Freneau's poetic anguish over British cultural domination of the newly formed United States characterizes the historical self-consciousness of the nation-building process – and the clear sense that writers felt they had a role to play in the process. As I argued in chapter 1, newer work in nationalism has demonstrated the position of the nation as an “invented” or “imagined” construct supported by cultural stratagems that create and bolster the myths, traditions, and emotional ties that help constitute the nation in the mind of its citizens. Less work has been done, however, in specifying the role of high-culture literature and canon formation in that process. Chapters 2 and 3 rectify this omission through an analysis of the often quite deliberate construction and maintenance of national literatures in the United States and Canada respectively.

It is my argument that the emergence of a national literature in both Canada and the United States was concomitant with the initial period of nation-building. The identification and development of American and Canadian national literatures were used to help imagine the nation and to help develop a unique national identity.