Poetry, myth and storytelling in the history of political theory

Abstract

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.