Primary Myths
Two nationalism's primary myths are connected with beliefs in:
- community's permanence (the myth of the eternal nation), based on its national character, territory and institutions and on its continuity across many generations, and
- community's common ancestry (myth of the common ancestry).
The nationalist myths portray the nation like sleeping and waiting to be awakened, but scholarly discourse avoid such image because national identity either exists or not and can not be asleep and awakened.
Read more about this topic: National Myth
Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or myths:
“Parental attitudes have greater correlation with pupil achievement than material home circumstances or variations in school and classroom organization, instructional materials, and particular teaching practices.”
—Children and Their Primary Schools, vol. 1, ch. 3, Central Advisory Council for Education, London (1967)
“Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have “really happened,” or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)