The Reception of Myth in English Romanticism

In this important study, Anthony Harding examines the ways in which mythology was received and reinterpreted by the most prominent English Romantic poets. Although there have been studies that examined a particular author's interest in various mythic traditions, none has addressed the wider question of the contemporary reception of myth: what sources the Romantics turned to, what the influential schools of mythography were, and what roles the individual writers gave to mythology or to particular myths in their work. In The Reception of Myth in English Romanticism, Harding deals with those questions by examining how Romantic writers understood and received myth and what they understood "the mythic" to be. He shows how the Romantics' own mythmaking drew its meaning from the contemporary political scene and contemporary ideological conflicts, rather than from a concept of myth as a timeless, unchanging source of value. Harding analyzes the uses of myth in selected texts of the period, covering the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, among others. Including a valuable bibliography of primary and secondary sources, The Reception of Myth in English Romanticism fills a major void in Romantic studies. This book will be of great benefit to specialists in English Romanticism and to anyone with a serious interest in mythology.