Description
Book SynopsisWhile the efforts of George Eliot's fictional Mr Casaubon to create a 'Key to All Mythologies' may seem fruitless and obscure, Colin Kidd's interdisciplinary study excavates Casaubon's hinterland and illuminates the fierce ideological war which raged over the use of pagan myths to defend Christianity from radical Enlightenment thought.
Trade Review'Behind this excellent study of the history of mythography in Britain lies an ingenious starting point: the 'hobby horse' of George Eliot's dried-up pedant and seeker of the 'Key to All Mythologies' in Middlemarch the Revd Edward Casaubon … Colin Kidd's achievement is to have made an impressively wide-ranging and readable contribution to the immensely complex history of the subject that caught the Revd Edward Casaubon in its net.' Rosemary Ashton, The Times Literary Supplement
'Kidd's sprightly style can breathe life into apparently dead disputes. He makes a particularly touching case for Jacob Bryant, whose hefty A New System of Ancient Mythology (1774–76) was the closest thing to a prototype of Casaubon's project.' Rosemary Hill, The Guardian
'The World of Mr Casaubon is an important insight into an early modern and nineteenth-century intellectual tradition - and a valuable explanation of why Eliot wished to give this tradition such a bruising.' Richard Fallon, The British Society for Literature and Science
Table of Contents1. Prologue: Casaubon's dubious bequest; 2. The key to all mythologies; 3. The legacies of the ancients in Enlightenment mythography; 4. The obsessions of Jacob Bryant: Arkite idolatry and the quest for Troy; 5. The dispute of the Orient: Anglo-French rivalries in an Age of Revolution; 6. Fish-gods, floods and serpent-worship: from apologetics to anthropology; 7. Epilogue: the keys to all mythology in 1872.
