ABSTRACT
The main objective of this study of Nation and Word will bear re-stating at this point: it is to explore the history of the kaleidoscopic relations of nation, language and religion (each of these in its most inclusive sense) in Europe between 1770 and 1850. Until now the focus has been mainly on theories concerning the origins, nature, function and constitutive relationships of language. I have explored the association of these theories with religious and philosophical traditions, and their reflection of and contribution to, the emerging idea of the modern nation state in Europe. Within Romanticism, however, there is a particularly complex relationship between concepts and theories about language and 'performative acts' of language as expression, communication, artistic creation. The distinction between theoretical analysis and literary exposition was often loosely marked more by internal dialectic than by clear boundaries within the work of authors such as Coleridge, Goethe or Chateaubriand. In response to this, our focus now shifts to the mythology, the tropes and figures through which the relationship of 'Nation' and 'Word', and of these to their purported divine source, evolved. Writers of the period frequently and often deliberately oscillated between words and the Word in connection with their own sense of national identity. The conscious attention to symbolism and the construction of philosophical theories concerning the nature and function of the symbol provided an important means through which the metaphysical nature of language could be expressed and made to serve the cause of national unity. One of the most important functions of many of the symbols which constituted the iconography of European nations was to link religious and national aspirations and ideals; it is this aspect which is of particular significance to us here.
