National literatures are an assumption of modern cultural landscapes. In countries around the world schoolchildren in state-mandated courses read the “Great Works” of their nation. Universities offer literature courses in a smorgasbord of national units: course catalogues list classes such as “Russian Masterpieces,” “The Brazilian Novel,” and “Major American Authors.” The style, themes, and narratives of each nation's literary canon, the pantheon of most valorized and legitimated texts, are analyzed and debated both in the scholarly literature and in more general social commentaries. Educated people are simply assumed to be conversant with their national canons. In the United States “everyone” is familiar with – even if one hasn't actually read – The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick. National literatures are the cornerstones of national cultures.

National literature and national character

National literatures have traditionally been understood as reflections of the unique character and experiences of the nation. That is, it is felt that the unique experience of national life generates a national, collective consciousness, or in some formulations a “collective unconscious” marked by a distinctive set of values, tensions, myths, and psychological foci, that produces in turn a certain readily identifiable national character – the American cowboy or the French sophisticate, for example. This character, and the values, tensions, and myths from which it springs, is then discernible in indigenous cultural products. Thus the distinctiveness of a national literature is seen as the natural embodiment of the distinctive national character (e.g., Wolfenstein and Leites 1950; Goldmann 1964, 1970).