Publisher's Synopsis
Ruskin's handling of the topic of mythology is one of the ways in which his work expresses the central concerns of the period in which he wrote - the age of Romanticism. Nevertheless, his early writing voices a Christian mistrust of supposedly pagan mythology.;Later he came to revere and use mythology and insisted that historical scholarship could never wholly uncover the meaning of myth: for him it was primarily a religious phenomenon with an unchanging spiritual message, founded on an ancient understanding of the world.;Ruskin believed that myth was an instrument of teaching and this book shows how deeply his thinking and works - autobiographical, art historical, political and scientific - are pervaded by his rewriting of myth.
