7 - ‘de te fabula narratur’: The Narrative Constitutionalism of James Harrington's Oceana

Summary

While the importance of James Harrington's Oceana is generally acknowledged, its meaning and intention, status and context have been the subject of three major controversies in the last sixty years. The first of these was about the work's linking of property and power and the meaning of Harrington's attempt to stabilise the relationship between them through an Agrarian Law. The second concerned the nature and sources of his republicanism. The third relates to the ambiguity of the work's dedication to Oliver Cromwell. Was Harrington sceptical or optimistic in relation to the lord protector's ability to act in the public interest, without personal ambition? These issues have overshadowed the significance of Oceana's subtitle citation of Horace - ‘de te Fabula narratur. That epigraph suggested a number of things, one of which was that narrative was to be critical to the work's form, intention and audience. The ‘te’ - the audience - whom it addresses embraced not only the lord protector but also mutually antagonistic English, Irish and Scottish political, military and religious groups as well as heads of households, office-holders and taxpayers at parish, hundred, county and Britannic levels, the victors, the defeated and the neuters in Britain's civil wars.