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The Mythographers and the Romantic Revival of Greek Myth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
That the english romantic poets were much more seriously interested in Greek myth, both in itself and as a subject for poetry, than their eighteenth-century predecessors hardly requires demonstration. The divergence may be suggested, admittedly in somewhat exaggerated form, by juxtaposing two quotations: Addison (in Spectator 523) congratulates a new poet because he “had not amused himself with Fables out of the Pagan Theology,” unlike the fashionable poetasters who filled their works with the exploits of river gods; and Keats hopes (in the Preface to Endymion) that he had “not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness.” The poet who uses the “pagan fables,” Addison suggests, can only be amusing himself; while for Keats those fables have become “the beautiful mythology of Greece,” which the poet scarcely feels himself worthy to touch.
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- Copyright © 1964 by The Modern Language Association of America
References
1 Douglas Bush's Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1937) deals with the subject in full. See especially pp. 20–26 on the status of mythology in the eighteenth century. While there have been many discussions of the treatment of Greek myth by the Romantic poets (see especially Edward Hungerford's Shores of Darkness, New York, 1941, and Edward S. LeComte's Endymion in England, New York, 1944), the mythographers discussed in this article have received little attention. Seznec's The Survival of the Pagan Gods stops far short of the period, and Manuel's The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods deals primarily with the sources in continental philosophy of the attitudes toward Greek myth.
2 Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (New York, 1940), p. 4.
3 Andrew Tooke, The Pantheon, Representing the Fabulous Histories of the Heathen Gods, and Most Illustrious Heroes (London, 1781), p. 26.
4 [William] King, An Historical Account of the Heathen Gods and Heroes; Necessary for the Understanding of the Ancient Poets (London, 1722), p. 91.
5 Samuel Boyse, A New Pantheon: or, Fabulous History of the Heathen Gods, Heroes, Goddesses, c. (London, 1753), p. 94.
6 Ibid., p. 239.
7 [Thomas Blackwell], Letters Concerning Mythology (London, 1748), p. 178.
8 The Chevalier Ramsay, “A Discourse upon the Theology and Mythology of the Ancients,” The Travels of Cyrus (London, 1727–28), ii, 23.
9 Joseph Spence, Polymetis: or, An Enquiry Concerning the Agreement Between the Works of the Roman Poets, and the Remains of the Antient Artists (London, 1747), p. 47.
10 Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteeenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), p. 65.
11 The Letters of John Keats, ed. Maurice Buxton Forman (London, 1952), p. 67.
12 John Bell, Bell's New Pantheon; or, Historical Dictionary of the Gods, Demi-gods, Heroes, and Fabulous Personages of Antiquity (London, 1790), i, 287.
13 It is interesting that when a heavily revised edition appeared in America in 1837, the editors proudly announced that they had separated the historical and geographical parts of the work from the mythological parts and relegated the mythological section to the last part of the book, presumably so that its imaginative “facts” would not be confused with the genuine facts of Greek history and geography. Furthermore, the editors of this edition informed their readers, they were particularly pleased that they had “removed from their pages the offensive matter with which those of the first author were so profusely stained,” those “grosser failings, to pervert the moral sense and feeling of the youthful inquirer who may have recourse to its pages.” [J. Lempriere, Bibliotheca Classica: or, a Dictionary of All the Principal Names and Terms Relating to the Geography, Topography, History, Literature, and Mythology of Antiquity and of the Ancients. Revised and Corrected, and Divided ... by Lorenzo L. DaPonte and John D. Ogilby (New York, 1837), p. 5.] The America of 1837 sounds oddly like the England of 1737.
14 “Lempriere's Dictionary,” The Quarterly Journal of Education, i (1831), 297.
15 Edward Baldwin (pseud.), The Pantheon: or Ancient History of the Gods of Greece and Rome (London, 1806), p. vii.
16 R. P. Knight, An Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology (London, 1836), p. iii.
17 Douglas Bush., “Notes on Keats's Reading,” PMLA, l (1935), 796.
18 Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, Recollections of Writers (New York, [1878]), p. 124.
19 Lots 673, 170, 321, and 449. Transactions of the Wordsworth Society, vi (1884), 195–257.
20 “English Deism and the Development of Mythological Syncretism,” PMLA, lxxi (1956), 1094–1116.
21 “Mythology and Religion of Ancient Greece,” The Foreign Quarterly Review, vii (1831), 33–52.
22 Karl Otfried Müller, Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (Göttingen, 1825), pp. 61–62.
23 “Mythology and Religion of Ancient Greece,” p. 51.
24 Heathen Mythology. Illustrated by Extracts from the Most Celebrated Writers, Both Ancient and Modern (London, [1842]), p. v.
25 “Mythological System of the Hellenes,” Fraser's, xxxv (1847), 304–305.
26 Spectator 523. Addison does accept the use of the fables in the mock epic, however.