Title: The city on the Moldau as a liminal space : Prague in Anthony Trollope's Nina Balatka
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2022, vol. 48, iss. 1, pp. 137-148
Extent
137-148
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2022-1-7
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.76861
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The article discusses Anthony Trollope's representation of the city of Prague in his 1867 novel Nina Balatka, which first appeared anonymously in the Blackwood's Magazine. The novel tells the story of the eponymous protagonist, a Christian woman, who falls in love with a Jewish man. Trollope's choice of Prague as the backdrop for the story of two lovers separated by the great gulf between Christians and Jews seems particularly fitting, because the spatial division of the city by the river Moldau which separates the Christian and the Jewish parts of town reinforces the sense that the two protagonists come from different worlds. Trollope's characters exist in the realistically represented city; yet, iconic Prague locations, described in picturesque detail, are imbued with symbolic significance which underscores the liminal position of the protagonist, who is torn between her Christian faith, and her love of a Jewish man.
References
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[2] Baumgarten, Murray (1996) Seeing double: Jews in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and George Eliot. In: Cheyette, Bryan (ed.) Between 'Race' and Culture: Representations of 'the Jew' in English and American Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 44–61.
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[4] Cohen, Gary B. (1977) Jews in German society: Prague, 1860–1914. Central European History 10 (2), 28–54.
[5] Cohen, Joan Mandel (1976) Form and Realism in Six Novels of Anthony Trollope. The Hague: Mouton.
[6] Cohen, Monica F. (2014) The paradox of literary commercialism in Trollope's Nina Balatka. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 47 (3), 383–402.
[7] Glendinning, Victoria (1993) Anthony Trollope. New York: Knopf.
[8] Hall, John N. (1991) Trollope: A Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
[9] Hondrila, Iulius (2008) Prague in Victorian fiction: an imagological approach. In: Bemong, Nele, Truwant, Mirjam, Vermeulen, Pieter (eds.) Re-thinking Europe: Literature and (Trans)national Identity. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 237–252.
[10] Moody, Ellen (1999) Trollope on the Net. London: The Hambledon Press.
[11] Murray, John (1858) Handbook for Travellers in Southern Germany: Being a Guide to Wuertemberg, Bavaria, Austria, Tyrol, Salzburg, Styria et.c., the Austrian and Bavarian Alps, and the Danube from Ulm to the Black Sea. 8th ed. London: Murray, 1858. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x001496660;view=1up;seq=7 [Accessed October 20, 2020]
[12] Nicoletti, L.J. (2004) Downward mobility: Victorian women, suicide, and London's 'Bridge of Sighs' Literary London Journal 2(1). http://www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/march2004/nicoletti.html [Accessed October 20, 2020]
[13] Pope Hennessy, James (1972) Anthony Trollope. Boston: Little Brown.
[14] Sennett, Richard (1977) The Fall of Public Man. New York: Knopf.
[15] Tracy, Robert (1991) Introduction to Nina Balatka / Linda Tressel by Anthony Trollope. Oxford: Oxford University Press. vii–xxv.
[16] Trollope, Anthony (1883) An Autobiography. iPad edition.
[17] Trollope, Anthony (2008) Nina Balatka. Sioux Falls, SD: NuVision Publications.
[18] Turner, Victor W. (2008) The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.
[19] Williamson, Michael (2018/19) Tracing Trollope in Prague. Trollopiana 112, 23–35.