Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. The World of Mr Casaubon
  • Cited by 16
      • Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      November 2016
      October 2016
      ISBN:
      9781139226646
      9781107027718
      9781107608597
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139226646
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.49kg, 248 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.37kg, 252 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Literature, History of Ideas, English Literature 1830-1900, History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
      Series:
      Ideas in Context (115)
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Subjects:
    Literature, History of Ideas, English Literature 1830-1900, History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
    Series:
    Ideas in Context (115)
    Information

    Book description

    The World of Mr Casaubon takes as its point of departure a fictional character - Mr Casaubon in George Eliot's classic novel, Middlemarch. The author of an unfinished 'Key to All Mythologies', Casaubon has become an icon of obscurantism, irrelevance and futility. Crossing conventional disciplinary boundaries, Colin Kidd excavates Casaubon's hinterland, and illuminates the fierce ideological war which raged over the use of pagan myths to defend Christianity from the existential threat posed by radical Enlightenment criticism. Notwithstanding Eliot's portrayal of Casaubon, Anglican mythographers were far from unworldly, and actively rebutted the radical freethinking associated with the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Orientalism was a major theatre in this ideological conflict, and mythography also played an indirect but influential role in framing the new science of anthropology. The World of Mr Casaubon is rich in interdisciplinary twists and ironies, and paints a vivid picture of the intellectual world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.

    Reviews

    'Behind this excellent study of the history of mythography in Britain lies an ingenious starting point: the 'hobby horse' of George Eliot's dried-up pedant and seeker of the 'Key to All Mythologies' in Middlemarch the Revd Edward Casaubon … Colin Kidd's achievement is to have made an impressively wide-ranging and readable contribution to the immensely complex history of the subject that caught the Revd Edward Casaubon in its net.'

    Rosemary Ashton Source: The Times Literary Supplement

    ‘Kidd’s sprightly style can breathe life into apparently dead disputes. He makes a particularly touching case for Jacob Bryant, whose hefty A New System of Ancient Mythology (1774–76) was the closest thing to a prototype of Casaubon’s project.’

    Rosemary Hill Source: The Guardian

    'The World of Mr Casaubon is an important insight into an early modern and nineteenth-century intellectual tradition - and a valuable explanation of why Eliot wished to give this tradition such a bruising.'

    Richard Fallon Source: The British Society for Literature and Science

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Contents

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Why this information is here

    This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

    Accessibility Information

    Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.