The Joyce industry is very much an institution over here as you might expect; Portrait of the Artist is a regular feature on the Leaving Cert curriculum but Ulysses is probably the most widely unread national epic in history which is such a shame because despite its difficulty it contains the most authentic rendering of the Dublin brogue ever put into print. Its gratifying to learn that much of the slang and street expressions in circulation today; "crawthumper" "spondoolicks"...

Scholars are generally wary in pinpointing the arrival of nationalism any earlier than the Napoleonic Wars (see in particular Anderson, Gellner & Hobsbaum) but the dispute when it arises goes beyond a mere matter of semantics. Having pride in your people's distinct culture and language is evident throughout antiquity and many empires have been built around the singular culture of a distinct people. In the modern era, and before the French revolution, we don't tend to refer to empire's expansion...