Modernity and the Reinvention of Tradition: Backing into the Future

by Stephen Prickett

• ISBN13: 9780521517461
• ISBN10: 052151746X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The idea of tradition seems a timeless one, but our modern understanding of the term was actually shaped by the Victorian revival of tradition as a cornerstone of religion, art and culture. Stephen Prickett traces how the word 'tradition' fell out of use in English by the middle of the eighteenth century and how it returned in the nineteenth having radically changed and gained in meaning. Prickett analyses the work of authors who, like Burke, perhaps unexpectedly, avoid use of the concept, as well as those who, like Coleridge, Keble and Newman, who, variously influenced by German Romantics, explored it in detail, and disagreed profoundly with each other as to its implications. An important contribution to literature, history and theology, this sweeping work shows how people manufacture their own idea of truth, customs, or ancient wisdom to make sense of the past in terms of a problematic present.

Author Biography

Michael Wheeler Visiting Professor, Universities of Lancaster and Southampton

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Introduction: Ancient & modern: the braid of Cassiodorus	p. 1
Tradition, literacy and change	p. 14
Church versus Scripture: the idea of Biblical tradition	p. 34
Revolution and tradition	p. 55
Re-envisioning the past: metaphors and symbols of tradition	p. 70
Inventing Christian culture: Volney, Chateaubriand and the French Revolution	p. 89
Herder, Schleiermacher, Novalis and Schlegel: the idea of a Christian Europe	p. 107
Translating Herder: the idea of Protestant Romanticism	p. 129
Keble and the Anglican tradition	p. 149
Newman and the development of tradition	p. 169
Arnold: taking religion out of religion	p. 189
Radical tradition: theologizing Eliot	p. 210
Epilogue: re-energizing the past	p. 226
Appendix: Veláquez and the Royal Boar Hunt	p. 239
Bibliography	p. 245
Index	p. 258
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