Muse about Italian following mother country (10)

'muse' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't see how they can define each other.

'about italian following mother country' is the wordplay.
'about' is an insertion indicator.
'italian' becomes 'it' (abbreviation for Italian).
'following' says to put letters next to each other.
'mother' becomes 'ma' (Ma is another word for mother or mum).
'country' becomes 'urania' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ma' put next to 'urania' is 'maurania'.
'it' going within 'maurania' is 'MAURITANIA'.

Can you help me to learn more?