ABSTRACT
In his Atlas of the European Novel, Franco Moretti analyzes the participation of the literary geography of the nineteenth-century novel in the dynamic of nationstate consolidation. Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels are exemplary in this respect because their mobile geography, inscribed by the movements and interactions of characters, effaces anthropological, ontological, and axiological borders. The role of film in the twentieth century was similar. Although feature films occasionally challenged the myths that sustained the coherence of the modern nation-state throughout that century, for the most part their role was not unlike that of much of nineteenth-century literature; they aided and abetted the cultural articulation of the nation-building and sustaining projects of states. However, increasingly as the twenty-first century progresses, literature and film are playing a more critical role. Resisting the codes of national affiliation, they have been registering and affirming post-national forms of both malaise and commitment.
