The Politics of ""National Character"" A study in interwar East European thought; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 National specificity and the challenge of ahistoricity in the Romanian intellectual tradition; 3 Historicism and populism: dilemmas of the Hungarian character-discourse; 4 Symbolic geographies and normative pasts: the search for the true Bulgarian self; 5 Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary
The book is a comparative analysis of the ideological constructions of national specificity in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Studying the growing infatuation with ""national essence"" it seeks to understand the radicalization of nationalism in East Central Europe in connection with the shift of the notions of historicity and temporality. Trencsenyi provides a contextual analysis of the symbolic resources and available ideological references that were used for creating these discourses in the respective countries. While focusing on the interwar period when these conceptions became central to
