Discourses of Nationhood: the Construction of National Identity in Eighteenth-Century France

Department of French Studies

Dr Elizabeth Rechniewski

Professor Margaret Sankey

Emeritus Professor Angus Martin

This is a two-year ARC Discovery Project for 2004 and 2005. The addresses a fundamental question in the current topical debates over nationhood and national identity - on what ideological and discursive bases nations are formed - by studying, through an innovative set of methodologies, the roots in eighteenth century France of modern national consciousness.

This project will lead to a new understanding of the survival of particularist ideas about the 'French people' and France, within the Universalist context of Enlightenment thought. It will demonstrate how, within the framework of an expanding communications system, representations of national character were already being disseminated - as today - in a broad range of literary, philosophical and political texts.

Building on past research undertaken by the investigators this project uses the methodologies of discourse analysis and media theory to bring new insights to the central theoretical and historical discussions taking place about the nature of nation formation. On the one hand, our analysis assesses the role of the rapidly expanding communications infrastructure in extending the possibility of exchanging ideas and opinions, and in disseminating the idea of nationhood amongst the wider population. On the other, we are undertaking discursive analyses of selected corpuses of text material, in order to identify the evolution in thinking about the nation and national character in early modern France.