National Identities in France explores nationalism, national identities, and the various ways in which these concepts are accepted, adapted, discarded, or internally disputed across ideological divides. The popular assumption that automatically regards nationalism as a largely right-wing concern, occludes the many ways in which nationalism and national identities have contributed to social imagination and political or literary discourses across the right-left spectrum.

The critical grounds on which such reflections are undertaken are rich and varied. The idea of invented...