Prague palimpsest
Subtitle: writing, memory, and the city
By: Alfred Thomas.
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Chicago; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 204
ISBN-13: 9780226795409
Subjects: Legends -- Czech Republic -- Prague; Libuše (Legendary character); Jewish ghettos -- Czech Republic -- Legends; Golem; Prague (Czech Republic) -- In literature
Genres: Legends
Description: Envisioning Prague as a multilayered text, or palimpsest, that has been constantly revised and rewritten, Alfred Thomas argues that it has become a paradoxical site of inscription and effacement, of memory and forgetting, a utopian link to the pre-war and pre-Holocaust European past and a dystopia of totalitarian amnesia.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Women on the verge of history: Libuše and the foundational legend of Prague; title: Deviant monsters and wayward women: the Prague ghetto and the legend of the golem; title: The castle hill was hidden: Franz Kafka and Czech literature; title: A stranger in Prague: writing and the politics of identity in Apollinaire, Nezval, and Camus; title: Sailing to Bohemia: utopia, memory, and the Holocaust in postwar Austrian and German literature; title: Epilogue: Postmodern Prague?