SATIRE AND HISTORY

This chapter and the one that follows try to look at one aspect of the relationship between satire and history by considering how satire expresses and questions nationalism and how nations are seen from the perspective of the satiric exile. The present chapter looks at images of nations in France and England between 1650 and 1760, a period during which, through different historical processes, nationalism was being defined in both countries. The next chapter, on exile, where the very topic renders national identification problematic, looks at satiric novels written since the 1960s. Nationalism and exile are complex metaphors suggesting relative historical positions. Their metaphorical quality creates a flow between the psychological condition of individuals and the political conditions of states. Nations may then be seen as metaphors of inclusion. Nations conceive of themselves in relation to other nations; they are bounded or defined in relation to Others. Satiric nationalists write, however critically, as members of a group calling itself a community. For the exile, however, this connection is broken, so that exiles, cut off from the state, must redefine a personal relationship to the culture that state once embodied. Satiric nationalism and satiric exile explore the relationship between the position of the observer and the historical reality of the material observed.

In questioning that relationship, satiric nationalism and satiric exile embody satire's traditional concern for historical particulars.