Mapping Mythologies
Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History

The last major work by Marilyn Butler, leading literary critic of the late twentieth century, on imaginative ideas of nationhood.

Marilyn Butler (Author), Heather Glen (Preface by)

9781107116382, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 August 2015

237 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.7 cm, 0.47 kg

'Rich in knowledge, historical empathy and new angles of interpretation … essential reading.' Pamela Clemit, The Times Literary Supplement

In this groundbreaking work of revisionary literary history, Marilyn Butler traces the imagining of alternative versions of the nation in eighteenth-century Britain, both in the works of a series of well-known poets (Akenside, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Chatterton, Macpherson, Blake) and in the differing accounts of the national culture offered by eighteenth-century antiquarians and literary historians. She charts the beginnings in eighteenth-century Britain of what is now called cultural history, exploring how and why it developed, and the issues at stake. Her interest is not simply in a succession of great writers, but in the politics of a wider culture, in which writers, scholars, publishers, editors, booksellers, readers all play their parts. For more than thirty years, Marilyn Butler was a towering presence in eighteenth-century and romantic studies, and this major work is published for the first time.

Preface Heather Glen
1. Mapping mythologies
2. Thomson and Akenside
3. Collins and Gray
4. The forgers: Macpherson and Chatterton
5. Popular antiquities
6. Blake
Coda.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]