Chopin cuts a curious figure in contemporary culture. A Pole working among Frenchmen, he exudes exoticism even as he partakes of European tradition. A male composer who wrote in feminine genres like the nocturne for domestic settings such as the salon, he confuses our sense of the boundaries of gender. Central to our repertory, he nevertheless remains a marginalized figure. The complex and unsettling status of Chopin in our culture - what it means and how it came about - is Jeffrey Kallberg's subject in this book. Combining social history, literary theory, musicology and feminist thought, Chopin at the Boundaries situates Chopin's music historically within his native Polish and adopted French cultures and to demonstrate the effects of these historical constructions on present experience.