Modernity: Urban Culture and the Balkans

Abstract

Europe’s sense of modernity developed during the eighteenth century when the Enlightenment began to shape the new idea of Europe. At the beginning of the century conditions were not so different for the vast majority of Europeans, in that the feudal order had left a legacy in which the largest single group were peasants whose lives were hardly open to economic and social transformation. While the possible life expectations for a peasant living in a small village in rural France at the beginning of the eighteenth century may not have differed very much from their Balkan counterparts, a distinct gap between them was opening up by the end of that century. The West was subject to the influences introduced by the philosophical and intellectual trends of the Enlightenment, by advances in agricultural technology, changes in land tenure and changes to the political order which hardly raised an echo in the far south-east. At the same time, the West witnessed the beginnings of a demographic revolution in the emergence of large urban areas. Urbanization was one of the most significant transformations of European society. The effect was felt and seen not only in social relations and economic organization, but also in the possibilities for imagining new ways of living.KeywordsEighteenth CenturyLiterary HistoryPrivate TutorCity LifeUrban CultureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.