Description
At the core of nationalism, the nation has always been defined and celebrated as a fundamentally cultural community. This pioneering cultural history shows how artists and intellectuals since the days of Napoleon have celebrated and taken inspiration from an idealized nationality, and how this in turn has informed and influenced social and political nationalism. The book brings together tell-tale examples from across the entire European continent, from Dublin and Barcelona to Istanbul and Helsinki, and from cultural fields that include literature, painting, music, sports, world fairs and cinema as well as intellectual history. Charismatic Nations offers unique insights into how the unobtrusive soft power of nationally-inspired culture interacts with nationalism as a hard-edged political agenda. It demonstrates how, thanks to its pervasive cultural and 'unpolitical' presence, nationalism can shape-shift between romantic insurgency and nativist populism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Table of Contents
Part I. Memory and Power: 1. The romantic spell; 2. Becoming something, unmaking empires; Part II. Romancing the Nation: 3. Romantic prophets: inspired poets inspiring people; 4. Manuscripts found in the attic; 5. Ancestral voices; 6. Languages, states, races; 7. History related; 8. The image and the presence; 9. In tune: concerts, choirs; Part III. Adapting to Modernity: 10. People in the present; 11. Culture mobilized; 12. The long tail.
