The essays in this collection address the question of nationalism in its manifest and latent forms in the Balkan literatures. The shared theme of the essays may be summed up as the investigation of the cultural production as well as reproduction of the ideology of nationhood in terms of the role literature plays in a nation's self-fashioning. The contributors from the various Balkan countries as well as experts on Balkan history and culture interrogate the ways in which the national consciousness of the specific country under discussion infiltrates its literary production.