Romancing the Nation: the Reconciliation of the Individual and the Collective in Romantic Nationalism

Romancing the Nation: The Reconciliation of the Individual and the Collective in Romantic Nationalism by Elizabeth Della Zazzera B.A. Honours, University of Ottawa, 2007 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of History Elizabeth Della Zazzera, 2009 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee Romancing the Nation: The Reconciliation of the Individual and the Collective in Romantic Nationalism by Elizabeth Della Zazzera B.A. Honours, University of Ottawa, 2007 Supervisory Committee Dr. Robert Alexander, (Department of History) Supervisor Dr. Gregory Blue, (Department of History) Departmental Member Dr. Perry Biddiscombe, (Department of History) Departmental Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Robert Alexander, (Department of History) Supervisor Dr. Gregory Blue, (Department of History) Departmental Member Dr. Perry Biddiscombe, (Department of History) Departmental Member The connection between Romanticism and nationalism, like most aspects of Romanticism, is complex and manifests in diverse ways. This project seeks to examine how Romanticism in Scotland, France and Germany could emphasize individualism and nationalism simultaneously, and seeks to elucidate the ways both these concepts were understood by Romantic scholars. It argues that although the connection between Romanticism and nationalism was not necessary, Romantic sensibilities were often compatible with nationalist theory. Romanticism can thus be said to have laid the theoretical groundwork for the possibility of nationalism, by emphasizing history, imagination and the importance of the collective. However, in all those things the Romantics also focused on the importance of individuals: lauding historical heroes, the imaginative genius of the scholar, and the fulfilment of the individual through belonging to a community. It further argues that the Romantics were influenced by the Enlightenment scholars’ emphasis on the individual, but sought to move away from individualism as a universal principle toward an understanding of individualism that balanced uniqueness and belonging to a particular community. Moreover, it contends that Romantic nationalism can be distinguished from later nineteenth century integral nationalism, by its relative emphasis on the individual, diversity and cosmopolitanism, but that it contained within it elements of, and therefore perhaps the seeds for, more virulent nationalism. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee............................................................................................................ii Abstract...................................................................................................................................iii Table of Contents....................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments....................................................................................................................v Dedication................................................................................................................................vi Chapter 1 – Introduction: The Historiography of Romantic Nationalism..............................1 Chapter 2 – The Past is This Self-Same Country: Romantic Concepts of the National, the Individual and the Historical..................................................................................................50 Chapter 3 – The Wholeness of the Individual and the Individuation of the Whole: The Idea of the Particular and the Relationship between the Whole and the Part in Romantic Thought ................................................................................................................................................87 Chapter 4 – Nationalism in the Middle: The Nation as the Ideal Unifier of the Historical Particular and the Universal.................................................................................................129 Conclusion............................................................................................................................168 Bibliography.........................................................................................................................174 v Acknowledgments I would like to offer my sincerest thanks to everyone who helped make completing this thesis possible. To my friends and family for their constant support and their willingness to act as sounding boards for my more confused ideas. To Heather Waterlander for cheerfully helping me to negotiate the necessary bureaucracy and paperwork. To Dr. Elizabeth Vibert for all of her guidance and support. To SSHRC and the University of Victoria for generously funding my Master’s. To Dr. Perry Biddiscombe for helping me to better grasp the minutia of nationalism scholarship. To Dr. Gregory Blue for insisting that I question my assumptions and qualify my generalizations. His erudite criticism, always delivered with kindness and enthusiasm for the subject matter, saved this thesis from a number of more egregious errors. Finally, to Dr. Robert Alexander, whom I cannot thank enough for his constant support, extremely helpful advice and suggestions, painstaking editorial work, and willingness to put up with my more irritating tendencies toward the verbose and repetitive. Without him, this thesis would certainly have been a poorer piece of scholarship. While none of these can be blamed when my work errs or falls short, they certainly deserve credit wherever and whenever it succeeds. Thank you all so much. It has certainly been educational. vi Dedication For my family. Chapter 1 – Introduction: The Historiography of Romantic Nationalism Although the contemporary world is often considered to be post-nationalist or internationalist, we in fact inhabit a world wherein the concept of nation has very much become naturalized. Contemporary conception of the world is closely tied to the idea of the nation as the fundamental unit of organization and analysis. Defined in this limited way the contemporary world is rife with ‘nationalists’ – people, who, in essence, believe in the existence and functional necessity of nations and have never questioned whether there might be another way to organize the world. As Ernest Gellner notes, it is relatively easy to conceive of a time without states, or a person without a state, but very difficult to imagine a person without a nation. He argues that “having a nation is not an inherent attribute of humanity, but it has now come to appear as such.”1 Nationalism is often taken as an emotive term, relating closely to patriotism and the desire to exalt one’s personal nation. While that is certainly its most common usage, at its very base nationalism as a political ideology is about belief in the existence and autonomy of nations. At the very least being a nationalist in the emotive sense requires that one uphold such an ideology. In its earliest stages, nationalism is often linked with Romanticism, an artistic and political movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.2 However, the connection between the two has not often been the topic of scholarly study, and it has been particularly infrequent in more recent scholarship. This is true both in works on nationalism and in ones on Romanticism. Nationalism scholarship is focused more on power dynamics than ideology and culture, and works on Romanticism are often concerned primarily with literature. 1 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 2nd Edition, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 6. [first edition 1983]. 2 There are exceptions to the perception of nations and nationalism as emerging in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. For example, Liah Greenfeld places the emergence of nationalism in sixteenth-century England. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992), 6-7. 2 Literary scholars are in fact more commonly the authors of works on Romanticism than are historians. With respect to nationalism, much of the scholarship has a distinct political science perspective, which seeks to unveil the truth behind nationalism, rather than describe its development and particular manifestations. By examining scholarly work on both nationalism and on Romanticism, one can extrapolate the ways in which the two phenomena have been discussed congruently, and determine an approach for future study that makes use of the lessons learned from an examination of the scholarship. Such is the purpose of this introduction. Nationalism It turns first to the historiography of nationalism, with a particular emphasis on how and when studies of nationalism have been able to integrate discussions of the cultural aspects of nationalism, as opposed to accounts that focus on nationalism as being fundamentally and primarily political. Scholarly interest in nationalism emerged on the heels of nationalism’s increasing importance in world politics. Thus, the study of the phenomenon developed in tandem with growing lay awareness of nations and nationalism in everyday life. Nationalism has played such an important role in modern history that Hans Kohn has taken to referring to the modern period as the ‘Age of Nationalism.’3 The study of nationalism has certainly changed over time; the earliest accounts

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