Mapping Mythologies

Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History

Marilyn Butler

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781107116382
• eBook ISBN: 9781316372050
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 A map of mythologising
• Chapter 2 Thomson and Akenside
• Chapter 3 Collins and Gray
• Chapter 4 The forgers: Macpherson and Chatterton
• Chapter 5 Popular Antiquities
• Chapter 6 Blake
• Coda
• Notes
• Index