Selecting the memory, controlling the myth
View/ Open
Published version
Embargoed until: 5555-01-01
Embargoed until: 5555-01-01
Pagination
57 - 57 (75)
Publisher
Publisher URL
ISBN-13
9781472462329
Location
Journal
Injustice, Memory and Faith in Human Rights
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Notwithstanding age-old aspirations to ground law in rational thought, the constitutive role of myth perennially resurfaces. Political mythology is always a reconstruction of historical memory, and that process becomes crucial at times of systemic political and legal re-constitution. We witness such a political moment in Western Europe in the late 16th and 17th centuries with the emergence of political modernity and the nation state. It is no accident that, in those years, theatre becomes a dominant art form, in which historical memory becomes ritually re-enacted to crystallise the political and social myths which will furnish European legal regimes with value systems. The Shakespearean Henry IV: Part One and The Tempest, along with Jean Racine’s Andromaque, are examined as evidence for that transformation from memory into myth, and history into normativity.
Authors
HEINZE, ECollections
- Department of Law [873]