National Poetry, Empires and War

David Aberbach is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, McGill University, Montreal. He has held visiting positions at Oxford, the LSE, UCL, and Harvard. His work bridges the arts and social sciences, as seen in his current book on national poetry and also in previous books, on loss and on charisma.

• Introduction: Unacknowledged Legislators: National Poets, Prophets and Revolution 1. National Poetry and the Hebrew Bible: War and the Messianic Age 2. Mythical History in National Poetry 3. European National Poetry, Islam and the Defeat of the Medieval Church 4. Medieval Spanish Hebrew National Poetry 5. Poetry of the British Isles: History, Myth, and Nationalism 6. The Greek War of Independence and Its Poetry 7. National Poetry and Russian-Ottoman Imperial Conflict 8. Byron to D’Annunzio: From Liberalism to Fascism in National Poetry, 1789-1933 9. Walt Whitman, American Nationalism and the Revolutions of 1848-49 10. The Poet as Nation-Builder: Yeats and Bialik 11. Defeat and Independence Struggles in National Poetry 12. The British Empire and Revolutionary National Poetry Conclusion: National Poetry, Morality and Individual Creativity

"Aberbach has given us a remarkable, panoramic view of national poetry and by doing so has fashioned an important area of study wrongly neglected by both scholars of nationalism and literature." -- Steven Grosby, Clemson University, USA