Knowra Romantic nationalism Romantic nationalism Romantic nationalism grounds a people’s political identity in shared language, culture, history, and folk traditions. It treats the nation as an organic community whose character develops through its distinctive heritage.
Volksgeist : A notion of a people's distinctive spirit, expressed through its language, customs, and cultural life. It names the collective spirit that Romantic nationalists believed their traditions revealed.
Johann Gottfried Herder : An eighteenth-century German philosopher who argued that language and inherited culture shape a people's character. His account of language and folk culture strongly informed Romantic ideas of national identity.
Greek War of Independence : The Greek revolt against Ottoman rule from 1821 to 1829, which established an independent Greek state. Philhellenic interest in ancient and contemporary Greek culture helped legitimize the independence cause.
Civic nationalism : A form of nationalism that defines national membership through shared political principles and citizenship. It contrasts cultural inheritance with a nation defined primarily by civic membership.
Vernacular literature : Literature written in the everyday language of a particular community rather than a classical or international language. Writing in a shared vernacular helped make a distinct national culture visible.
German Romanticism : A late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century movement in German literature, philosophy, and art emphasizing emotion, imagination, and cultural particularity. Its interest in distinctive cultures helped shape Romantic nationalism's intellectual foundations.
Italian unification : The nineteenth-century political movement that brought most Italian territories into a single kingdom by 1871. Language, literature, and a claimed shared history helped frame unification as national renewal.
Ethnic nationalism : A form of nationalism that defines the nation through common ancestry, descent, or ethnic identity. It can overlap with Romantic nationalism, but emphasizes descent more directly than cultural formation.
Folklore : Traditional stories, songs, beliefs, and practices transmitted within a community. Collecting folk traditions supplied evidence of a people's distinctive cultural inheritance.
Grimm's Fairy Tales : A collection of German folktales assembled and published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, beginning in 1812. The Grimms' collection exemplified the search for a shared national heritage in oral tradition.
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