Vienna, the pageantry of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra
on the barge, the splendor of Elizabeth I’s reign,
the glory of King Arthur’s legend, and the founda-
tional humanity of Ovid’s mythological figures are
juxtaposed with the garbage of modern picnickers
floating down the Thames River, with throngs of
dejected workers filing down the streets of London
and with an overall barrenness in the modern land-
scape, in order to highlight the national and personal
crises of identity that for Eliot marked the modern
era. His work, then, not only serves as a sort of
compendium of European culture but also as a call
to mindfulness in the reader; through the authority
of the objects, events, and people incorporated in his
allusions, the reader is free to indulge in nostalgia
for the great moments of the past as well as to make
associations with them, leading to highly personal
questions of identity and nationalism. In the mod-
ern world, then, memory is as important as ever as
a means of establishing authority, evoking nostalgia,
and helping to forge personal and national identity.
See also Bambara, Toni Cade: saLt eaters,
the; Cather, Willa: My Ántonia; Dickens,
Charles: david copperF ieLd; Ellison, Ralph:
invisibLe Man; García Márquez, Gabriel:
one hundred years oF soLitude; Joyce, James:
portrait oF the artist as a younG Man, a;
Momaday, N. Scott: way to rainy Mountain,
the; O’Neill, Eugene: LonG day’s Journey into
niGht; Rhys, Jean: wide sarGasso sea; Rushdie,
Salman: MidniGht’s chiLdren; Welty, Eudora:
optiMist’s dauGhter, the; Wiesel, Elie: niGht;
Wilder, Thornton: our town; Williams, Ten-
nessee: GLass MenaGerie, the; Woolf, Virginia:
to the LiGhthouse.
FURTHER READING
Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of
Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2008.
Ender, Evelyne. Architexts of Memory: Literature, Sci-
ence, and Autobiography. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2005.
McConky, James, ed. The Anatomy of Memory: An
Anthology. Oxford University Press, 1996.
Middleton, Peter, and Tim Woods. Literature of Mem-
ory: History, Time and Space in Post-War Writing.
Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press,
2001.
Nalbantian, Suzanne. Memory in Literature: From Rous-
seau to Neuroscience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2004.
Melissa Ridley-Elmesnationalism
Many scholars have struggled to define the term
nationalism in a way that encompasses and makes
sense of all the different situations in which it is
employed. In general, it is an ideology in which
nationality is a category by which humans define
themselves. Nationalism necessarily categorizes peo-
ple—one either is or is not a member of “my nation.”
It thrives through the use of such elements as
national folklore, symbols, heroes, sports, music, reli-
gion, and the idea that there is a national identity or
character. Anthony D. Smith, a theorist of national-
ism, has suggested that there are criteria that must
be in place for nationalism to exist. His list includes
a physical homeland, either current or ancient; a
high degree of autonomy among the citizens, hos-
tile surroundings, memories of glory or defeat in
battle, special customs, historical records, common
languages and scripts, and what he calls sacred
centers or places (17). This sort of nationalism is
highly dependent on the concept of the nation-state
and probably represents the most common use of
the term. It has been used to justify imperialism, to
unite countries in times of war, and to describe the
struggles for nationhood in colonized countries such
as Ireland and India.
However, nationalism has also been used to
describe movements within sovereign nations, such
as the black nationalist movement in the United
States in the 1960s and 1970s and the Hindu
nationalism currently seen in India. American
Indian activists have also called for American Indian
nationalism, especially given that many of their
tribes are sovereign nations themselves.
One of the reasons nationalism is so difficult to
define is that any discussion involving the subject
necessarily spills over into cognate subjects such
as race and racism, fascism and other ideologies,
language development, international law, genocide,
and immigration. In addition, nationalism can takenationalism 71