Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815-1914

by Gay, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780393048933
• ISBN10: 0393048934
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• Publisher: W W NORTON

Summary

Using Arthur Schnitzler, the sexually emboldened Viennese play-wright as his master of ceremonies, Peter Gay, in this daring, revisionist work of cultural history, reexamines the hundred-year period that began with the defeat of Napoleon and concluded with the conflagration of 1914 that brought the world to war. Provocatively renaming this period "Schnitzler's Century," Gay demands that we shed many of the misconceptions that have previously hindered our understanding of nineteenth-century life. The culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, Schnitzler's Century is a defining work by one of America's greatest historians. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Peter Gay is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and, since 1997, director of the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Preface	xix
Overture	xxvii
Part I FUNDAMENTALS
Bourgeoisie(s)	3	(32)
Home, Bittersweet Home	35	(28)
Part II DRIVES AND DEFENSES
Eros: Rapture and Symptom	63	(34)
Alibis for Aggression	97	(32)
Grounds for Anxiety	129	(28)
Part III THE VICTORIAN MIND
Obituaries and Revivals	157	(34)
The Problematic Gospel of Work	191	(30)
Matters of Taste	221	(32)
A Room of One's Own	253	(28)
Coda	281	(10)
Notes	291	(24)
Bibliography	315	(2)
Acknowledgments	317	(4)
Index	321