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Conjuring (divine) authority: the myth of the 'found' text

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Conjuring (divine) authority: the myth of the 'found' text
Authors: Patrick, Heather
Contributors: Colorado, Carlos, University of Manitoba
Publisher Information: 2018.
Publication Year: 2018
Subject Terms: Comparative mythology, Margaret Atwood, Aelius Aristides, Method and theory in the study of religion, Book of the law, Recovered documents, Social memory theory, Timaeus, Invented religions, Fabrication and forgery, History of religion, Constructing authority
Description: In this study, I classify and examine a literary device that I term ‘the myth of the found text’ so as to explore how such stories operate to authorize and reinforce, especially religious, authority. Here I contend that individuals or groups in specific socio-historical contexts construct stories of found texts as a kind of conjuring trick, one that functions to confer the storyteller’s power and stature. By appealing to the authority of an ancient text allegedly newly recovered, these mythmakers are able to situate social programs and religious reforms in an imagined, ideal antiquity—an exemplary past. The creation and telling of such myths can thus be seen as a political manoeuvre, a manoeuvre that constructs an authority (the ‘found’ text) that is then cleverly protected from contestation. While we may be quick to impugn such strategies, they have much in common, I argue, with ‘religion’ and with scholarship itself.
Document Type: Master thesis
File Description: application/pdf
Language: English
Access URL: https://hdl.handle.net/1993/33411
Accession Number: edsair.od.......217..5c399fc859b9b5390c43255f56398b00
Database: OpenAIRE
Description
Abstract:In this study, I classify and examine a literary device that I term ‘the myth of the found text’ so as to explore how such stories operate to authorize and reinforce, especially religious, authority. Here I contend that individuals or groups in specific socio-historical contexts construct stories of found texts as a kind of conjuring trick, one that functions to confer the storyteller’s power and stature. By appealing to the authority of an ancient text allegedly newly recovered, these mythmakers are able to situate social programs and religious reforms in an imagined, ideal antiquity—an exemplary past. The creation and telling of such myths can thus be seen as a political manoeuvre, a manoeuvre that constructs an authority (the ‘found’ text) that is then cleverly protected from contestation. While we may be quick to impugn such strategies, they have much in common, I argue, with ‘religion’ and with scholarship itself.