Parallel Polis
Cities in Central Europe as Imagined Communities, 1450–1800
By (author) Jaroslav Miller
(Hardback) (Published)
(May 2026)
ISBN: 9782503614397
7 x 10 inches
Price: $87.00
In stock
An interdisciplinary book uniquely combining methods and concepts of history, sociology and literary science. The monograph explores the normative idea of a premodern city as it should be, namely as the ideal(ized) community, politically autonomous entity based upon republican values with its own mythology and also as a strictly symmetrical place being the distinctive feature of the rational human civilisation. Though expressed in numerous urban rituals, symbolical acts, public festivities and urban architecture, the normative concept of the city was above all embedded in written and printed sources. The book‘s findings are based upon a spectrum of narrative sources involving urban chronicles, political treatises, panegyrics, family memoirs, descriptions of cities, instructions summarizing principles of good governance, and also the literary genre of utopia. All of them referred to the normative image of a premodern urban community by highlighting the idealized and therefore largely imagined principles of urban republicanism. By covering the period 1450–1800, the monograph explores also the gradual collapse of idealized premodern communities and the rise of modern urban societies. Geographically, research has focused upon cities and towns in peripheries that have been traditionally ignored by the mainstream urban history. The largely “unknown urban Europe“ comprises the Bohemian Lands, Polish-Lithuania and Hungary with significant overlaps to German Lands and Austria.
Acknowledgements
Gazetteer
Chapter One. Introduction. A Premodern City as Imagined Community
Chapter Two. Utopian Cities or Urban Utopias?
Chapter Three. Idealizing a City and the Language of Community I
Chapter Four. Idealizing a City and the Language of Community II
Chapter Five. A Sociological View. From Burgher Communities to Urban Societies?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
- By (author) Jaroslav Miller
Other Titles in this Series
Gouverner la ville au bas Moyen Age
Les elites dirigeantes de la ville de Namur au XVe siecle
Volume 16
La Justice dans une ville du Nord du Royaume de France au Moyen Age
Etude sur la pratique judiciaire a Saint-Quentin (fin XIe-debut XVe siecle)
Volume 24
Civilites et incivilites urbaines
Urbanite, rituels et ceremonies dans la ville du XVIIe siecle
Volume 62
Le chatiment des villes dans les espaces mediterraneens (Antiquite, Moyen Age, Epoque moderne)
Volume 26
De Bono Communi
The Discourse and Practice of the Common Good in the European City (13th-16th c.) / Discours et pratique du Bien Commun dans les villes d'Europe (XIIIe au XVIe siecle)
Volume 22
Le pouvoir en ville
Gestion urbaine et pratiques politiques a Geneve (fin XIIIe - debut XVIe siecles)
Volume 25
Rise of Cities Revisited
Reflections on Adriaan Verhulst's Vision of Urban Genesis and Developments in the Medieval Low Countries
Volume 61
Technologies of Learning
Apprenticeship in Antwerp from the 15th Century to the End of the Ancien Regime
Volume 11
Woven into the Urban Fabric
Cloth Manufacture and Economic Development in the Flemish West-Quarter (1300-1600)
Volume 54
Emotions in the Heart of the City (14th-16th century) / Les emotions au coeur de la ville (XIVe-XVIe siecle)
Les emotions au coeur de la ville (XIVe-XVIe siecle)
Volume 5
Urban Elites and Aristocratic Behaviour in the Spanish Kingdoms at the End of the Middle Ages
Volume 27
Des amities ciblees
Concours de tir et diplomatie urbaine dans le Saint-Empire, XVe-XVIe siecle
Volume 51
The Power of Space in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
The cities of Italy, Northern France and the Low Countries
Volume 30
The city, the duke and their banker
The Rapondi family and the formation of the Burgundian state (1384-1430)
Volume 7
Usuriers publics et banquiers du Prince
Le role economique des financiers piemontais dans les villes du duche de Brabant (XIIIe-XIVe siecle)
Volume 28
Sixteenth-century Antwerp and its Rural Surroundings
Social and Economic Changes in the Hinterland of a Commercial Metropolis (ca. 1450 - ca. 1570)
Volume 14
Subaltern City?
Alternative and Peripheral Urban Spaces in the Pre-modern Period (13th-18th Centuries)
Volume 46
Epitomes of Evil
Representations of Executioners in Northern France and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages
Volume 8
La police de Bruxelles entre reformes et revolutions (1748-1814)
Police urbaine et modernite
Volume 29