Imagining the Balkans

by Maria Todorova

Overview

"If the Balkans hadn't existed, they would have been invented" was the verdict of Count Hermann Keyserling in his famous 1928 publication, Europe. Over ten years ago, Maria Todorova traced the relationship between the reality and the invention. Based on a rich selection of travelogues, diplomatic accounts, academic surveys, journalism, and belles-lettres in many languages, Imagining the Balkans explored the ontology of the Balkans from the sixteenth century to the present day, uncovering the ways in which an insidious intellectual tradition was constructed, became mythologized, and is still being transmitted as discourse.

Maria Todorova, who was raised in the Balkans, is in a unique position to bring both scholarship and sympathy to her subject, and in a new afterword she reflects on recent developments in the study of the Balkans and political developments on the ground since the publication of Imagining the Balkans. The afterword explores the controversy over Todorova's coining of the term Balkanism. With this work, Todorova offers a timely, updated, accessible study of how an innocent geographic appellation was transformed into one of the most powerful and widespread pejorative designations in modern history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195387865
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2009
Edition description:	Updated Edition
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	327,655
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	1610L (what's this?)

About the Author

Maria Todorova is Gutgsell Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Table of Contents

Introduction Balkanism and the Orientalism: Are They Different Categories?
1. The Balkans: Nomen
2. "Balkans" as Self-designation
3. The Discovery of the Balkans
4. Patterns of Perception until 1900
5. From Discovery to Invention, from Invention to Classification
6. Between Classification and Politics: The Balkans and the Myth of Central Europe
7. The Balkans: Realia -Qu'est-ce qu'il y a de hors-texte?
Conclusion
Afterword to the Updated Edition
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Outstanding."—Misha Glenny, London Review of Books

"Passionate, learned, entertaining, polemical, ambitious, courageous."—Slavic Review

"Contains many brilliant insights and always displays the author's enormous erudition."—CHOICE

"Todorova's book is a passionate, provocative, and necessary attempt to retrace the construction of a pejorative image of the Balkans."—Nicholas J. Miller, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Full of challenging ideas, forcefully presented opinions, references for further reading, and enlightening observations."—Gale Stokes, H-Net

"By far the best work of historiography on the region."—Tomislav Z. Longinovic, Lingua Franca

From the Publisher