Front cover image for Imagining the Balkans

Imagining the Balkans

"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
eBook, English, 2009
Oxford University Press, USA, Cary, 2009
1 online resource (654 pages)
9780199728381, 0199728380
1027486671
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Contents
Introduction Balkanism and 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