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8 books match the query 'Bohemia (Czech Republic)'

cover of Anne’s Bohemia: Czech Literature And Society, 1310-1420

Anne’s Bohemia

Czech Literature And Society, 1310-1420

Alfred Thomas

University of Minnesota Press, 1998

The first book in English on medieval Czech literature.

Anne’s Bohemia is the first general book in English to introduce the little-known riches of medieval Bohemian culture. Alfred Thomas considers the development of Czech literature and society from the election of Count John of Luxembourg as king of Bohemia in 1310 to the year 1420, when the papacy declared a Catholic crusade against the Hussite reformers. This period is of particular relevance to the study of medieval England because of the marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia, the figure around whom this book is focused.

Anne’s Bohemia provides a social context for the most important works of literature written in the Czech language, from the earliest spiritual songs and prayers to the principal Hussite and anti-Hussite tracts of the fifteenth century. The picture that emerges from Thomas’s close readings of these texts is one of a society undergoing momentous political and religious upheavals in which kings, queens, clergy, and heretics all played crucial roles. During the reign of Charles IV (1346-78), the Bohemian Lands became the administrative and cultural center of the Holy Roman Empire and Prague its splendid capital. Comparing and contrasting the situation in Bohemia with the England of Richard II, Anne’s Bohemia charts the growth and decline of the international court culture and the gradual ascendancy of the Hussite reformers in the fifteenth century. Expert but accessibly written, the book offers an engaging overview of medieval Bohemian culture for specialist and nonspecialist alike.ISBN 0-8166-3053-4 Cloth $49.95xxISBN 0-8166-3054-2 Paper $19.95x232 pages 6 black-and-white photos 5 7/8 x 9 AprilMedieval Cultures Series, volume 13Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press
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cover of Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and his Legend of St Wenceslas

Autobiography of Emperor Charles IV and his Legend of St Wenceslas

Balázs Nagy

Central European University Press, 2001

One of the few autobiographies to have survived from the Middle Ages, this life history of one of the most influential rulers of the fourteenth century, Charles IV of Bohemia, covers his life from birth until his election as King of Germany in 1346.

Charles IV describes his childhood, spent mainly in the court of French kings, his juvenile years, his marriage and his first steps into the international political scene during the early part of the fourteenth century.

A unique addition to this volume is the first ever English translation of the Legend of Saint Wenceslas, written by Charles IV of Luxemburg.

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cover of Bohemia's Jews and Their Nineteenth Century: Texts, Contexts, Reassessments

Bohemia's Jews and Their Nineteenth Century

Texts, Contexts, Reassessments

Jindrich Toman

Karolinum Press, 2023

Bohemian Jewish culture and literature during the underexamined 1820s to 1880s.

This book on Jewish culture and literature focuses on the “quiet” decades of the nineteenth century, a scarcely written-about period of time in Bohemian Jewish history. Using a myriad of sources, including travelers’ accounts, poems, essays, short stories, guides, and newspaper articles, the volume explores Jewish expression, Jewish-Czech relations, and the changing attitudes toward Jews between the 1820s and 1880s. It offers close readings of writers like Karel Havlíćek Borovský, Ján Kollár, Siegfried Kapper, and Jan Neruda, as well as lesser-known authors and sources. Combining skillful sustained analysis, judicious argumentation, and elegant writing, the book is a truly enriching reading experience.
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cover of Changing Places: Society, Culture, and Territory in the Saxon-Bohemian Borderlands, 1870-1946

Changing Places

Society, Culture, and Territory in the Saxon-Bohemian Borderlands, 1870-1946

Caitlin E. Murdock

University of Michigan Press, 2010

"Changing Places is an interesting meditation on the varying identities and rights claimed by residents of borderlands, the limits placed on the capacities of nation-states to police their borders and enforce national identities, and the persistence of such contact zones in the past and present. It is an extremely well-written and engaging study, and an absolute pleasure to read."
---Dennis Sweeney, University of Alberta

"Changing Places offers a brilliantly transnational approach to its subject, the kind that historians perennially demand of themselves but almost never accomplish in practice."
---Pieter M. Judson, Swarthmore College

Changing Places is a transnational history of the birth, life, and death of a modern borderland and of frontier peoples' changing relationships to nations, states, and territorial belonging. The cross-border region between Germany and Habsburg Austria---and after 1918 between Germany and Czechoslovakia---became an international showcase for modern state building, nationalist agitation, and local pragmatism after World War I, in the 1930s, and again after 1945.

Caitlin Murdock uses wide-ranging archival and published sources from Germany and the Czech Republic to tell a truly transnational story of how state, regional, and local historical actors created, and eventually destroyed, a cross-border region. Changing Places demonstrates the persistence of national fluidity, ambiguity, and ambivalence in Germany long after unification and even under fascism. It shows how the 1938 Nazi annexation of the Czechoslovak "Sudetenland" became imaginable to local actors and political leaders alike. At the same time, it illustrates that the Czech-German nationalist conflict and Hitler's Anschluss are only a small part of the larger, more complex borderland story that continues to shape local identities and international politics today.

Caitlin E. Murdock is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Long Beach.

Jacket Credit: Cover art courtesy of the author

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cover of Cosmas of Prague

Cosmas of Prague

Lisa Wolverton

Catholic University of America Press, 2014

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cover of Cosmas of Prague: The Chronicle of the Czechs

Cosmas of Prague

The Chronicle of the Czechs

Petra Mutlová

Central European University Press, 2020

The Latin-English bilingual volume presents the text of The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague. Cosmas was born around 1045, educated in Liège, upon his return to Bohemia, he got married as well as became a priest. In 1086 he was appointed prebendary, a senior member of clergy in Prague. He completed the first book of the Chronicle in 1119, starting with the creation of the world and the earliest deeds of the Czechs up to Saint Adalbert. In the second and third books Cosmas presents the preceding century in the history of Bohemia, and succeeds in reporting about events up to 1125, the year when he died.


The English translation was done by Petra Mutlova and Martyn Rady with the cooperation of Libor Švanda. The introduction and the explanatory notes were written by Jan Hasil with the cooperation of Irene van Rensvoude.T

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cover of Demographic Avant-Garde: Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah

Demographic Avant-Garde

Jews in Bohemia between the Enlightenment and the Shoah

Jana Vobecká

Central European University Press, 2013

This book studies the unique demographic behavior of Jews in Bohemia (the historic part of the Czech Republic), starting from a moment in history when industrialization in Central Europe was still far away in the future, and when Jews were still living legally restricted lives in ghettos. Very early on, however, from the 18th century onwards, Jews developed patterns of decreasing mortality and fertility that was not observed among the gentile majority in Bohemia; patterns which established them as a demographic avant-garde population in all of Europe.
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cover of The Chronicle of the Czechs

The Chronicle of the Czechs

Lisa Cosmas of Prague

Catholic University of America Press, 2009

The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague (d. 1125) is a masterwork of medieval historical writing, deeply erudite, consciously researched, and narrated in high rhetorical style.
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