Rise of Modern Mythology, 1680-1860.

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - sehr guter Zustand / very good condition - M�elstrich Exemplar, ansonsten tadelloser Zustand / Deficiency stroke copy, otherwise impeccable condition - INTRODUCTION -- This BOOK IS A CRITICAL HISTORY, WITH EXTENSIVE DOCUMENTATION, of the rise and development of interest in myth from the early eighteenth century through the middle of the nineteenth century. What prompts such a volume is our sense that a reassessment of this period�s contribution to the study of myth is long overdue - both for its intrinsic worth and for its decisive part in shaping twentieth-century views of myth. We hope to make clear that our own century�s fascination with myth is part of a broader movement which spreads and intensifies from post-Renaissance times to our own. And, if only implicitly, we wish to suggest that the remarkable impact of such modern mythologists as Tylor or Frazer, Freud or Jung, Malinowski or Cassirer or others has partly contributed to but also importantly derived from the relative neglect of what has been said and thought about myth in the century and a half after 1700. One of our aims here is to redress this neglect, and to show that contemporary mythologizing is an indivisible part of a tradition - one that has become increasingly obscured. But our main interest is to try to demonstrate that this early modern work on myth is worth studying for its own sake: that from around 1700 to around 1860, theorists, scholars, and artists formulated and elaborated ideas that constitute a watershed in which radically new views of myth emerged and continue to emerge. And these may help to illuminate - from an unusual but nonetheless central viewpoint - some of the much-debated shifts in taste and thought described under such rubrics as the movement from neoclassic to romantic, or some of the problems involving, for example, primitivism, nationalism, or historicism. To remedy neglect, but convinced too that this early modern mythology can still show itself directly persuasive and interesting, we have given over a sizable part of this volume to documents. No comparable collection of texts on myth from this period exists; several of these texts have not appeared before in English, and even in the original languages and editions many of these are available only in very large or specialized libraries. Many of these texts are indeed widely and easily available, but their original concern with and importance for mythology is often overlooked: it is not usually remembered that Hume or Isaac Newton or Marx were also mythologists. ISBN 9780253201881