Binding: Paperback
Description: 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 Boh me (1896) to Aki Kaurism ki's film La vie de Boh me (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 Fr hel 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.
Title: Bohemians: A Very Short Introduction
Author(s): Weir David (Distinguished Visiting Scholar; Professor Emeritus Of Comparative Literature Distinguished Visiting Scholar; Professor Emeritus Of Comparative Literature Goldsmiths University Of London; Cooper Union New York City)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Barcode: 9780197538296
Pages: 160 Pages, 10 Black And White Illustrations
Publication Date: 5/30/2023
Series: Very Short Introductions
Category: Social & Cultural History