Branching Histories: Political Mythopoetics in Four Brexit Narratives

This thesis aims to provide a case study for a critical theory of mythopoetics, via analysis of four ‘Brexit narratives’: The Bad Boys of Brexit by Arron Banks, Unleashing Demons by Craig Oliver, All Out War by Tim Shipman and The Brexit Club by Owen Bennett. My objective is to demonstrate the prevalence of mythopoetics in political and historical discourse, via analysis of four competing political histories. Each offers a narrative account of the 2016 referendum to exit the European Union. I intend to examine how four literary works, each labelled as historical non-fiction, carefully and consciously apply mythopoetic techniques to create four strikingly diverse narratives from a single, common experience. Their existence reflects the concerns of the culture in which they were written: that in a society defenestrated of cohesive “grand narratives” (Lyotard 30-32), unfathomably complex issues are increasingly manipulated and weaponised in a dialectical struggle of power and national identity. In order to effectively critique the mythification of political histories, we must re-evaluate the role of the citizen as a reader and critic of society.