Description

The Romantic myth of Bohemia originated in the early nineteenth century as a way of describing the new conditions faced by artists and writers when the previous system of aristocratic patronage collapsed in the wake of the Age of Revolution Without the patron system the artist was free to move around to seek an audience wherever fortune beckoned This marketing model likening the artists vagabond career to the gypsy life helps to explain part of the bohemian myth but not all of it Most bohemians have scant interest in commercial gain and are not so itinerant after all confining their movements to downmarket urban neighborhoods where the rent is cheap and the morals are loose

This Very Short Introduction traces the myth of Bohemia through its various fictional manifestations from Henry Murgers novel Scenes of Bohemian Life and Giacomo Puccinis opera La Bohme to Aki Kaurismkis film La vie de Bohme and Jonathan Larsons musical Rent It goes on to examine the history of different bohemian communities including those in the Latin Quarter of Paris and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York David Weir also considers the politics of Bohemia and traces the careers of the artists Gustave Courbet and Pablo Picasso and the great chanteuses Yvette Guilbert Frhel and Edith Piaf in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris