Nations, Traditions and Cross-cultural Identities

Book excerpt: The notion of citizenship is part of a national collective memory and a memory of individuals belonging to a specific geographical, historical and cultural context. The volume seeks to investigate the importance of women's relationship with citizenship and nationality from a diachronic perspective analysing different forms of writing in various European contexts. Many themes intersect in the different essays that comprise the volume, including the construction of female identity through religious ideology, the importance of translation and cultural studies as a source of feminine knowledge, and the relationship between public life and private domain within the multiculturalism of Europe. The intersection between national identity, women's writings and cultural difference surfaces in many essays and demonstrates how the notion of a necessary translation between cultures has been central for women authors since the seventeenth century.