French Identity: The National Search for Retrospective Legitimacy and Unanimity
French Identity: The National Search for Retrospective Legitimacy and Unanimity
The French sense of national identity derives from legitimizing myths and symbols rather than from the divergent realities that operate within shifting territorial frameworks of reference. National heroes are commemorated in the Pantheon, statues, and state funerals while the people are personified in the secular figure of Marianne as against the Right's Joan of Arc. Roman Catholicism's link with the Monarchy historically linked claims to religious universality and national specificity. Conscription and literacy in French language reinforced national-building.
Keywords: symbols, Pantheon, Marianne, Catholicism, conscription, literacy
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