'Kubla Khan' and the Fall of Jerusalem: The Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and Secular Literature 1770–1880

by Elinor S. Shaffer

Dr Schaffer outlines the development of the mythological school of European Biblical criticism, especially its German origins and its reception in England, and studies the influence of this movement in the work of specific Coleridge Hölderlin, Browning, and George Eliot. The 'higher criticism' treated sacred scripture as literature and as history, as the product of its time, and the highest expression of a developing group consciousness; it challenged current views on the authorship and dating of the Pentateuch and the Gospels, on inspiration, prophecy, and canonicity, and formulated a new apologetics closely linked with the growth of Romantic aesthetics. The importance of this study is that it shows that readings of specific literary texts can intersect with general movements of thought and action through the scrutiny of a clearly defined intellectual discipline, here the higher criticism, which developed as a particular expression of the larger trends in the history of the period. Dr Shaffer throws light on individual works of literature, the formation between England and Germany, and the bases of European Romanticism.

Genres: Nonfiction

371 pages, Hardcover

First published September 25, 1975

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

For years, the only book of its sort in English. Takes seriously and on its own terms, a forgotten moment in the early history of critical theory. Similar studies have emerged recently, such as those of James Porter, those these appear in the service of later thinkers (Nietzches, to wit) and treat the exegetics and hermeneutics of the Gottingen school merely as prolegommena to the reading of the later and more universally recognized genius. It's is no small feat that the author accomplishes in taking materials thought long obsolete and dry as lye, and reanimating them in a way that allows the reader to comprehend why they were in their own day seen not just as relevant put positively thrilling. Students and scholars alike today need as much of this stuff as they can get.