THE The essays collected here concern, from different

perspectives and to different degrees, the concept of nation.

They are all focused on Romanian space, investigated within
a broad comparative perspective and in the wider European
context. In the last decades, the idea of the nation, its origins
and its meaning, have been the focus of many reflections
theoretical questions, which have challenged many of the
ideas that were vulgated, contributing to renew the research
directions on one of the central and inalienable concepts of
history European. We only remember the famous volume by
Bendict Anderson, Imagined Communities, released in 1983,
which first tried to correct a constructivist view too much rigid,
which considered the nations only as artificial and contingent
realities, fruit modernism of the ideology of nationalism, which
would precede the individual national realities1 . Anderson
has made it clear that nations are "cultural artifacts of a very
kind particular ", which are not reducible only to an artificial
ideological design, but they are rooted in the ability of human
groups to imagine part of one a wider and more particular
historical-political community with its own specific identity. On
this line, perhaps the most important and original works, were
those of the English historian Anthony D. Smith and his
ethnosymbolic perspective2 . In wide-ranging studies e of
strong theoretical commitment, Smith has shown that modern
historical nations have become established on the basis of
previous ethnic communities, linked by relationships of social
solidarity, linguistic, religious, which had a reality and a
historical basis secular. The six categories around which,
according to Smith, ethnos is built, they remain a point
fundamental starting point to study the establishment of
European national identities, that is to say: a collective name,
a myth of its origin, a historical memory shared, a language, a
religion, common uses and understood as specific, a territory
and, finally, "a community sentiment of identity and solidarity"
3 . These ideas can obviously be applied, even to the study of
the history of the Romanians, which can not be separated
from a critical analysis of the concept of nation. As is known,
the nation modern Romanian was formed starting from the
great Bildung model proposed by the intellectuals of the
Transylvanian School. The prodigious identity machine
developed in the works of Petru Maior, Gheorghe ªincai,
Samuil Micu, based on the linguistic principle of latinity and on
the historical one of the origin and of the Roman continuity of
the Romanian people, was born to support policies of
recognition and claims civilians of the Romanians of
Transylvania, subjected to the Austro-Hungarian domination.
Passing the Carpathians, the ideas of the Transylvanians will
offer ideological depth and breath Introductory words /
Editor`s Notes historical to the vague Western and national
aspirations, which already surfaced among the young
generations of the principalities' boyars and writers, inflaming
the minds in a short time and consciences. At the center of
the ideological building of the Transylvanians was the idea of
a brand almost humboldtiana, of the organic and inseparable
connection between Language and Nation. This link will be at
the center of literary production and political and civil activity
of all the Roman intellectuals of the nineteenth century,
guided by the desire to build a language and a modern and
unitary nation. Within a relationship of mutual dependence
and implication of these two dimensions, language and history
are the able elements to offer the indispensable guarantees of
continuity over time, synchronic coherence of the structure
and distinctive individuality, on which to build the identity of
the Romanian nation.4 La Transylvanian lesson, transplanted
in the new political and cultural context of the 'Risorgimento'
that is, it has adapted to the new demands of modernization
and national struggle of the 1848 generation. Consider, from
this perspective, one of the masterpieces of Romanian
romantic historiography as Românii supt Mihai-Voievod
Viteazul by Nicolae Bãlcescu and the complex rhetoric that he
puts in place to support and demonstrate the national ideal.
As he explained a lot well just Anthony D. Smith, it is never
the antiquarian spirit to inspire the rediscoveries history of
romantic nationalism, "never a disinterested inquiry into the
past "As it really was", but a burning desire to re - enter into a
living past and of make sure that it meets our needs. This is
the reason why nationalist stories are so full of dramatic
scenes from the past: <...> Alexandr Nevsky while
massacring the Teutonic Knights on the ice of Lake Peipus,
<...> the Jews along the rivers of Babylon, the last Welsh bard
who raises his lament on a cliff under which the army
advances of King Edward. "5 Of this series of