ABSTRACT
1 Any reflection on identity implies a meditation on memory, history, and values: a philosophy of the cultural or national “self.” Collective identities are inextricably associated with narrative: at their inception we are bound to find myths of origin, biographies of their founding fathers, accounts of the legendary exploits of their heroes. From an historical, literary, and philosophical standpoint, the inquiry about identity in western cultures begins with Plato’s Republic and continues in Aristotle’s Politics and his Poetics, where we also find references to the nation-epos relationship. It is not incidental that the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Poetics in the sixteenth century should coincide with the emergence of the first nation-states in Europe and the reappearance of this theme as a pressing concern. The Greek term “epos” has traditionally been applied to the epic genre or, in the more ample sense used by German medievalists, to a body of narrative poems, epics, and/or mythical stories that are tied to the origin of a community. Thus, the term epos designates a body of literature through which the canonical foundational values of a community are established.
