Make Love and War: The Knight's Tale

Emily, the lady-love of Chaucer's “Knight's Tale,” the first of the Canterbury Tales, appears in a garden, and the poet describes her as if where were part of the garden. She is Eve in Eden.But this is no Edenic world. The men who see her are locked out of Eden, locked, indeed, in prison. . . . . Continue Reading »

Nations: Grown or Imagined?

Romantic thinkers, perhaps most especially Johann Gottfried Herder, developed an organic conception of nationhood. A nation is an extended family, and so a perfect nation, the most natural state, is “one nation, an extended family with one national character.” The connection that people have . . . . Continue Reading »