During the 19th Century, European societies went through a stark transition due to processes of modernity, predominantly urbanization, liberalization and proletarization. As the majority of European citizens during the previous century were farmers, it is rational to hypothesize that the loss of rural ideals and farmer society must constitute a major part within national identity and collective memory. In this study I analyze how two different literary narratives of rural traditions have been used in order to construct such memories. Through comparing two novels, Joy of Man’s Desiring by Jean Giono, and the Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg, I have focused upon how literature from a specific era constructs narrative of an earlier time as a tool to capture and debate their own contemporary political processes. Through interpretative methods and theories of collective memory, original myth, and the historical novel, I have focused upon specific relevant themes. My results show that French political narratives of environmental preservation and anti-pastoralist policy are central within Giono’s novel, where he uses anti-modern tropes in order to reconstruct an alternative route which aims to reject and conflict dichotomies of culture and nature, as well as modernity and tradition. He places the supreme way of life to that of the pastoralist, a tradition which lies at the heart of Provence identity. In opposite, Moberg’s story rejects traditional Swedish farmer society as representative of a static, oppressive order, and places American nature and society as representative of a new enlightened and liberalized age. Conclusively I discuss how these two authors both use the historical novel as motivational discourses which project an ideal national identity through positioning themselves within different ideals of modernity and tradition.