Anthem Quality

In the twenty-first century, new empires and corporate governance notwithstanding, ours remains a world of nation states. Anthems may for the most part be nineteenth century (so pre-modernist) artefacts, nevertheless nations today all have anthems and these are, among available texts, the principal affective means by which citizens recognise themselves and each other as subjects of nations in particular. Strikingly under-theorized, the lyrics of national anthems are among the best known poems in the world today.

Nations have anthems and, in the act of singing them, citizens represent themselves to the outside world and express solidarity with each other. An understanding of anthem, as artefact of nation, reveals not only the investments and the self-image of particular peoples but the nature of national feeling more generally. Nations are hypostasized entities with pretensions to ancient authority, the devotions they inspire are (as Benedict Anderson and others have shown) of a quasi-religious nature. Anthems are objects, which because of their sanctity to the national imagination, have largely fallen below the threshold of scholarly attention.

This book is a theoretical study, made on the basis of an empirical journey among lyrics of various of the world’s anthems, and taking account of their historical and present circumstances. While musical accompaniment is discussed along the way, as an aspect of context, the focus of this study is on the meanings and the affect carried by the words of the anthems examined. The most general function of the theory being developed, will be – as per the book’s title – to define ‘anthem quality’. Along the way, this study deals with all of the world’s most famous and best known national anthems, and including those of England, France, the United States, Germany, China, India and Japan.