Politics of Love

Gender and Nation in Nineteenth-Century Poland

Inbunden, Engelska, 2024

729 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar. Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

The Politics of Love describes the history of Polish intellectual and cultural life, which covertly flourished at home and abroad despite imperial repression between Poland's two great uprisings in 1830–1831 and 1863. Natalie Cornett focuses her study on a group of educated women known as the "Enthusiasts" (Entuzjastki), who were united by their commitment to live as independent women despite the intense nationalism that put the nation above all—including class and gender. The Enthusiasts, led by Narcyza Żmichowska, emphasized sororal love and homosocial bonding in their program to contest both an oppressive imperial regime and constrictive gender roles. Their affective relationships with each other and their decision to remain unmarried, childless, or divorced violated accepted conventions and the patriotic emphasis on the Polish family. By drawing on a large corpus of their letters, diaries, police files, and published works, Cornett describes the Enthusiast movement from its emergence in the 1840s to the death of Narcyza Żmichowska, in 1876. The Politics of Love describes how the Polish intelligentsia was so monomaniacally focused on the struggle for independence that discussion of other social questions was dismissed as "unpatriotic." Its dismissal of the Enthusiasts as socially deviant, despite the Enthusiasts' support for the national cause, reveals the limitations of nationalism as a binding agent and demonstrates how Polish women appropriated and contributed ideas about women's emancipation, nationalism, and religion in a globalizing era of increasing literacy and transnational exchange.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2024-09-15
Mått152 x 229 x undefined mm
Vikt907 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor234
FörlagCornell University Press
ISBN9781501776649
UtmärkelserWinner of Taylor and Francis Book Prize in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2025 (United States)

Tillhör följande kategorier

The book's clarity makes it accessible to readers whose first language is not English and to those outside academia who are interested in publications on women's presence in culture and history. It introduces them to a largely unknown phenomenon, thereby contributing to a broader view of women's emancipation and providing insight into the fascinating diversity of ways, ideas, and ideals on which women's communities were—and are—built.