The fact that Queen Elizabeth’s funeral is taking a month enables me to be at least somewhat topical and talk about monarchy’s relationship to the imagination. For monarchy is not just a political but also a mythological construct, and that is the reason it persists in a democratic age despite the many voices, some of them angry, crying to abolish it. The British monarchy clearly would like to be an entirely symbolic institution, and thus above politics, but dissenters are presently denying such a possibility and holding it responsible for everything wrong with the UK, from income inequality to the British Empire. Does an American have any business holding forth on this issue? What do I know of monarchy, whose country came into existence by revolting against it? My only answer is that I have spent my life teaching British literature, and in doing so have been faced with the task of trying to equip students with the imaginative background necessary to understand authors whose work is inseparable from the theme of royalty, from the
September 23, 2022
September 23, 2022
September 23, 2022
The fact that Queen Elizabeth’s funeral is taking a month enables me to be at least somewhat topical and talk about monarchy’s relationship to the imagination. For monarchy is not just a political but also a mythological construct, and that is the reason it persists in a democratic age despite the many voices, some of them angry, crying to abolish it. The British monarchy clearly would like to be an entirely symbolic institution, and thus above politics, but dissenters are presently denying such a possibility and holding it responsible for everything wrong with the UK, from income inequality to the British Empire. Does an American have any business holding forth on this issue? What do I know of monarchy, whose country came into existence by revolting against it? My only answer is that I have spent my life teaching British literature, and in doing so have been faced with the task of trying to equip students with the imaginative background necessary to understand authors whose work is inseparable from the theme of royalty, from the