Abstract
In the 19th century a fundamental change occurred in the literary system because the national past started to figure systematically in it. That process will be explored in four sub-projects. The first of these will study how the integration of older texts into the contemporary system proceeded through academic editions of medieval and seventeenth-century texts and through the newly emergent genre of literary historiography. The second analyses how literary criticism (in legitimising its appraisals through arguments from history) started to play a key role in the appreciation of the national heritage. The third project studies how the national government became an agent in the nineteenth-century literary system by supporting the publication of old texts, by purchasing medieval manuscripts, and by intervening in the educational institutions. The last project concentrates on the thematic aspects of the past in literary products. How does the rise of genres like the historical novel, ballad or legend fit into these developments and what role do these new genres play in the developing national conceptualisation of the past? These various lines of research address desiderata and topics which until now have been neglected at least at the national level and often at the international level as well. They are brought together in a synthetic study which describes how the unstructured, unguided past was canonised and streamlined into a historical template of immense topical relevance.