'Kubla Khan' and the Fall of Jerusalem
The Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and Secular Literature 1770–1880

The development of the mythological school of European Biblical criticism.

E. S. Shaffer (Author)

9780521298070, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 5 June 1980

372 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.61 kg

'It is no exaggeration to say that this study is one of the few produced recently which European scholars and thinkers, so often and pertinently quoted, will have to take very seriously indeed.' George Steiner, The Times

Dr Schaffer outlines the development of the mythological school of European Biblical criticism, especially its German origins and its reception in England, and studies the influence of this movement in the work of specific writers: Coleridge Hölderlin, Browning, and George Eliot. The 'higher criticism' treated sacred scripture as literature and as history, as the product of its time, and the highest expression of a developing group consciousness; it challenged current views on the authorship and dating of the Pentateuch and the Gospels, on inspiration, prophecy, and canonicity, and formulated a new apologetics closely linked with the growth of Romantic aesthetics. The importance of this study is that it shows that readings of specific literary texts can intersect with general movements of thought and action through the scrutiny of a clearly defined intellectual discipline, here the higher criticism, which developed as a particular expression of the larger trends in the history of the period. Dr Shaffer throws light on individual works of literature, the formation between England and Germany, and the bases of European Romanticism.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Fall of Jerusalem: Coleridge's unwritten epic
2. The visionary character: revelation and the lyrical ballad
3. The oriental idyll
4. Hölderlin's 'Patmos' ode and 'Kubla Khan': mythological doubling
5. Browning's St John: the casuistry of the higher criticism
6. Daniel Deronda and the conventions of fiction
Appendices
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]