Description

Since their arrival in Europe at the beginning of the eleventh century, the "Gypsies" have stimulated and fascinated the European imagination, but have also always been perceived as "other" and marginalised. This title is split into four parts and seeks to address the questions raised by the ambivalent encounter of the "Gypsies" with European cultures. The volume begins with three chapters about the genesis, development and scope of Romany Studies. Constructions of Romany culture and identity are at the heart of the second part. Part three focuses on nineteenth and twentieth century literary constructions of Romany identity, be it from a gadzo or Romany perspective. The final part tackles the question of how the role of the Romanies will be remembered, recorded and commemorated. Preface Notes on Contributors Introduction: The Role of the Romanies: Images and Counter-Images - Susan Tebbut and Nicholas Saul Part I: Romany Studies and it Parameters John Sampson and Romani Studies in Liverpool - Anthony Sampson The Gypsy Collections at Liverpool Belated Travelling Theory, Contemporary Wild Praxis: A Romani Perspective on the Practical Politics of the Open End - Ken Lee Part II: Constructions and Concoctions of Romany Culture The Role of Language in Mystifying and Demystifying Gypsy Identity - Yaron Matras The Origins of Anti-Gypsyism: The Outsiders’ View of Romanies in Western Europe in the Fifteenth Century - Donal Kendrick The Concoctors: Creating Fake Romani Culture - Ian Hancock Modernity, Culture and ‘Gypsies’: Is there a Meta-Scientific Method for Understanding the Representations of ‘Gypsies’? And do the Dutch really Exist? - Thomas Acton Part III: Orientalism and Gender Issues in Literature Half a Gypsy: The Case of Ezra Jennings in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868) - Nicholas Saul Understanding the ‘Other’? Communication, History and Narration in Margriet de Moor’s Hertog van Egypte (1996) - Claudia Breger From Survival to Subversion: Strategies of Self-Representation in Selected Works by Mariella Mehr - Carmel Finnan Part IV: Memory, Records and the Romany Experience Disproportional Representation: Romanies and European Art - Susan Tebbutt A Photographer and his ‘Victims’ 1934-1964: Reconstructing a Shared Experience of the Romani Holocaust - Eve Rosenhaft Ritual of Memory in Constructing the Modern Identity of Eastern European Romanies - Slawomir Kapralski ‘Severity has often enraged but never subdued a gypsy’: The History and Making of European Romani Stereotypes - Colin Clark Index