Appunti sul programma di Letteratura inglese

Lezione 1: 4.11.2025

Ideas and narratives of the nation, from Shakespeare to Brexit

Some kind of national identity exists and this concept is understandable nowadays if this is respected.

Patrick Chamoiseau is one of the most important authors of the period, in “Fratelli Migranti”, the Italian translation of his book, he wrote about the idea of migrancy, which suggests movement, change and transformation and is a condition which we must welcome, it’s inside our chemical composition, nationality always suggests a sense of belonging.

What is a nation? Why are we dealing with nation and national identity in our interconnected global landscape? In what sense are they constructed and fluid discourses?

The concept of national identity relates to political discourse, international relations, and individual sense of belonging.

When we normally speak nowadays, we use the term state and nation interchangeably, but historically they suggest something different.

• State --> A tangible political subdivision of the globe with defined territory and population, even with different cultures, languages, or ethnicities.
• Nation --> Is from the Latin “nasci”, which means to be born, and suggests something less physical than state, is described as an intangible psychological bond joining people who believe they’re different from others in a vital way. This term is based on a sense of shared origin and evolution. Often suggesting blood ties.
• Sovereign-State --> Is a state that is governed by a single government and where the people identify as part of a nation and share a common sense of identity, often based on language, culture, ethnicity or shared history.

Traditionally, a nation is a large group of people with common characteristics including language, culture, ethnicity, history and territory. Very often when hearing about the nation there is this idea of the organic nature of national communities.

The term nation is also associated with “primordialism” or “perennialism”, nations as natural, ancient entities with deep biological and cultural roots; national identity emerging from attachments to a territory, a language, a religion.

Nationalism only entered wide usage by the late 19^th century.

In ancient societies people primarily identified themselves with kinship groups, tribes, city-states rather than expansive nations; or in the Middle Ages there was a division, people identified as “lord of X”, not as members of nations. In the early modern period, the first ideas of nationhood started to emerge after the treaty of Westphalia.

According to some critics such as Herder, he has theories on the role of shared culture, language and collective will, also Rousseau is important.

Nation is determined by people. The French Revolution promoted the idea of nation-state.

Three scholarly positions

Ernest Gellner talks about this idea in “Nation and modernism”, modernity in the sense of an industrialized society. He wrote that nation and nationalism are products of industrialization and modernization. A society needs a standardized education and also bureaucracy that helps the nation to develop; key and modernity are the key words for Gellner.

Nations are deliberately constructed to meet the functional needs of modern societies, requiring standardized education and cultural homogeneity, nations are not natural but are constructed through the development of societies, is a specific kind of sociological community composed of discrete populations, a given territory. The state creates a unified culture for efficiency, and his criticism is too economic and functionalist.

Antony Smith’s in “Ethno-symbolism and nationalism” says that the concept of nation is partly connected to development and society but there are some aspects that pertain to the origins of people who define nationalism, cultural symbols, myth and collective memories, focus on common shared.

The state builds on existing ethnic identity; his criticism overstates the role of ethnic history. He is bridging modernist and primordialist theories by recognizing both the modern aspects of nations and their roots in pre-existing ethnic symbols and traditions. He poses emphasis on the historical continuity of cultural symbols, myths, and memories in forming national identity.

Benedict Anderson said that a nation is an imagined community, a concept more emotional than physical, members never meet most fellow citizens, and yet they maintain a mental image of communion, despite actual inequalities nations conceptualize themselves as deep horizontal comradeships. Nations exist in the minds of people, are social constructs or “cultural artifacts”. Cultural production-print capitalism helps people imagine themselves as a part of the nation. There is the idea that mass media and print capitalism reinforce the idea of the nation as a community.

Ernest Renan in “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” said: Nation is “a soul, a spiritual principle”, is something immaterial, constituted by past memories and present consent.

“A nation’s existence is a daily plebiscite”, nationhood requires ongoing consent and affirmation from its citizens.

The nation represents a large-scale solidarity constituted by past sacrifices, and those ones are prepared to make in the future.

Nation possesses a “Janus-faced ambivalence” that simultaneously looks to the past and future.

“The noblest countries, England, France and Italy are those where the blood is the most mixed”.

Selective memory: “l’essence d’une nation est que tous les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oublié bien des choses”.

For a very long time in the past Scotland was not considered part of the British empire and creates a strong sense of identity that erases this part of history and detached themselves from British identity.

The theories and ideas of Renan anticipated many of the later theories and ideas on nation and nationality.

The idea of a nation is attachment, collected empathy and sacrifice through solidarity connected to the idea of attachment to the nation.

The emotional power of nationalism

Nationalism in some countries is intended as patriotism, some aspects that explain why nationalism should be considered such powerful are:

• Ultimate sacrifice --> This idea of comradeship is very important, because it can be associated with Anderson (crossing-boundaries idea), and is something we find in Henry V, we can see the start of nationalistic spirit. We have this idea of brotherhood who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the nation; is the willingness to die for the nation which demonstrates nationalism’s profound emotional power.
• Horizontal comradeship --> Nations create deep bonds that transcend social divisions and class barriers.
• Shared symbols --> There are common cultural touchpoints that reinforce the imagined community across time and space. For example the flower “cargo”, which is a symbol of Scotland; other motives are the double (doppelgänger).
• Imagined connections --> People form powerful bonds with compatriots they’ve never met and never will.

Core concepts of national identity

• Collective sense of belonging to a larger community that transcends immediate family or local ties.
• Shared cultural values, expressions and traditions and symbols that members recognize and create cohesion and distinction from other national groups.
• Fluid and evolving nature, in response to internal social changes and external influences. What constitutes “being Italian” or “being British” transforms across generations and historical contexts, for example the period before Second World War, after that a lot of people relocated from the former colonies and produced a transformation of the British society.

Core components of national identity

Cultural dimension: How important language is for a sense of national belonging and identity in translations, in particular Irish Gaelic, different than English language, so this preservation of one’s language is seen as a major and fundamental component of the national identity. An African author Guthi Yatonongo(?) started to write in his own original native language because he thinks that not to use the native language and instead use English means to deny one’s national identity and belonging; on the other hand we have Arushki(?) who thinks that the use of English does not mean deny one’s original culture, because there exist a variety of English and vehiculates meanings and messages that couldn’t be possible if the author utilized another language (Irish Gaelic), literature, music, cuisine, and traditional customs.

Historical dimension: Historically accurate or mythologized “narratives”, shared historical experiences, foundational moments incorporated into collective memory.

Political dimension: Governance structures, legal systems, and civic conception, based on citizenship and shared values.

Nationality is a fluid concept and changes continuously, depends on the specific historical and social contingencies. National identity can be seen also in translations, in fact exist languages but also education, a specific education system that is important in translation when England, around the 19^th century, replaced the typical education system in which Gaelic was used at school with the national system and education system were integrating the language of education, this was a transformation at the time, Ireland was affected by it, also with Irish culture. English depends on somehow influential media, communication are establishing and reinforcing this idea of national identity, especially with the digital languages forms and concepts of the nation that are more powerful and reinforced.

Constructing national identity

1. Education systems --> Standardized curricula, official language, teaching national history and cultural values.
2. Media and communication --> News, entertainment, and social platforms, reinforce shared cultural references and narratives.
3. Symbols and rituals --> Flags, Anthems, Monuments (Stonehenge for example, symbol of constructions of national identity and history), National celebrations.
4. Globalization effects --> Global flows of ideas, people, and culture both challenge and reinforce national identities. Globalization also affects the economic dimension, some countries in Europe resent the fact that European community established some laws in economics and other countries wanted to be more independent from those decisions taken centrally; sometimes we need some reaction to these globalization effects against the specificity of a single nation but globalization flows, these influences come across the nation and impact on national identity.

Challenges to national identity: Post-nation?

Immigration and multiculturalism --> Increasing population mobility has created more ethnically and culturally diverse societies, challenging homogeneous conceptions of national identity. Nations must negotiate between assimilation and multicultural approaches to integration. Nation is something organic.

Supranational identities --> Organizations like the European Union foster identities that transcend national boundaries. Multiple levels of belonging, from local to global (e.g. humanitarian intervention). Layered identities rather than exclusive national allegiances.

Sub-national identities --> Regional, ethnic, and indigenous identities often compete with national frameworks. Tensions between national identity and more localized identifications (e.g. separatist movements). Catalonia and Scotland are “special” and separate identities, people may feel the presence of stronger and more powerful nation suffocating identity, quite recently in Catalonia and Scotland started to begin separatist movements, people want to separate from the national context from which they belong, they want to return at an established independence, these are examples of sub-national movements that would like to separate from individual countries, Scotland tried but failed.

Digital interconnectedness --> Online communities transcend geographical boundaries, creating new forms of belonging based on shared interests rather than shared territories. The digital world and the connections through the digital media challenge traditional nations' identities by creating new communities.

Challenging objectives

• Inclusive national narratives --> Developing more inclusive conceptions that accommodate diversity.
• Balanced identities --> Reconciling national belonging with global citizenship.
• Adaptive traditions --> Evolving cultural practices that retain meaning while embracing change.
• Responsive institutions --> Political frameworks that recognize identity's complexity.

The etymology of nation is “to be born”, is something more in the mind and not referred to physical and geographical or political area, this is the main difference between nation and state, even if the two concepts conflate together, in fact they are both political union and a group of people with shared identities; nation represents a sort of organic nature given by the same language, common sense, and this is something that in recent works, for example in the postcolonial book of Baba, he has critiqued this organic vision of the nature.

The primordial approaches to the idea of the nation implied that there are primordial values that are shared by those who belong to the nation, they may be also associated with some symbols, values that have to do with a specific territory, language, religion, origin, language will be concentrate on the UK, as a multi-nation state.

Nationalism and everything connected with it is fairly recent and emerged after the one-hundred-year war that affected the central Europe, after the treaty of Westphalia we have this idea of conglomeration, in the 15^th century; this idea of nationalism is reinforced by philosophers such as Rousseau, French idea of nationalism as defined by shared culture languages and a collective consciousness, the nation state becomes something associated with the will of people, not of the monarch and in the 19^th century nationalism must be combined with historical processes of unification.

Some writers believe that it is through literature and reading that we can also form bonds and connections; literature is a sort of authoritative nation. Azar Nafisi was the author of “The public of imagination” about the effects of the events that reading can have for us and encourages the readers to reflect about what we share with other people and what we have in common with other societies different from us, what is it that makes us similar to other people that belong to other cultures; literature helps us to recognize this common ground, quotation from Primo Levi ‘I write in order to rejoin the community of mankind’, he was said to highlight writing to enjoy the community in camps, a community that he doesn’t even know, inviting us to cross continents and time.

Nafisi lived during the regime of Atalasi, in which speech wasn’t allowed, teaching was obliged on some fields, she was a professor but also teaching was controlled, she in Tehran organized some private classes in home for her students because she can’t do this in university, she created this space of imagination where are useless passports but the only requirement to enter is an open mind.

The notion of Englishness and Britishness

British is often used to refer to English people in general, Britishness is associated with the United Kingdom, English is the common language. Britishness was very strong when the UK was a very strong colonial power, that was dismantled starting from the American Revolution especially in the 1940, this Commonwealth of Nations, the empire of North there was an element of nostalgia for that past in which England appeared far from nations, was a central role in the world.

Celtic tribes --> A Celtic culture that still exists nowadays because Irish, Welsh and Scottish are Celtic languages, most of them are endangered species but are still spoken. Non-organic fixed and homogeneous cultures that are present from the very beginning.

Normans, Celtics and Scotland were all three romances, and they haven’t managed to push so far. The Celtic language characterizes society and is particular in Scotland and Wales.

In Ireland in the 12^th century there is the beginning of English colonization. In general this Celtic fringe revealing independence of England is present in the period, this stratum is layered everywhere.

The early modern period is a period in which England and Englishness became more and more powerful. The first country of the Celtic fringe to be annexed is Whit(?), the first act of union was in the 16^th century, with the establishment of Anglicanism, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there were present references to how England started to explore the new world; France became the fear of colonization; religious differences because Anglicanism was the principal religion in England and from the 16^th century Calvinism appeared, practiced by the majority of Irish people.

The Scottish language is an Anglo-Saxon language; Welsh, Irish, Norman are Celtic languages, there is this difference in Scotland.

Matthew Arnold wrote the poem “Dover Beach”, is a poem regarding national identity but he was also a critic, he gives one of the most important contributions ever to the characteristics of Celtic literature.

The UK was born in 1707, year of the unification of parliaments, this is important because those moments mark moments in which Scotland and Ireland lost their political independence, they have economic advantages thanks to imperialism, even if Scotland have problems in recognizing the establishment of the British empire but then Scotland