Figurations of France

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In Figurations of France: Literary Nation-Building in Times of Crisis (1550-1650) , Marcus Keller explores the often indirect and subtle ways in which key texts of early modern French literature, from Joachim Du Bellay's Défense et illustration de la langue française to Corneille's Le Cid , contribute to the fiction of France as a nation. Through his fresh take on these and other classics, he shows that they not only create the French as an imaginary community but also provide venues for an incisive critique of the political and cultural construct that underpins the modern nation-state. Current theories of nationhood, in particular the concepts of the nation form and fictive ethnicity (Étienne Balibar), inform the close readings of Du Bellay's Défense , Ronsard's Discours , d'Aubigné's Tragiques , Montaigne's Essays , Malherbe's odes, and Corneille's Le Cid and Horace . They reveal the imaginary power and unifying force of early modern figurations of France that come to bear in this heteregoneous corpus of French literature, with texts ranging from manifesto and epic poem to essay and tragedy. Situating each author and text in their particular historical context, the study suggests

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