Poetry, myth and storytelling in the history of political theory

ABSTRACT

This essay raises three questions: What has myth been? What can myth do? And does recognising the centrality of mythmaking and imaginative narration to political theory across time have implications for how we approach political theory's modern history? First, I suggest that discussions of myth in early modern England were embedded within broader debates about the nature and power of poetry. This raises questions about how we delineate the criteria for myth as opposed to other forms of imaginative narration. Then I ask whether myths are not simply obfuscating, as often assumed, but also potentially truth-making? Finally, if a constitutive aspect of political theory across time has been a preoccupation with myth, this gives us further ground (if such further ground is needed) to attend to feminist theorists in the 1960s and 70s, for whom a central task was to expose and debunk prevailing myths.

KEYWORDS:

• Myth
• Thomas More
• Francis Bacon
• poetry
• imagination
• feminist theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Note that this allows, on Keum’s terms, literary myth to include both stories said to originate from those civilizations themselves as well as stories about ancient or remote civilizations which do not necessarily originate from those contexts.

2. I don’t think the distinction for Keum here can simply be a matter of explicit naming, either: where literary myths are those that are explicitly named as such and deep myths are those which are not so named. Not least because she treats as literary myths certain stories – like that recounted by Raphael Hythloday in Utopia – which are not referred to as ‘myths’ either by their tellers or by their audience.

3. ‘Fables’ is the translation here but it is worth noting that the word Cebes, Socrates’s interlocutor, uses to refer to Aesop’s speech in this instance is logos.

4. Though we should not underestimate the extent to which Plato was engaged by movement women in the US, both inside and outside the academy. For an early example of the inclusion of the Republic on a women’s movement reading list see Cisler (1968).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sophie Smith

Sophie Smith is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow of University College. Her research focuses on early modern political thought and twentieth-century intellectual history, especially the history of feminist political theory.