This paper examines certain theoretical underpinnings of the historical processes by which Shakespeare's history plays became the de facto collective memory of the events they depict, even when those events are misrepresented. The scholarly conversation about this misrepresentation has heretofore centered on Shakespeare's potential political motivations. I argue that this focus on a political, authorial intent has largely ignored the impact these historical distortions have had over the subsequent 400 years. I propose that, due to Shakespeare's unique place in the historical timeline of the development of collective memory, Shakespeare's historical misrepresentation in the history plays is a byproduct of the emerging ability to access historical sources while also shaping the nascent collective memory. Shakespeare became an archon, in the Derridian sense, of English history. As such he exercised the archon's hermeneutic right to interpret English history. Tracing the methods by which the public experienced Shakespeare's plays, this project shows that in the 20th century film became the dominant medium by which audiences experienced Shakespeare for the first time. Using Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight as the principle example, I show that the hermeneutic right shifted away from Shakespeare and was instead taken on by directors reinterpreting Shakespeare's version of history. Welles' knowing manipulation of the archontic function empowers his film, affecting subsequent interpretation and placing it squarely in the Shakespearean film canon.

George MacDonald's novel Lilith relates the story of a young man inheriting his deceased father's estate and coming in contact with its remarkable library and mysterious librarian. The protagonist's subsequent adventures in a fantastical world prepare the young Mr. Vane to assume authority over his inherited archive and become an archon. Jacques Derrida's exposition of the responsibilities of the archon including archival authority, domiciliation, and consignation illuminate the mentoring role of the elusive librarian Mr. Raven in Vane's adventures. By using Derrida's deconstruction of archives to unpack the intricacies of knowledge transfer in MacDonald's novel, the lasting impact of the archon on the archive and the individuals in Lilith, as well as the importance of the archon in the transfer of knowledge between individuals facilitated through relationships, becomes apparent. The archon, acting as a gatherer, organizer, and shaper of texts, uses the materials within the archive to exercise power and to bequeath power upon other individuals, as seen in the character Mr. Raven's actions. Lilith illustrates the necessity of the archon as he shapes the archive's contents and governs the interactions between book and reader, ultimately allowing the archive to become a place where knowledge is heritable.

In the first chapter of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Gilbert Markham invites his reader to join him as he attempts to recall the past. Because Gilbert uses the journal of another to supplement his own memories, the novel's frame narrative structure becomes saturated with complex memory-based issues and problems. Thus, the complicated frame narrative provides fertile ground for exploring the novel through memory. In studying the frame narrative, scholars have typically devoted their criticism to Gilbert and how he shapes the frame. Few scholars afford the other primary narrator of the novel, Helen, any power in shaping that frame. However, both Gilbert's and Helen's narratives exist separately yet function codependently. Using recent studies in memory as well as Derridean and Foucaultian archive theory as a lens, I will explore how Tenant presents an anarchic narrative structure that simultaneously gives its own semblance of power and order without assigning complete narrative power to one person or to one gender.

L’anarchia désigne au sens propre la vacance du pouvoir dans la sphère militaire (la mort du chef sur le champ de bataille) et dans la sphère politique (la vacance de la magistrature, en particulier éponyme). La notion est vite devenue plus générale et exprime au figuré le manque ou le refus du commandement. Elle se rapproche des sens d’insubordination, insoumission, indiscipline, licence et désordre. L’expérience effective de la vacance du pouvoir dans les cités grecques, sa représentation et sa conceptualisation constituent les axes principaux de cette recherche. L’anarchia est envisagée à l’échelle de l’âme, de la famille, de la cité, voire de l’univers. Elle engage une réflexion sur l’articulation entre deux principes a priori antagonistes, l’aspiration à la liberté et la nécessité de l’ordre, et par conséquent sur les fondements de l’exercice légitime du pouvoir. L’étude repose sur l’analyse précise des emplois du terme anarchia dans les sources épigraphiques, historiques, littéraires et philosophiques. La première partie envisage les vacances effectives des magistratures dans le cadre du cours normal ou d’une rupture du fonctionnement des institutions ainsi que les palliatifs mis en place. Les occurrences du terme anarchia concernent les cités d’Athènes, Thasos, Téos, Syros et Bérénikè. S’ajoutent les emplois problématiques des termes akosmia à propos du régime crétois par Aristote et atagia dans les inscriptions thessaliennes. La deuxième partie envisage l’évolution sémantique du terme de l’absence de chef à l’anarchie chez les historiens et les poètes tragiques et la place de l’anarchia dans les théories du commandement élaborées par Xénophon, Platon et Aristote. / The term anarchia refers literally to the absence of power, in the military sphere (that caused by the loss of a commander), and the political sphere (the absence of archontes, specifically the eponymous archon). The concept quickly generalised, coming to designate in the figurative sense the lack and want of power or the rejection and negation of power. It approaches the meanings of insubordination, rebelliousness, unruliness, licentiousness and disorder. The actual experience of power vacuum in the cities of Ancient Greece and how the Greeks represented it and conceptualised it are the three main lines of this research. Anarchia is conceived not only in the city but also in the soul of the individual, in the family, or even in the universe. It demands reflection on the articulation between two seemingly antagonistic principles, the desire for freedom and the necessity of order, and consequently upon the foundations of legitimate authority. This work relies on a precise analysis of the term anarchia in the epigraphic, historical, literary and philosophical sources. The first part deals with actual periods of power vacuum in the ordinary course of political life or in the context of institutional disruption and the implemented remedies. The term anarchia is employed in the cities of Athens, Thasos, Teos, Syros and Berenike. One must add the problematical use of the terms acosmia by Aristotle regarding the Cretan regime and atagia in the Thessalian inscriptions. The second part deals with the semantic evolution of the term from the absence of ruler to anarchy in the work of historians and tragic poets and the role of anarchia in the theory of leadership developed by Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle.

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