The mythologized wandering Gypsy figure appealed to the bohemian artists of the nineteenth century as a model from which to appropriate a new artistic identity, a phenomenon that was repeated again during the twentieth century but with the sensationalized African-American jazz dancer figure. With an emphasis on literary and historical representations of the marginalized exotic other in terms of the spectacle, nomadism, exoticism and witchcraft, this dissertation offers a cultural reading of the origins of Bohemian Paris as related to self-imposed marginality. This study analyzes the literary myth of the female Gypsy and jazz dancer figures in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, George Sand's Consuelo, Prosper Merimee's Carmen, Louis-Charles Caigniez's melodrama, La petite Bohemienne, Paul Morand's Magie noire and Josephine Baker's films, asking the questions: How were the myths of la Bohemienne and la danseuse de jazz appropriated as models of marginality for the self-exiled bohemian artist? How should we define the idealization of freedom for the Romantics and later the Avant-garde as exemplified by the myth of the marginalized other? How close to the original marginalized culture was this mythologized ideal? Comparative analyses of the bohemian artist figure in Theophile Gautier's Les Jeunes-France and Henry Murger's Scenes de la vie de Boheme further elucidate the bohemian artists' methods of appropriating this marginalized lifestyle. By examining the relationship between the myth of the Gypsy and the bohemian artist figure through close investigation of stereotypes, representations and applications in literary and historical texts, this study aims to shed new light on the ways in which countercultural identities and communities are formed and regenerated.