1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910150172203321

Autore

Kidd Colin

Titolo

The world of Mr Casaubon : Britain's wars of mythography, 1700-1870 / / Colin Kidd [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2016

ISBN

1-108-10956-X

1-108-11024-X

1-108-10547-5

1-108-11092-4

1-139-22664-9

1-108-11160-2

1-108-11432-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (vi, 232 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Ideas in context ; ; 115

Disciplina

283.4209033

Soggetti

Mythology - History

Mythologists - Great Britain

Orientalism - Great Britain

Great Britain Intellectual life 18th century

Great Britain Intellectual life 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 28 Nov 2016).

Nota di contenuto

Prologue: Casaubon's dubious bequest -- The key to all mythologies --  The legacies of the ancients in enlightenment mythography -- The obsessions of Jacob Bryant: Arkite Idolatry and the quest for Troy -- The dispute of the Orient: Anglo-French rivalries in an age of revolution -- Fish-gods, floods and serpent-worship: from apologetics to anthropology -- Epilogue: the keys to all mythology in 1872.

Sommario/riassunto

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.