The Rise of Modern Mythology, 1680-1860

by Feldman, Burton

• ISBN13: 9780253201881
• ISBN10: 0253201888
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-02-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

"... peerless... " -- The Key Reporter"... this book is a first. It will be a standard... Comprehensiveness as well as the clarity of the headnotes should make it endure." -- Choice"... so good as it stands... one should simply be happy to have it." -- The Journal of the History of Ideas"... an original, compendious, and highly useful contribution to historical and mythographical scholarship." -- The American Scholar"The Rise of Modern Mythology is a voice of reason in the contemporary maelstrom of international religious violence and American pluralism; more than any book I know, it exposes the roots of the Western appropriation of non-Western mythologies, from Lawrence of Arabia and Omar Khayyam to Tibetan Buddhism in Hollywood and Krishna Consciousness in airports. This is a book that we need now." -- Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, The University of Chicago

Author Biography

Burton Feldman, Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Denver, has also taught at the University of Chicago and Hebrew University. He has contributed articles on 18th-19th century mythology to the Dictionary ofthe History of Ideas and The Encyclopedia of Religion, and (with Robert D. Richardson) has edited and introduced Myth and Romanticism, a 50-volume set of sources for English Romantic writers.

Robert D. Richardson, Jr. is an independent scholar and literary biographer who currently divides his time between Middletown, Connecticut, Key West, and Cape Cod. He has taught at Harvard, the University of Denver, theUniversity of Colorado, Queens College and the Graduate Center of CUNY, Sichuan University in China, Yale, and Wesleyan. He is author of Literature and Film, Myth and Literature in the American Renaissance, Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, and Emerson: The Mind on Fire. He edited (with Allen Mandelbaum) Three Centuries of American Poetry and is working on a biography of William James.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xii
Wendy Doniger
1972 Foreword	xiii
Mircea Eliade
Acknowledgments	xvii
Introduction	xix
PART ONE / The Earlier Eighteenth Century
Introduction	3	(4)
Bernard Fontenelle (1657-1757)	7	(12)
Of the Origin of Fables	10	(9)
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)	19	(6)
From ``Jupiter,'' in The Dictionary Historical and Critical	22	(3)
John Toland (1670-1722)	25	(9)
From ``Origin of Idolatry,'' in Letters to Serena	27	(7)
John Trenchard (1662-1723)	34	(7)
From the Natural History of Superstition	35	(6)
Richard Blome (d. 1705)
Willem Bosman (b. 1672)
Pere Joseph Lafitau (1670-1740)	41	(9)
From The Present State of His Majesties Isles	43	(1)
From Description of Guinea	44	(3)
From The Customs of the American Savages Compared to the Customs of the First Ages	47	(3)
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)	50	(12)
From The New Science	55	(7)
Andrew Ramsay (1686-1743)	62	(9)
From ``Of the Mythology of the Antients,'' in The Travels of Cyrus	64	(7)
Samuel Shuckford (c. 1694-1754)	71	(8)
From Sacred and Profane History Connected	73	(6)
Ephraim Chambers (d. 1740)	79	(4)
From Cyclopedia	80	(3)
Etienne Fourmont (1683-1745)	83	(3)
From Critical Reflections on the Accounts of Ancient Peoples	84	(2)
Antoine Banier (1675-1741)	86	(7)
From The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients explain'd from history	88	(5)
Nicolas Freret (1688-1749)	93	(6)
From ``Mythology: or the Religion of the Greeks''	96	(3)
Thomas Blackwell (1701-1757)	99	(13)
From An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer	103	(4)
From Letters concerning Mythology	107	(5)
William Warburton (1698-1779)	112	(6)
From The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated	113	(5)
Noel Antoine Pluche (1688-1761)	118	(6)
From The History of the Heavens	119	(5)
William Stukeley (1687-1765)	124	(6)
From Stonehenge, A Temple restor'd to the British Druids	126	(4)
Andrew Tooke (1673-1732)
Joseph Spence (1699-1768)	130	(9)
From Tooke's Pantheon	133	(1)
From Polymetis	134	(5)
Mark Akenside (1721-1770)	139	(5)
From ``Hymn to the Naiads''	140	(4)
Robert Lowth (1710-1788)	144	(9)
From Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews	146	(5)
Voltaire (1694-1778)	151	(2)
From Philosophical Dictionary	153	(7)
David Hume (1711-1776)	157	(3)
From The Natural History of Religion	160	(8)
PART TWO / The Later Eighteenth Century
Introduction	165	(3)
Charles De Brosses (1709-1777)	168	(9)
From On the Worship of Fetish Gods	170	(7)
Baron D'Holbach (1723-1789)	177	(8)
From The System of Nature	180	(5)
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)	185	(6)
From An Essay on the Study of Literature	187	(4)
Robert Wood (1717?-1771)	191	(8)
From ``Homer's Religion and Mythology,'' in An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer	192	(7)
Paul Mallet (1730-1807)
James Macpherson (1736-1796)
Hugh Blair (1718-1800)	199	(16)
From Northern Antiquities	203	(7)
From Carthon	210	(1)
From ``A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian''	211	(4)
Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812)	215	(9)
From ``Inquiry into the Causes of Fables''	218	(2)
From ``An Interpretation of the Language of Myths''	220	(4)
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)	224	(17)
From ``A Correspondence on Ossian''	228	(2)
From ``On Contemporary Uses of Mythology''	230	(2)
From Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind	232	(3)
From Travel Diary	235	(1)
From The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry	236	(5)
Jacob Bryant (1715-1804)	241	(8)
From A New System	243	(6)
Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824)	249	(8)
From A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus	251	(6)
Antoine Pernety (1716-1801)	257	(3)
From Egyptian and Greek Fables Unveiled	258	(1)
From Mythic-Hermetic Dictionary	258	(2)
J. W. von Goethe (1749-1832)
K. P. Moritz (1756-1793)	260	(7)
``Prometheus''	263	(1)
From Treatise on the Gods	264	(3)
Sir William Jones (1746-1794)	267	(9)
From ``On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India''	270	(6)
Charles Dupuis (1742-1809)	276	(12)
From The Origin of All Religious Worship	279	(9)
William Blake (1757-1827)	288	(14)
From Jerusalem	291	(1)
From ``A Descriptive Catalogue''	292	(3)
From ``A Vision of the Last Judgment''	295	(2)
PART THREE / The Nineteenth Century to 1860
Introduction	297	(5)
German Romanticism and Myth	302	(4)
Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829)	306	(9)
``Talk on Mythology''	309	(4)
From The Athenaeum	313	(2)
F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854)	315	(13)
From System of Transcendental Idealism	320	(2)
From Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology	322	(6)
Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843)	328	(5)
``In My Boyhood Days''	331	(1)
From ``The Only One''	332	(1)
From ``Germania''	332	(1)
Novalis (1772-1801)	333	(8)
From ``Klingsohr's Fairy Tale,'' in Henry of Ofterdingen	336	(5)
August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845)	341	(8)
From Lectures on Literature and Fine Arts	343	(2)
From Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literture	345	(4)
German Romantic Mythology and India
Friedrich Majer (1772-1818), Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)	349	(16)
From Universal Mythological Lexicon	355	(2)
From On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians	357	(4)
From The World as Will and Representation	361	(4)
English Romanticism and Myth	365	(16)
Archibald Alison (1757-1839), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834), Robert Southey (1774-1843), Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), and Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
From Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste	370	(3)
From The Prelude	373	(1)
From The Excursion	374	(1)
From a letter to John Thelwall	375	(1)
From The Curse of Kehama	376	(1)
From ``Spirit of the Ancient Mythology''	377	(2)
From Sartor Resartus	379	(2)
Joseph Gorres (1776-1848)	381	(6)
From Mythic History of the Asiatic World	383	(4)
Friedrich Creuzer (1771-1858)	387	(10)
From Symbolism and Mythology of Ancient Peoples	390	(7)
George S. Faber (1773-1854)	397	(11)
From The Origin of Pagan Idolatry	400	(8)
Jacob Grimm (1785-1836)
Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859)	408	(8)
From Teutonic Mythology	410	(6)
Karl Otfried Muller (1797-1840)	416	(10)
From Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology	418	(4)
From History of the Literature of Ancient Greece	422	(4)
French Romanticism and Myth	426	(17)
Andre Chenier (1762-1794), F. R. De Chateaubriand (1768-1848), Honore De Balzac (1799-1850), Gerard De Nerval (1808-1855), Victor Hugo (1802-1885), and Jules Michelet (1798-1874)
From America and Invention	432	(1)
From The Genius of Christianity	433	(2)
From Seraphita	435	(4)
``El Desdichado''	439	(1)
From The Satyr	439	(2)
From Historical View of the French Revolution	441	(2)
Thomas Keightley (1789-1872)	443	(7)
From The Fairy Mythology	445	(1)
From Tales and Popular Fictions	446	(2)
From The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy	448	(2)
David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874)	450	(13)
From The Life of Jesus	454	(9)
Arthur De Gobineau (1816-1882)	463	(6)
From The Inequality of Human Races	466	(3)
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)	469	(6)
From ``Art and Revolution''	472	(1)
From ``The Art-Work of the Future''	473	(2)
From ``A Communication to my Friends''	475	(5)
From ``The Nibelungen''	477	(1)
From ``Origin and evolution of the Nibelungen-myth''	478	(2)
Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900)	480	(8)
From Comparative Mythology	483	(5)
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)	488	(11)
From The Essence of Christianity	496	(2)
From The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy	498	(1)
From ``The Leading Article of No. 179 Kolnische Zeitung''	499	(6)
From Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right	500	(1)
From ``Theses on Feuerbach''	500	(1)
From German Ideology	501	(4)
Victorian Popular Mythology	505	(6)
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) and Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867)
From The Heroes	507	(1)
From The Age of Fable	508	(3)
American Romanticism and Myth	511	(17)
R. W. Emerson (1803-1882), Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), E. A. Poe (1809-1849), Herman Melville (1819-1891), and H. D. Thoreau (1817-1862)
From ``The Age of Fable''	516	(3)
From Margaret and Her Friends	519	(4)
From ``The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion''	523	(3)
From Mardi	526	(1)
From ``Walking''	527	(1)
Bibliography of Works on Myth, 1680-1860	528	(27)
Index	555