many different forms, with the central factor upon
which a movement is based being, for instance,
religious, political, ethnic, or cultural. This further
confuses the way the term is used and defined. In
the latter half of the 18th century, for instance, the
people of France had successfully united under such
symbols as the tricolor flag, the sentimental power
of the anthem “The Marseillaise,” and the ideals of
liberté, egalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity).
This type of patriotism allowed the nation to feel
as one in a way that had not been possible before
the French Revolution. For the French, at least in
overthrowing the monarchy, the loyalty inspired by
nationalism helped to create a “free” society, the goal
of the Revolution. Throughout the 19th century,
however, nationalism would be used to justify impe-
rialism, jingoism, and xenophobia in countries such
as Great Britain, the United States, Italy, and France
itself. Some scholars also attribute the 20th-century
rise of fascism to nationalism taken to its extreme.
In the late 20th century, the term came to be used
most often to describe indigenous movements seek-
ing autonomy, equality, and recognition.
Most broadly, the term has been used to describe
the way the people of a country define themselves.
The idea that a “nation” is an entity, an identifiable
thing moving forward through time, is a relatively
new one, having only been around since the 18th
century or so. Although some historians believe that
the “concept” of nationalism existed even in tribal
communities and has probably been around since
the beginning of humanity, modern theorists place
its origins at the beginning of the 18th century.
Before that period, they say, no one had more than
local interests. Nationalism, for these theorists, was
made possible by the Industrial Revolution, the
widespread use of the printing press, and the rise of
capitalism. All of these things relied on a large, liter-
ate, and culturally homogeneous population for their
success. These theories, expounded by people such as
Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, argue that
nationalism is a “socially constructed” phenomenon.
In other words, they believe that it is an artificial
designation, imposed on the denizens of a country
for social or political purposes. This belief does not
reduce the power of the concept but merely suggests
that it is not a real, organic phenomenon arising
from the true feelings and motives of the country’s
people.
As viable political entities, nations must concern
themselves with defining what it means to be a
nation. This is a challenge even for the most homog-
enous linguistically and historically bound people,
but it is a concern that is crucial to their existence.
Literature, as a vehicle, helps to express national-
ist ideas particularly well. If nations or nationalist
movements are indeed identifiable entities moving
forward in time, they need to speak, and literature
gives them a voice to do just that. Postrevolution-
ary America, for instance, needed to come to terms
with its independence, as well as to establish and put
forward a national character. Washington Irving’s
The sketchbook oF GeoFFrey crayon (1819)
depicts characters struggling with these ideas. In one
of Irving’s most famous stories, “Rip Van Winkle,”
the main character goes to sleep for 20 years and
wakes up in a world unfamiliar to him. What was
once a pleasant, sleepy community now seems, to
Rip, like a busy, contentious place, rife with disagree-
ment. The American Revolution has taken place
while he slept, but instead of focusing on political
matters, Irving uses Rip to show the reader how
daily life has changed in those lost years—daily life
being more important than politics in the life of an
ordinary man. This reading helped early Americans
take a step toward defining the national character of
the fledgling country; it also helped readers under-
stand the pain of independence from the mother
country.
Similarly, in William Butler Yeats’s poetry,
metaphors for national character and the struggle
toward independence abound. In poems such as
“The Stolen Child,” “Chuchulain’s Fight with the
Sea,” “Who Goes with Fergus?,” and the long
poem “The Wanderings of Oisin,” Yeats strives to
invoke old Ireland, mystical and Celtic, in order to
create for the modern country a precolonial image
to which it might aspire. Ireland was the oldest of
England’s colonies, held for nearly 800 years, and
an obstacle for Irish nationalists was finding a way
to clearly distinguish what was Irish from what was
English. Yeats was such a nationalist poet, however,
that he did not merely speak in metaphors. Much of
his commentary on nationalism is not figurative at72 nationalism