Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About the Cover
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Prologue: The Prehistory of Power: Souls Spirits, Deities
- Part One Kings and Emperors
- 1 Divine Kingship in Mesopotamia
- 2 Pharaohs among the Indestructibles
- 3 Kingship among the Hebrews
- 4 The Deification of Roman Emperors
- 5 The Deva-Rajas in India and Southeast Asia
- 6 The Chinese Mandate from Heaven
- 7 The Japanese Imperial Cult
- Part Two Empires before the Common Era
- 8 The Legendary Empire of the Sumerians
- 9 Legendary Empires of Preclassical Greece
- 10 Patriarchs, Exodus, and the Epic of Israel
- 11 Legendary Empires of Ancient India
- 12 The Legendary Founding of Rome
- Part Three Founders
- 13 Moses: The Israelite Lawgiver
- 14 Buddha and Legends of Previous Buddhas
- 15 The Savior Narratives
- 16 Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Islam
- 17 The Virgin Mary through the Centuries
- 18 Tonantzin and Our Lady of Guadalupe
- Part Four Empires of the Common Era
- 19 Narrative Inventions of the Holy Roman Empire
- 20 The Epic of Kings, Alexander the Great, and the Malacca Sultinate
- 21 The Franks, Charlemagne, and the Chansons de Geste
- 22 The Legendary Kingdom of King Arthur
- 23 Ethiopian Kings and the Ark of the Covenant
- 24 Narratives of the Virgin Queen
- Part Five Ideologies
- 25 Discovery: The European Narrative of Power
- 26 Epics of the Portuguese Seaborne Empire
- 27 Dekanawida and the Iroquois League
- 28 The New England Canaan of the Puritans
- 29 The Marxist Classless Society
- 30 Adolph Hitler: Narratives of Aryans and Jews
- Epilogue: A Clash of Narratives
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About the Cover
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Prologue: The Prehistory of Power: Souls Spirits, Deities
- Part One Kings and Emperors
- 1 Divine Kingship in Mesopotamia
- 2 Pharaohs among the Indestructibles
- 3 Kingship among the Hebrews
- 4 The Deification of Roman Emperors
- 5 The Deva-Rajas in India and Southeast Asia
- 6 The Chinese Mandate from Heaven
- 7 The Japanese Imperial Cult
- Part Two Empires before the Common Era
- 8 The Legendary Empire of the Sumerians
- 9 Legendary Empires of Preclassical Greece
- 10 Patriarchs, Exodus, and the Epic of Israel
- 11 Legendary Empires of Ancient India
- 12 The Legendary Founding of Rome
- Part Three Founders
- 13 Moses: The Israelite Lawgiver
- 14 Buddha and Legends of Previous Buddhas
- 15 The Savior Narratives
- 16 Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Islam
- 17 The Virgin Mary through the Centuries
- 18 Tonantzin and Our Lady of Guadalupe
- Part Four Empires of the Common Era
- 19 Narrative Inventions of the Holy Roman Empire
- 20 The Epic of Kings, Alexander the Great, and the Malacca Sultinate
- 21 The Franks, Charlemagne, and the Chansons de Geste
- 22 The Legendary Kingdom of King Arthur
- 23 Ethiopian Kings and the Ark of the Covenant
- 24 Narratives of the Virgin Queen
- Part Five Ideologies
- 25 Discovery: The European Narrative of Power
- 26 Epics of the Portuguese Seaborne Empire
- 27 Dekanawida and the Iroquois League
- 28 The New England Canaan of the Puritans
- 29 The Marxist Classless Society
- 30 Adolph Hitler: Narratives of Aryans and Jews
- Epilogue: A Clash of Narratives
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author
Summary
We typically think of power as economic, military, or political. In this war-torn millennium, stealth aircraft and smart bombs come to mind. In past cultures, we think of invaders on horseback or sailing ships armed with cannons. We rarely think of power as an intangible invention of leaders, elites, artists, sculptors, or storytellers in imperial courts. But from the dawn of civilization, kings, empires, and societies have developed self-aggrandizing narratives in inscriptions, relief art, literary works, and political tracts. Fictional History, Fabricated Power traces narratives of power from prominent cultures across the globe. The continental divide of this study is the distinction between story and fact, the latter becoming the primary unit of knowledge with the rise of empirical science. The motivation was the need to establish a person, society, culture, or ideology as separate and superior through imaginative means. Before the Renaissance, meaning was stored and communicated through narrative, which Hayden White (1989, 1) described as a “metacode” understandable to all members of a culture. More broadly, Roland Barthes (1977, 79) described narrative as “international, transhistorical, transcultural,” a “human universal” according to Donald Brown (1991), defining it as a reservoir of primary importance for discovering how cultures worldwide throughout history invented themselves. The ubiquity of invented history defines this as a rich area for probing the social and psychological nature of power.
Effects of this approach are several; those relevant to this study are three. From the dawn of civilization, kings or their loyal elites created narratives of power as enhancements of their persons, positions, and authority. From any objective viewpoint, these defy historical verification; such narratives are almost entirely fictional. This is true not only with kings and lawgivers but also with spiritual leaders who stand as founders of major world religions. Second, entire populations have been receptive to such narratives and thus responded with almost uniform support for their leaders and dedication to their kingdoms and empires. This behavior is a fact of observation; quite apart from issues of historical fact, such narratives meet imaginative needs of populations so influenced. Third, entire populations have been empowered by elaborate narratives of imperial origins and back histories that justify nationalist and imperialist behavior—the subjugation of other cultures and, in some cases, persecution, inquisition, execution, ethnic cleansing, and wholesale destruction.
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- Information
- Invented History, Fabricated PowerThe Narratives Shaping Civilization and Culture, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2020