RT Book
T1 The world of Mr Casaubon: Britain's wars of mythography, 1700-1870
T2 Ideas in context
JF Ideas in context
A1 Kidd, Colin 1964-
LA English
PP Cambridge New York Melbourne Delhi Singapore
PB Cambridge University Press
YR 2017
ED First paperback edition
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1632838087
AB The World of Mr Casaubon takes as its point of departure a fictional character - Mr Casaubon in George Eliot's classic novel, Middlemarch. The author of an unfinished 'Key to All Mythologies', Casaubon has become an icon of obscurantism, irrelevance and futility. Crossing conventional disciplinary boundaries, Colin Kidd excavates Casaubon's hinterland, and illuminates the fierce ideological war which raged over the use of pagan myths to defend Christianity from the existential threat posed by radical Enlightenment criticism. Notwithstanding Eliot's portrayal of Casaubon, Anglican mythographers were far from unworldly, and actively rebutted the radical freethinking associated with the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Orientalism was a major theatre in this ideological conflict, and mythography also played an indirect but influential role in framing the new science of anthropology. The World of Mr Casaubon is rich in interdisciplinary twists and ironies, and paints a vivid picture of the intellectual world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.
NO Includes bibliographical references and index
CN PR4662
SN 9781107608597
SN 9781107027718
SN 1107608597
SN 1107027713
K1 Eliot, George 1819-1880
K1 Eliot, George 1819-1880 : Knowledge : Mythology : Eliot, George 1819-1880 : Middlemarch (Eliot, George) : 1700-1899
K1 Mythology in literature
K1 Mythology : History : 18th century
K1 Mythology : History : 19th century
K1 Mythology
K1 Mythology in literature : History
DO 10.1017/9781139226646