Rethinking Period Boundaries : : New Approaches to Continuity and Discontinuity in Modern European History and Culture / / ed. by Lucian George, Jade McGlynn.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2022 Part 1
• MitwirkendeR: Benedetti, Alessia,; Burek, Jan A.,; Clift, Aaron,; George, Lucian,; Lokhmatov, Aleksei,; Robertson, Ritchie,; Secklehner, Julia,; Talabér, Andrea,
• HerausgeberIn: George, Lucian ,; McGlynn, Jade,
• Place / Publishing House: München ;, Wien : : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (V, 258 p.)

Periodization is an ever-present feature of the grammar of history-writing. As with all grammatical rules, the order it imposes can structure but also stifle historical interpretations. Though few historians consider their period boundaries as anything more than useful guidelines, heuristic artifice all too easily congeals into immovable structure, blinkering the historical gaze. In this cross-disciplinary volume, an international group of historians and cultural scholars considers different ways in which accepted period boundaries in modern European history and cultural studies can be challenged and rethought. Alongside a theoretical introduction and epilogue, the volume contains seven case studies exploring hitherto under-researched continuities and discontinuities in the social, cultural, intellectual, literary, labour and art history of 19th- and 20th-century Europe, with a particular focus on the continent’s East. Topics covered include French anti-communism, peasant memories of serfdom, cosmopolitan art in a nationalist age, the communist takeover of Poland, Russian literary history, and national day traditions in East-Central Europe. To problematize period boundaries, the chapters in this volume adopt the perspective of social groups that standard periodization schemes have ignored; shine a light on "awkward" actors who have appeared out of step with canonical understandings of their period; consider how historical actors themselves divide up history and how this informs historical practice; and explore the difficulties that the non-synchronicity of different historical processes can pose for periodization.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Introduction Periodization Challenges and Challenging -- Periodization: Interdisciplinary Reflections -- Chapter 1 History Seems Different from the Shop Floor. A -- Micro-Historical Challenge to Established Caesurae in the History of -- 20th-Century Poland: Transwar Continuities in -- Żyrardów -- Chapter 2 Rumours of Re-Enserfment, Anti-Feudal Identities -- and “Folk Periodization”: The Memory of Serfdom in Early -- 20th-Century Galicia -- Chapter 3 L’homme au couteau entre les dents and Les -- classes dangereuses: A “Transwar” Perspective on Continuities in French -- Anticommunist Discourse -- Chapter 4 Crossing Borders and Period Boundaries in Central -- European Art: The Work of Anna Lesznai (ca. 1910–1930) -- Chapter 5 “Periodizations” in Intellectual History: On the -- Plurality of Continuities in the Public Debates of Post-War Poland -- Chapter 6 A “Product of a Certain Social Milieu” and a -- “Genius”: Analogies and Continuities between Pre- and Post-Revolutionary -- Debates on Dante in Russia -- Chapter 7 Continuing Traditions: National Days in -- Czechoslovakia and Hungary during the 20th Century -- Epilogue Some Problems in Historical and Literary -- Periodization -- List of Contributors -- Index