زکریا بزدوده

This study endeavors to analyze the ethno-genealogical or ethnosymbolist model of nation by Anthony D. Smith to delineate that it is a useful method for the study and analysis of literary texts. The theories of nation go back to Ernest Renan who proposed a definition of nation in his “What Is a Nation” (1882). Since then, a number of approaches to the study of nation have developed which include primordialism, perennialism, ethnosymbolism, modernism, and postmodernism. Reviewing the dominant principles of ethnosymbolism, the present author tries to reveal the priority of the ethnosymbolist model for the study of literature. Ethnosymbolism concentrates on the elements of journey or quest, territory, history or memory, ethnicity, language, religion, myths, and symbols, among others, in its designing a model of nation and nationality. In fact, nationality is formed as a result of an interrelationship between these elements. These elements have been historically referred to as some very dominant motifs in literary texts, particularly fiction. We are living in a controversial age of national consciousness in different parts of the world; we can see the emergence of such motifs in the literatures of different parts of the world, particularly in the literatures of Africa and countries with a controversial colonial history. Moreover, they can be traced in the literature of migration. Since the national identity of people is formed by such elements, they can be traced in their literatures voraciously; thus, what the present author wants to argue, after an analysis of the ethnosymbolist model, is the preference and priority of such a model for the study of literary texts.