The Reception of Myth in English Romanticism by Anthony John Harding (review)

340 LETTERS IN CANADA 1995 tell us how Burney reflected on husbands and wives, parents and childIen, royalty and kingship, while mad King George stalked the garden-walks at Kew. Bufher comedies are another story. They are lively, solidly plotted, rich in sharply characterized dialogue. Certainly, cutting is required; Burney supplied persons, incidents, complications, and speeches with a novelist's generous hand; the stringent economies of the stage must be imposed. Given the assistance of a skilled dramaturge, however, all of Burney's comedies could play well. The highly successful production of A Busy Day by an English company in Bristol and London in 1993 shows the way. The Complete Plays of Frances Burney makes a massive addition to the published canon of an author whose claim to major status it substantially reinforces. Peter Sabor and his colleagues have prepared an edition worthy of the occasion, and McGill-Queen's has issued it in two volumes well printed and sturdily bound - quality rare in bookmaking these days. Superb work all round. (JOHN D. BAIRD) Anthony John Harding. The Reception ofMyth in English Romanticism University of Missouri Press. xvi, 290 . $39.95 Based on the assumption that 'the very term "myth" designates something that has slipped from our grasp,' and the no doubt accurate observation that, 'having flourished briefly in the 1940S and 1950S, II myth criticism" has ... become intellectually disreputable,' this timely book sets out to build some bridges between an important but now neglected mode of literary discourse and some of the prevailing fashions in critical theory. Professor Harding's style is analytical and somewhatsceptical; his own criticalstance could perhaps be described as deconstructive with a small'd' and feminist with a (mostly) small/f.' Apropos of style, the word 'reception' (based on a quotation from Hans Blumenberg) in the book's title suggests a passive role for the poet in relation to myth, a connotation that is rather unfortunate because, as Harding himself observes, it is 'the process of transformation and reinterpretation that repays study,not the "original myth.'" Attempting to distance himseU from Northrop Frye's currently unfashionable theory of archetypal criticism, Harding gives a capsule summary of the Anatomy that makes Frye sound like Joseph Campbell. Maintaining that 'what [Frye] calls "the central myth of literature" is the quest myth [based on] the hero's relation to the gods,' Harding continues: 'Behind this premise appears to run the implicit assumption that readers will initially be interested in whatbefalls the hero, and even that readers will to a greater or lesser extent "identify" with the hero.... To "identify with" the hero of Shelley's "Alastor" is to read the text naively; to identify with Captain Ahab, even more so.' This is of course a gross oversimplification of Frye's HUMANITIES 341 theory: as Frye wrote in hls NotebooksI'I'vealways thought of identification with the literature, putting yourself in the place of the hero, as the depth of absurd immaturity; clearly I mean something else.' Defining his own approach to Romantic mythology, Hardingwrites: 'this book will confine itself to the sense in which myth is usually associated with mythography and mythology, that is, to traditionary myths, the origins of which are assumed to be nonliterary and no longer accessible or even comprehensible to the writer who adapts and transmits them.' Lest one should assume that this is merely a tautology for 'classical mythology/ Harding does not (always or entirely) exclude from his purview folkloric elements or biblical stories such as Ithe Genesis myth.' He does largely exclude the one Romantic poet who tackled head on the problem of making his own myth: Blake. Here Harding seems to be rather uneasily following the precedent of Douglas Bushl whose 'very useful and painstaking study, published in 1937, remains [according to Harding] the only attempt to deal comprehensively with the Romantics' use of myth.' Harding also tiptoes warily around Byron, who is also regretfully excluded, along with women writers of the period, so that what emerges is the following set of parameters : .'This book does not pretend to be a comprehensive survey of the literary uses of myth in English Romanticism.... I focus on the four poets [Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley...