Review: Emili Samper (ed.), The Myths of the Republic: Literature and Identity. Col. “Estudis Catalans 8”, Edition Reichenberger, Kassel, 2016, 239 pp.

Abstract

Journalism and history—or historiographical discourse—do not qualify as transparent evidence of facts. To put it in Linda Hutcheon’s words, it has “a tendency towards myth and illusion-making” (A Poetics of Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction, Routledge, London-New York, 1988, p. 16). History is thus semiotically transmitted. Myths, forged and spread across literature and popular culture, play a crucial role in the construction of the past and the popular mind-set. In Barthes’s theory, the ideological function of the myth is to naturalize what culture is, namely, to make dominant cultural and historical values, beliefs, and attitudes seem self-evident, timeless, and akin to common sense (Mythologies, The Noonday Press, New York, 1972, p. 143). In short, myths shape the historical knowledge of the past and the identity of nations, together with a common language and devastating events such as battles.