The Invention of Frenchness

The history of French literature has long been inextricably linked to a sense of genealogical history rooted in France. This sense of history exposes and defends a desire to fully realize the homogeneity of modern nation-states in terms of language and race. The Invention of Frenchness contributes to the revision of this paradigm by considering how in the long fourteenth century, a period neglected in that context, francophone writers increasingly debated and negotiated in their works a complex sense of literary and cultural identity. Such identity was not necessarily rooted in France, nor was it simply genealogical.

Beginning in the twelfth century, French literature focused on telling stories of how a knightly cast developed a common sense of transnational purpose and identity that they carried across Europe and the Mediterranean. Along the way, a growing desire to develop a sense of identity rooted in place became a preoccupation for francophone authors. Drawing on the Deleuzian notions of de- and re-territorialization, as well as that of the rhizome, by the fourteenth century, French authors invented a rich and impactful idea of Frenchness that was both global and local.