The first volume in a series to be brought out by the middle of 2007 in altogether four books. The series is a daring undertaking of CEU Press, presenting the most important texts that triggered and shaped the processes of nation-building in the many countries of Central and Southeast Europe. The project brought together scholars from Albania, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, the Republic of Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey. The editors have created a new interpretative synthesis that challenges the self-centered and "isolationist" historical narratives and educational canons prevalent in the region, in the spirit of of "coming to terms with the past." The main aim of the venture is to confront 'mainstream' and seemingly successful national discourses with each other, thus creating a space for analyzing those narratives of identity which became institutionalized as "national canons." The series will broaden the field of possible comparisons of the respective national cultures. Each text is accompanied by a presentation of the author, and by an analysis of the context in which the respective text was born.

Fifty-one texts illustrate the evolution of modernism in Eastern Europe. Essays, articles, poems, or excerpts from longer works offer new opportunities of possible comparisons of the respective national cultures. The volume focuses on the literary and scientific attempts at squaring the circle of individual and collective identities. Often outspokenly critical of the romantic episteme, these texts reflect a more sophisticated and critical stance than in the preceding periods. At the same time, rather than representing a complete rupture, they often continue and confirm the romantic identity narratives, albeit with "other means". The volume also presents the ways national minorities sought to legitimize their existence with reference to their cultural and institutional peculiarity.