What is it about?

To trace the dynamics of cultural connections, an encyclopedic approach is needed; but this requires more than a traditional listing of individual entries in alphabetical order. Instead, ERNiE has been organized as a matrix, on the twin parameters of transnational and intermedial interconnections. The main portion of ERNiE – the section entitled PATTERNS – is organized like the location grid on a city map or a chessboard (illustration 1). In a matrix-style organization, some 30 Cultural Currents are mapped against some 50 Cultural Communities, yielding an entry structure of ca. 1200 relevant headwords, e.g. ‘Basque language activism’, ‘Finnish classical music’, ‘Greek archeology’ or ‘Icelandic folklore studies’

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Why is it important?

ERNiE contains analytical articles on themes and persons, as well as historical documentation (Letters, Writings, Images, Music etc.), tracing and visualizing the transnational rise of national culture-building in 19th-century Europe.These articles and materials cover manifestations of Romantic Nationalism in Europe during the long 19th century. While European in focus, ERNiE’s coverage is as comprehensive as possible and firmly transnational: what ERNiE hopes to make visible is not only the great mass, social penetration and mobilizing agency of individual cultural actions, gestures and developments within different countries, but also their cross-national (as well as intermedial) connections and interrelations. ERNiE wishes to draw attention to culture not only as the intellectual and artistic ambitience which made nationalism, as an ideology, thinkable and attractive, but above all as the communicative medium which rendered a transnational diffusion of nationalism possible. A brochure can be viewed/downloaded here. An online user’s manual can be found here.

Perspectives

The articles point out the importance of music in shaping nineteenth-century nationalism and national consciousness. In the nineteenth century, music societies, choral competitions, and operas functioned as social media to disseminate and focus attention on national issues.

Krisztina Lajosi
Universiteit van Amsterdam

The article highlights the development of the Ukrainian standard language with the special focus to the period from the beginning till the end of 18th and 19th-centuries in the Eastern and Western Ukraine.

Olha Voznyuk
University of Vienna, Austria

This study is a high opportunity to explain the signifiance and singularity of the catalan music in the construction of a national identity during XIX century. The most part of the specific bibliography nowadays is published in catalan or in spanish. This article is an excellent chance to explain in a basic level, but responsible, the most important bases of catalan music during Romantic period.

Francesc Cortès
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

Writing this entry gave me the oportunity to outline key features of Neohellenic architecture: its struggle to balance imported modernization and indigenous traditions with Modern Greece’s romantic nationalism based on the legacy of Classical Hellas and Orthodox Byzantium.

Helen Fessas-Emmanouil
National Technical University of Athens

The interesting thing about writing the article has been the process of gaining new knowledge yourself in order to communicate it further.

Troels Peter Roland

It seems to me that the intellectual movement with most effect on politics from the nineteenth century on was not Marxism, nor Fascism, but romantic nationalism, grounded on comparative philology. This has shaped Europe, by unifying nations like Germany and Italy, while creating others from the break-up of consortia like the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the former Yugoslavia. These movements have acted acted as a model for much of the wider world. Its effects are furthermore by no means dead, as shown by separatist movements throughout Europe.

tom shippey
Saint Louis University

ERNiE aims to trace, not just the individual manifestations of Romantic Nationalism, but also the connections between them. The material described here is not presented as a collection of individual occurrences or facts, but as a dynamic whirl of exchanges and influences. For that reason, each article is extensively hyperlinked and ERNiE itself is ‘reticular’, organized like a network of hyperlinked articles arrayed in a matrix-style grid. In order to acess this structure, there is, besides the emphasis on topically situated articles in the PATTERNS section, specific attention for the nodal points that connect these patterns: PERSONS and PLACES. It is available in book form and online as a freely available open-access web resource. The web resource is at http://ernie.uva.nl. The 2-volume, 1500-page book, published by Amsterdam University Press, is available from regular booksellers.

Kim Simonsen
International Center for Russian and East European Jewish Studies

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This page is a summary of: Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe, March 2018, Amsterdam University Press,
DOI: 10.5117/9789462981188.
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