Editing the nation's memory : : textual scholarship and nation-building in ninteenth-century Europe / / edited by Dirk Van Hulle and Joep Leerssen.

• Superior document: European studies : an interdisciplinary series in European culture, history and politics ; 26
• TeilnehmendeR: Hulle, Dirk van.; Leerssen, Joseph Th. 1955-
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: European studies (Amsterdam, Netherlands) ; 26.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (325 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Europe's nation-states emerged from a complex of nineteenth-century developments in which cultural consciousness-raising played a formative role. The nineteenth-century reflection on Europe's national identities involved a re-inventory and revalorisation of the vernacular cultural past and, above all, the nation's literary heritage. Everywhere in Europe, foundational texts (including medieval epics and romances, ancient laws and chronicles) were retrieved from their obscure repositories. In new, printed editions, prepared according to the emerging academic standards of textual scholarship, they were appropriated, contested and canonised as public symbols of the nation's permanence in history. This often neglected, but crucially important Europe-wide process of 'editing the nation's memory' involved old states and emerging nations, large and small countries, metropolitan and peripheral regions; it straddled politics, the academic professionalization of textual scholarship and of the human sciences, and literary taste. This collection of studies by outstanding specialists offers a comparative synopsis on exemplary cases from all corners of the European continent.

Table of Contents

Intro -- EUROPEAN STUDIES -- CONTENTS -- Authors in this Volume -- Introduction: Philology and the European Construction of National Literatures -- TEXTS BETWEEN PAST AND PRESENT: EUROPEAN READERSHIPS, NATIONAL ROOTEDNESS -- A Darwinian Change in European Editorial Thinking -- The Angel of Philology -- CASE STUDIES I EMERGING CANONS AROUND THE EUROPEAN RIM -- Slovene Text Editions, Slavic Philology and Nation-Building -- Inscribing Orality: The First Folklore Editions in the Baltic States -- Scania Province Law and Nation-Building in Scandinavia -- Welsh Literary History and the Making of 'The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales' -- John O'donovan's Edition of the Annals of the Four Masters: An Irish Classic? -- After the Lisbon Earthquake: Reassembling History -- Medieval Heritage in the Beginnings of Modern Catalan Literature, 1780-1841 -- The Troubadours and the French State -- CASE STUDIES II EUROPEAN CROSS-CURRENTS: ENGLAND, GERMANY AND THE LOW COUNTRIES -- The Case of Beowulf -- Walther von der Vogelweide and Early-Nineteenth-Century Learning -- Hoffmann von Fallersleben and Dutch Medieval Folksong -- Private to Public: Book Collecting and Philology in Early-Independent Belgium (1830-1880) -- Stages in the Development of Dutch Literary Historicism -- The Nation's Canon and the Book Trade.