'Imposed authenticity': Approaching eastern European national characterologies in the inter-war period

Balázs Trencsényi*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalReview Articlepeer-review

    Abstract (may include machine translation)

    The article analyses the concepts of national specificity and the national past in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary; focusing on debates in the inter-war period. It seeks to discern the common features, as well as the considerable divergence, between the local versions of this characterological discourse, while also placing them into a wider European cultural context. It concentrates on the use of history and the category of historicity, which became an important question in the inter-war period as nineteenth-century evolutionary narratives encountered challenges. To explain the differences between the characterologies, it goes beyond a monocausal scheme. It provides a contextual analysis of the symbolic resources and available ideological references that were used for creating these discourses in the respective countries. In the light of the three case studies, it also seeks to contribute to discussions of the problem of modernism and anti-modernism in twentieth-century political thought.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)20-47
    Number of pages28
    JournalCentral Europe
    Volume8
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 1 May 2010

    Keywords

    • BULGARIA
    • EASTERN EUROPE 1918-1939
    • HUNGARY
    • NATIONAL CHARACTER
    • NATIONALISM
    • ROMANIA
    • ROMANTICISM

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