Synopses & Reviews
Vienna's Dreams of Europe argues, via a sweeping literary and intellectual history, for a convincing counter-narrative to the prevailing story of Austria's place in Europe since the Enlightenment. For a millennium, Austrian writers have used images of Europe and its hegemonic culture as their political and cultural reference points. Yet in discussions of Europe's nation-states, Austria appears only as an afterthought, no matter that its precursor states-the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Empire, and Austria Hungary-represent a globalized European cultural space outside the dominant paradigm of nationalist colonialism. Today's Austrian writers confront reunited Europe in full acknowledgment of Austro-Hungary's multicultural heritage, a culture mixing various nationalities, ethnicities and cultural forms, including ancestors from the Balkans and beyond.
To challenge standard accounts of eighteenth- through twentieth-century European imperial identity construction, Vienna's Dreams of Europe introduces a group of Austrian public intellectuals and authors who have since the eighteenth century construed their own publics as European. Arens posits a political identity resisting two hundred years of European nationalism, and working in different terms than today's theorist-critics of the hegemonic West.
Synopsis
A sweeping account and re-evaluation of Austrian identity, via literature, culture and history, from the Enlightenment to the present.
Synopsis
Vienna's Dreams of Europe argues for a convincing counter-narrative to the prevailing story of Austria's place in Europe since the Enlightenment. For a millennium, Austrian writers have used images of Europe and its hegemonic culture as their political and cultural reference points. Yet in discussions of Europe's nation-states, Austria appears only as an afterthought, no matter that its precursor states-the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Empire, and Austria Hungary-represent a globalized European cultural space outside the dominant paradigm of nationalist colonialism. Austrian writers today confront reunited Europe in full acknowledgment of Austro-Hungary's multicultural heritage, a culture mixing various nationalities, ethnicities and cultural forms, including ancestors from the Balkans and beyond.
To challenge standard accounts of 18th- through 20th-century European imperial identity construction, Vienna's Dreams of Europe introduces a group of Austrian public intellectuals and authors who have since the 18thcentury construed their own publics as European. Katherine Arens posits a political identity resisting two hundred years of European nationalism, and working in different terms than today's theorist-critics of the hegemonic West.
About the Author
Katherine Arens is a Professor of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. She is the author of five books, including Empire in Decline and Austria and Other Margins: Reading Culture.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Letters to the Ruling Class: Enlightening Two National Cultures
Chapter 2: Classicism and the Tyranny of the Moderns: How Grillparzer Resists Weimar
Chapter 3: Revolution from the Prompter's Box: Grillparzer and Nestroy in Vienna
Chapter 4: Eclipses, Floods, and Other Biedermeier Catastrophes: The theatrum mundi of Revolution
Chapter 5: Hofmannsthal's European Revolution: The Space of Common Culture
Chapter 6: Schnitzer and the Space of Public Discourse in Fin de siècle Vienna
Chapter 7: The Persistence of Kasperl in Memory: Artmann, Bayer and Handke
Chapter 8: Lost Maps, Lost Europe?: "The Balkans Begin at the Gürtel"
Chapter 9: Austria's Millennial Europe: The Vanishing of Mitteleuropa
Afterword: Austria as Europe?: Post-National Cultural Studies
Bibliography
Index