“REALMS OF MEMORY” RECONSTRUCTED IN LITERARY DISCOURSE

The paper suggests that literary discourse provides “realms of memory” that are necessary, according to Pierre Nora, for reconstructing national collective memory. If “realms of memory” are revealed in literary discourse, the selected “realms of memory” will not be overabundant and ideologically determined, as they are in the monumental edition “Realms of Memory” by Pierre Nora. Following Nora’s semiotic approach, the paper argues that “realms of memory” selected in literary discourse should be perceived as nodes in the national collective memory. They shape national memory as a dynamic system since each author give their personal interpretation in his/her work. The paper compares how different are authorial interpretations for the “realms of memory” in two works written in the same period: a collection of poems The Legend of the Ages by Victor Hugo and a novel Les Déracinés by Maurice Barrès. The new actualisations of a “realm of memory” in the literary works allows its new interpretations. However, the intrinsic relationship between the subject who remembers and the object of memory enables to create a “second degree history”, such as it was conceived by Nora, revealing how national memory has been constructed.