Mapping Mythologies : Countercurrents in Eighteenth-Century British Poetry and Cultural History

Witty, informative, full of sharp and provocative insights, this study by leading scholar, Marilyn Butler, offers a compelling account of the varied, ambitious 'mythologies' of the nation developed by writers in eighteenth-century Britain who felt themselves to be marginalized or excluded from centres of power.

In this groundbreaking work of revisionary literary history, Marilyn Butler traces the imagining of alternative versions of the nation in eighteenth-century Britain, both in the works of a series of well-known poets (Akenside, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Chatterton, Macpherson, Blake) and in the differing accounts of the national culture offered by eighteenth-century antiquarians and literary historians. She charts the beginnings in eighteenth-century Britain of what is now called cultural history, exploring how and why it developed, and the issues at stake. Her interest is not simply in a succession of great writers, but in the politics of a wider culture, in which writers, scholars, publishers, editors, booksellers, readers all play their parts. For more than thirty years, Marilyn Butler was a towering presence in eighteenth-century and romantic studies, and this major work is published for the first time.