Conversational Modernism: Talking Czech Men into Being Gentlemen by Way of The Gentleman , 1924–30.

The article provides a profile of the Czech life-style magazineGentleman(The Gentleman), published in Prague from 1924 to 1930. The gendered nature of the magazine is stressed and discursive mechanisms effective in the formation of modern masculinity are discussed. Issues of ‘democratic aristocratis...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Central Europe Vol. 13; no. 1/2; pp. 19 - 36
Autor principal: Toman, Jindřich
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Nov2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:The article provides a profile of the Czech life-style magazineGentleman(The Gentleman), published in Prague from 1924 to 1930. The gendered nature of the magazine is stressed and discursive mechanisms effective in the formation of modern masculinity are discussed. Issues of ‘democratic aristocratism’, male fashion, gender identity, but also traces of a local inflection (T. G. Masaryk as a modern man) are among the select points of attention. While some aspects of the magazine may appear instructional, the analysis draws attention to the fact thatThe Gentlemanactually moves between the instructional and the represented, thus leaving ample space for the reader to negotiate his position on the map of masculine modernity. Other instances of media (e.g., the nineteenth-centuryKonversationslexikon) and authors (Karel Čapek, Milena Jesenská) are adduced to broaden the context and to explicate the meaning of ‘conversational modernity’, that is, a negotiated representation of modernity.