Introduction: Austria as a Challenge to Europe -- 1. Letters to the Ruling Class: The Public Spaces of Enlightenment -- 2. Extending Europe's Enlightenment: Why Grillparzer Resists Weimar -- 3. Revolution from the Prompter's Box: Rewriting Public Dreams of Political Morality -- 4. Eclipses, Floods, and Biedermeier Catastrophes: Public Spaces in extremis -- 5. Hofmannsthal's European Revolution: Recapturing a Space for Common Culture -- 6. Schnitzer and the Space of Public Discourse: The Politics of Decadence in fin de siecle Vienna -- 7. Kasperl and the Wiener Gruppe: artmann, Bayer and Handke -- 8. A New Balkan Challenge: The Reemergence of Austria's Europe -- Afterword: Austria as Europe?: The Art and Science of the Post-National Culture.
Summary:
"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 18th century 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"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.