The tale-end of history

literary form, historiography and the Danish (post)-national imagination

C. C. Thomson

pp. 45-69

in: Richard Mole (ed), Discursive constructions of identity in European politics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

Abstract

In one of Isak Dinesen's most famous tales, a discussion takes place between a cardinal and a woman in black about the respective merits of the modern novel and the classic story.² The modern novel, thinks the cardinal, is too concerned with exploring the psychology of the individual and the story suffers as a result. The classic tale, on the other hand, keeps up the historical momentum and thereby achieves the elevation of the individual to the universal. Both genres approach the question "who am I?" from different angles and both fail completely to answer it. This tale playfully circles the difficulty of categorising Dinesen's own oeuvre (Selboe, 2002, p. 480) but it also encapsulates two inter-related problems in literary studies: how do we draw the lines between literary (and, indeed, non-literary) genres? And how do we conceive of the relations between literature and identity, between text, individual and community?