiety. Through this study, Samuel Foster explores how this changing domestic climate shaped perceptions of other cultures, and Britain's relationship to them, focusing on those Balkan territories that formed the first Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941. Yugoslavia in the British Imagination examines these connections and demonstrates how the popular image of the region's peasantry evolved from that of foreign 'Other' to historical victim - suffering at the hand of modernity's worst excesses and symbolizing Britain's perceived decline. This coincided with an emerging moralistic sense of British identity that manifested during the First World War. Consequently, Yugoslavia was legitimized as the solution to peasant victimization and, as Foster's nuanced analysis reveals, enabling Britain's imagined (and self-promoted) revival as civilization's moral arbiter. Drawing on a range of previously unexplored archival sources, this compelling transnational analysis is an important contribution to the study of British social history and the nature of statehood in the modern Balkans.

Author : William A. Everett
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2008-10-01
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780300138351

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Sigmund Romberg by William A. Everett Pdf

divdivHungarian-born composer Sigmund Romberg (1887–1951) arrived in America in 1909 and within eight years had achieved his first hit musical on Broadway. This early success was soon followed by others, and in the 1920s his popularity in musical theater was unsurpassed. In this book, William Everett offers the first detailed study of the gifted operetta composer, examining Romberg’s key works and musical accomplishments and demonstrating his lasting importance in the history of American musicals. Romberg composed nearly sixty works for musical theater as well as music for revues, for musical comedies, and, later in life, for Hollywood films. Everett shows how Romberg was a defining figure of American operetta in the 1910s and 1920s (Maytime, Blossom Time, The Student Prince), traces the new model for operetta that he developed with Oscar Hammerstein II in the late 1920s (The Desert Song, The New Moon), and looks at his reworked style of the 1940s (Up in Central Park). This book offers an illuminating look at Romberg’s Broadway career and legacy./DIV/DIV

Author : Ulf Hannerz,Andre Gingrich
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2017-06-02
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780812248937

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Small Countries by Ulf Hannerz,Andre Gingrich Pdf

How does smallness shape a country and its relations with other countries? In comparative case studies that cover a diverse set of regions, Small Countries describes a number of similar problems with which small countries must cope, on domestic levels as well as in their transnational and global encounters.

Author : James Koranyi
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2021-12-16
Category : History
ISBN : 9781316517772

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Migrating Memories by James Koranyi Pdf

Charts the transnational story of Romanian Germans in modern Europe - their migration, their position as a minority, and their memories.