1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910827477303321

Autore

Cottom Daniel

Titolo

International bohemia : scenes of nineteenth-century life / / Daniel Cottom

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2013

ISBN

0-8122-0807-2

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (366 p.)

Collana

Haney Foundation Series

Haney Foundation series

Disciplina

809/.933552

Soggetti

Alternative lifestyles - History - 19th century

Alternative lifestyles - History - 20th century

Bohemianism in literature

Bohemianism - History - 19th century

Bohemianism - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1. Bohemian Poseur Jew -- Chapter 2. Maggie, Not a Girl of the Streets -- Chapter 3. The Indignity of Labor -- Chapter 4. Unknowing Privat -- Chapter 5. America, the Birthplace of Bohemia -- Chapter 6. The Poverty of Nations -- Chapter 7. Sherlock Holmes Meets Dracula -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

How did this vagabond word, bohemia, migrate across national borderlines over the course of the nineteenth century, and what happened to it as it traveled? In International Bohemia, Daniel Cottom studies how various individuals and groups appropriated this word to serve the identities, passions, cultural forms, politics, and histories they sought to animate. Beginning with the invention of bohemianism's modern sense in Paris during the 1830's and 1840's, Cottom traces the twists and turns of this phenomenon through the rest of the nineteenth century and into the early years of the twentieth century in the United States, England, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Even when they traveled under the banner of l'art pour l'art, the bohemians of this era generally saw little reason to observe borderlines between their lives and their



art. On the contrary, they were eager to mix up the one with the other, despite the fact that their critics often reproached them on this account by claiming that bohemians were all talk-do-nothings frittering away their lives in cafés and taverns. Cottom's study of bohemianism draws from the biographies of notable and influential figures of the time, including Thomas Chatterton, George Sand, George Eliot, Henry Murger, Alexandre Privat d'Anglemont, Walt Whitman, Ada Clare, Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Through a wide range of novels, memoirs, essays, plays, poems, letters, and articles, International Bohemia explores the many manifestations of this transnational counterculture, addressing topics such as anti-Semitism, the intersections of race and class, the representation of women, the politics of art and masquerade, the nature of community, and the value of nostalgia.