Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > English Romantic Hellenism - Influence Of Greek Mythology On The Romantics

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INFLUENCE OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY ON THE ROMANTICS

Douglas Bush (essay date 1937)

SOURCE: "Coleridge: Wordsworth: Byron," in Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry, 1937. Reprint, Harvard University Press, 1969, pp. 51-80.

[In the following essay, Bush examines the influence of Greek mythology on Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Byron. Bush argues that Christian ideas dominate "Hellenic impulses " in Coleridge's poetry; maintains that Wordsworth "re-created mythological poetry for the nineteenth century "; and asserts that Byron's use of myth is most effective in his satires.]

I. Coleridge

Before we come to Wordsworth, who has been described as Coleridge's greatest work, and, like all his other works, left unfinished, a few pages must be given to Coleridge's writings. Mythology is perhaps not to be counted among the first score or two of his major interests, but some of his allusions to the subject in both...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Poetry
3. Overviews
4. Historical Development Of English Romantic Hellenism
5. Influence Of Greek Mythology On The Romantics
6. Influence Of Greek Literature, Art, And Culture On The Romantics
7. Further Reading
8. Copyright