Bohemians A Very Short Introduction

Author : David Weir
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197538312
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Bohemians: A Very Short Introduction written by David Weir and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-03 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 bohemian myth, 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 of Munich, 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 also developed. Weir concludes with a discussion of the legacy of Bohemia today as something outworn and dying, an exhausted tradition that somehow continues.

Author : David Cottington
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199582734
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Avant Garde: A Very Short Introduction written by David Cottington and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a hundred years 'the avant-garde' has been the most influential concept in modern art; its impact on the history of modern culture has been profound. In this Very Short Introduction, David Cottington explores why the avant-garde carries so much authority, and places it within the context of western modernity and capitalist culture.

Author : Martyn Rady
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192511343
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Habsburg Empire: A Very Short Introduction written by Martyn Rady and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Habsburgs are the most famous dynasty in continental Europe. From the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, they ruled much of Central Europe, and for two centuries were also rulers of Spain. Through the Spanish connection, they acquired lands around the Mediterranean and a chunk of the New World, spreading eastwards to include the Philippines. Reaching from South-East Asia to what is now Ukraine, the Habsburg Empire was truly global. In this Very Short Introduction Martin Rady looks at the history of the Habsburgs, from their tenth-century origins in Switzerland, to the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. He introduces the pantheon of Habsburg rulers, which included adventurers, lunatics, and at least one monarch who was so malformed that his true portrait could never be exhibited. He also discusses the lands and kingdoms that made up the Habsburg Empire, and the decisive moments that shaped their history. Dynasty, Europe, global power, and the idea of the multi-national state all converge on the history of the Habsburg Empire. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author : David Sterritt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199344310
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Beats: A Very Short Introduction written by David Sterritt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the writers of the Beat Generation revolutionized American literature with their iconoclastic approach to language and their angry assault on the conformity and conservatism of postwar society. They and their followers took aim at the hypocrisy and taboos of their time--particularly those involving sex, race, and class--in such provocative works as Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (1956), and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959). In this Very Short Introduction, David Sterritt offers a concise overview of the social, cultural, and aesthetic sensibilities of the Beats, bringing out the similarities that connected them and also the many differences that made them a loosely knit collective rather than an organized movement. Figures in the saga include Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Clellon Holmes, Carolyn Cassady, and Gary Snyder. As Sterritt ranges from Greenwich Village and San Francisco to Mexico, western Europe, and North Africa, he sheds much light on how the Beats approached literature, drugs, sexuality, art, music, and religion. Members of the Beat Generation hoped that their radical rejection of materialism, consumerism, and regimentation would inspire others to purify their lives and souls as well. Yet they urged the remaking of consciousness on a profoundly inward-looking basis, cultivating "the unspeakable visions of the individual," in Kerouac's phrase. The idea was to revolutionize society by revolutionizing thought, not the other way around. This book explains how the Beats used their antiauthoritarian visions and radical styles to challenge dominant values, fending off absorption into mainstream culture while preparing ground for the larger, more explosive social upheavals of the 1960s. More than half a century later, the Beats' impact can still be felt in literature, cinema, music, theater, and the visual arts. This compact introduction explains why. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

Author : David Sterritt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199796777
Total Pages : 145 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Beats: A Very Short Introduction written by David Sterritt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a concise overview of the social, cultural, and aesthetic sensibilities of the Beat Generation, explaining how their drastic visions and radical styles challenged postwar America's dominant values in ways that can still be felt in literature, cinema, music, theatre, and the visual arts.

Author : David Weir
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190610220
Total Pages : 155 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Decadence written by David Weir and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- Rome: classical decadence -- Paris: cultural decadence -- London: social decadence -- Vienna and Berlin: socio-cultural decadence -- Afterword: legacies of decadence

Author : John Shelton Reed
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807147664
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Dixie Bohemia written by John Shelton Reed and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square had become the center of a vibrant if short-lived bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane University, resided among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter." In Dixie Bohemia John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends -- ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer -- and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the Jazz Age. Reed begins with Faulkner and Spratling's self-published homage to their fellow bohemians, "Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles." The book contained 43 sketches of New Orleans artists, by Spratling, with captions and a short introduction by Faulkner. The title served as a rather obscure joke: Sherwood was not a Creole and neither were most of the people featured. But with Reed's commentary, these profiles serve as an entry into the world of artists and writers that dined on Decatur Street, attended masked balls, and blatantly ignored the Prohibition Act. These men and women also helped to establish New Orleans institutions such as the Double Dealer literary magazine, the Arts and Crafts Club, and Le Petit Theatre. But unlike most bohemias, the one in New Orleans existed as a whites-only affair. Though some of the bohemians were relatively progressive, and many employed African American material in their own work, few of them knew or cared about what was going on across town among the city's black intellectuals and artists. The positive developments from this French Quarter renaissance, however, attracted attention and visitors, inspiring the historic preservation and commercial revitalization that turned the area into a tourist destination. Predictably, this gentrification drove out many of the working artists and writers who had helped revive the area. As Reed points out, one resident who identified herself as an "artist" on the 1920 federal census gave her occupation in 1930 as "saleslady, real estate," reflecting the decline of an active artistic class. A charming and insightful glimpse into an era, Dixie Bohemia describes the writers, artists, poseurs, and hangers-on in the New Orleans art scene of the 1920s and illuminates how this dazzling world faded as quickly as it began.

Author : Ted Kooser
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 9780803278110
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.1X/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Local Wonders written by Ted Kooser and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the "quietest magnificent book IUve ever read" (Jim Harrison, author of "Legends of the Fall") Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska--an area known as the Bohemian Alps--where nothing is too big or too small for his attention.

Author : David Cottington
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 019164255X
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Avant Garde: A Very Short Introduction written by David Cottington and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The avant-garde' is perhaps the most important and influential concept in the history of modern culture. For over a hundred years it has governed critical and historical assessment of the quality and significance of an artist or a work of art, in any medium-if these have been judged to be 'avant-garde', then they have been worthy of consideration. If not, then by and large they have not, and neither critics nor historians have paid them much attention. In short, modern art is and has been whatever the 'avant-garde' has made, or has said it is. But very little attempt has been made to explore why 'the avant-garde' carries so much authority, or how it came to do so. What is more, the term remains a difficult one to define, and is often used in a variety of ways. What is the relation between 'the avant-garde' — that is, the social entity (the 'club') — and 'avant-garde' qualities in a work of art (or design, or architecture, or any other cultural product)? What does 'avant-gardism mean? Moreover, now that contemporary art seems to have broken all taboos and is at the centre of a billion-pound art market, is there still an 'avant-garde'? If so, what is the point of it and who are the artists concerned? In this Very Short Introduction, David Cottington explores the concept of the 'avant-garde' and examines its wider context through the development of western modernity, capitalist culture, and the global impact of both. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author : Graydon Carter
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0698170091
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells written by Graydon Carter and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering readers an inebriating swig from the great cocktail shaker of the Roaring Twenties—the Jazz Age, the age of Gatsby—Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells showcases unforgettable writers in search of how to live well in a changing era. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter introduces these fabulous pieces written between 1913 and 1936, when the magazine published a Murderers’ Row of the world’s leading literary lights, including: F. Scott Fitzgerald on what a magazine should be Clarence Darrow on equality e. e. cummings on Calvin Coolidge D. H. Lawrence on women Djuna Barnes on James Joyce John Maynard Keynes on the collapse in money value Dorothy Parker on a host of topics, from why she hates actresses to why she hasn’t married