Bohemia in America, 1858-1920 / Joanna Levin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levin, Joanna.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Literary movements--United States--History--19th century.

Literary movements.

Literary movements--United States--History--20th century.

Bohemianism--United States--History--19th century.

Bohemianism.

Bohemianism--United States--History--20th century.

Bohemianism in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (481 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Bohemia in America, 1858–1920 explores the construction and emergence of "Bohemia" in American literature and culture. Simultaneously a literary trope, a cultural nexus, and a socio-economic landscape, la vie bohème traveled to the United States from the Parisian Latin Quarter in the 1850's. At first the province of small artistic coteries, Bohemia soon inspired a popular vogue, embodied in restaurants, clubs, neighborhoods, novels, poems, and dramatic performances across the country. Levin's study follows la vie bohème from its earliest expressions in the U.S. until its explosion in Greenwich Village in the 1910's. Although Bohemia was everywhere in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American culture, it has received relatively little scholarly attention. Bohemia in America, 1858–1920 fills this critical void, discovering and exploring the many textual and geographic spaces in which Bohemia was conjured. Joanna Levin not only provides access to a neglected cultural phenomenon but also to a new and compelling way of charting the development of American literature and culture.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The “Vault at Pfaff ’s”: Whitman, Bohemia, and the Saturday Press

2. Bret Harte, Urban Spectatorship, and the Bohemian West

3. “A Plot to Live Around”: La Vie Bohème in Fiction, City Sketches, and Memoir

4. The Bohemian Grove and the Making of the Bourgeois- Bohemian

5. Regional Bohemias

6. Cosmopolitan Bohemias

7. The Spiritual Geography of Greenwich Village, 1912– 1920

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804772549

0804772541

OCLC:

609855924