Political Leadership Stories Of Power And Politics From Literature and Life

Chapter 1 I Political Stories from the Past We live in history, its heritage a powerful force in our present-day lives. And so it goes with nations as well. Past political errors or breakthroughs inform the way we think about nationhood and how we act as citizens in the country we call our own. In the following political stories of the past, we see how the process of politics is enacted by those who rule, and how it impacts those who follow. Through the eyes of tragedians of long ago, such as Sophocles, and later through the words of nineteenth-century novelists of England and Russia, such as George Eliot and Dostoyevsky, we learn how average people tried to live, and tried to make do, in families and neighborhoods. But these same introspective writers were also attempting to render the political side of our livesdepicting the leaders to whom we acquiesce, and the doubt (even, at times, outright disapproval or disdain) we have with respect to them. Here, then, are political moments of the past, given the suggestive life high art can convey to a reader's later time. Through them, we see how politics workswe witness the manipulations of power and ambition, the art of compromise, the rise and fall of political careers, and the desire to conquer. In short, the past becomes the teacher of the present. George Eliot George Eliot (181980), the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, is regarded as one of the great Victorian novelists, especially noted for her insightful psychological characterizations. Her best-known novel, Middlemarch (187172), follows the emotional and intellectual frustrations of Dorothea Brooke. As Oscar Wilde once remarked in 1897, Eliot "is the embodiment of philosophy in fiction." In Felix Holt, the Radical, written in 1866, Eliot observes that progressive reformers can be even more self-interested than their conservative opponents. Young Harold Transome returns to England from the American colonies with a self-made fortune, then scandalizes his district by running for Parliament as a Radical. This excerpt from Felix Holt introduces the concept of "political consciousness," which can be understood as a continuing and acute sense of the role politics plays in everyday life. Through Felix Holt's actions, George Eliot shows us how average people are affected by politicshow their values and daily activities are connected to, and shaped by, government. For George Eliot, the political process articulated a given country's social valuesit provided public expression for the customs and conflicts of daily life. The theater of politics becomes, then, an affirmation of a citizenry's values, concerns, and aspirations. 7 From Felix Holt, the Radical Thus Treby Magna, which had lived quietly through the great earthquakes of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, which had remained unmoved by the "Rights of Man," and saw little in Mr. Cobbett's "Weekly Register" except that he held eccentric views about potatoes, began at last to know the higher pains of a dim political consciousness; and the development had been greatly helped by the recent agitation about the Reform Bill. Tory, Whig, and Radical did not perhaps become clearer in their definition of each other; but the names seemed to acquire so strong a stamp of honour or infamy, that definitions would only have weakened the impression. As to the short and easy method of judging opinions by the personal character of those who held them, it was liable to be much frustrated in Treby. It so happened in that particular town that the Reformers weSmerek, Ryan is the author of 'Political Leadership Stories Of Power And Politics From Literature and Life', published 2005 under ISBN 9780812971705 and ISBN 0812971701.