Literary Histories as an Aspect of Discursive Construction of National Identity
Literary Histories as an Aspect of Discursive Construction of National Identity

Summary/Abstract: Stuart Hall has written in the article The Questions of Cultural Identity that one of the aspects of national identity is the narrative of a nation. The narrative of a nation exists in national narratives, in literature, in media and in everyday culture. It creates a connection between stories, landscapes, historical events, national symbols etc. Hall assigns literature a very important role in the creation process of national identity (Hall 1996: 613–615), as well as David Perkins does: A function of many literary histories has been to support feelings of community and identity. [---] a history of literature, whether it be the literature of a nation, class, region, race, or gender, would help instruct us who we are individually and as a community. It displays the tradition in which we stand whether we will or no, for this tradition has formed us. [---] Literary histories explain allusions in text, establish the expectations associated with a genre in a given time and place, show how a work broke through a general crisis in aesthetic construction, demonstrate that it served or subverted a dominant ideology, and so forth. (Perkins 1992: 180–183).

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