"The National Longing for Form"
Timothy Brennan－from Nation and Narration

Provider: Kate Liu / 劉紀雯

purpose: 

承接Anderson, Lukacs, Bakhtin, Benjamin的理論，談小說如何想像、建構國家。談論小說重點在
１）寫實小說的複合性(composite nature)
２）小說與史詩和故事的不同
３）現代小說及第三世界小說處理「國家vs.流放」的不同。
　
I. Nation:
  1. its myths, as both "the modern nation-state and...something more ancient and nebulous" 
  2. the national question(nationalism dead or not): nationalism vs. local affiliation and (capitalist or working class) internationalism
  3. postwar nations and migration to the imperial center: anti-colonialism, cultural pluralism at 'home' and expatriates
  4. English studies－refused to place the fact of domination in a comprehensive approach to its literary material.
  5. invention of nation: of tradition (history and symbols)

    6. ★ two 'anti-death processes'p. 51 (R. Debray) Cf. Balibar & Bhabha
    populist and Romantic nationalism p. 53－people, folk, working class
    e.g. Rousseau's 'people' and civic virtue㻖rom middle-class liberties to lower classes, 

    　Herder's 'primordial and inalienable roots
    　populist trends in Romantic poetry (Wordsworth)
II. Nation and novel －sociological plurals + heteroglossia
--★objectifying the nation's composite nature (language, calendrical coincidences, readership, social classes) 
p. 49-51
Novel and epic －political view vs. ritual view p. 50
--novel directs itself to 'open-ended present'
key event in the development of the novel: 
Lukacs－the French Revolution
Bakhtins－that period when 'the world becomes polyglot once and for all ..'
Brennan－B cannot explain on-going heteroglossia
[modernist] Novelist vs. Storyteller(Benjamin)--
communal/oral vs. Isolated/written; memory or not; with moral vs. meaning of life; the miraculous or not)★←→Brennan－one trend in Third World novels is close to storytelling as defined by B p. 55
★Third World novel－a cosmopolitan form, to play a national role only in an international arena p. 56, examples?
Phases of nation－
imperialism, 'empire's old clothes' wore by anti-colonial elite; nation-state as "only the by-product of the conditions created by European exploration; two emperial legacies: 'world' languages, international communications
Exile vs. nationalism--
two kinds of exile:
  1. archaic, literary--　banishment, wander, exodus
  2. modern political－　deportation　　immigrant　　refugee　　flight


 3 kinds 3rd World novels about nation--
1. attack independence, 
2. Anti-colonial work, 
3. Cosmopolitan explanations of the 'lower depths' or the 'fantastic unknown'

★one trend--a simultaneous recognition of nationhood and an alienation from it.

議題：見★；小說的複合體一定代表國家嗎？
例子：Fanon－KMT; Balibar－In Country; Brennan－Midnight's Children

　

Timothy Brennan.  "The National Longing for Form."   Nation and Narration, ed. Homi Bhabha (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 44-70.