Date of Publication: 2008-07-01

They have either retold the old, familiar myths of the past so that they carry fresh messages relevant to a contemporary audience or created their own, new myths as modern vehicles of traditional truths. Many writers have combined the two techniques.

Such is the transforming artistry which the eighteen essays in Re-Embroidering the Robe examine: the remaking or new-minting of myth, in literature from 1850 to the present day, so that what it embodies and expresses speaks powerfully to the modern reader. In widely differing ways, therefore, all of the texts analysed here compel attention.

Suzanne Bray is Professor of English Studies at Lille Catholic University in France. She specialises in the areas of history of ideas and literature and theology, mainly in Britain, during the 20th century. Her PhD examined the success of four Christian authors (G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers) during the period 1900 to 1963. She publishes in both French and English and her latest book, C. S. Lewis: la vocation d’un best-seller, was published by Imago in October 2007.

Adrienne E. Gavin is a Reader in English Literature at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK where she specializes in Victorian Literature, Children’s Literature, and Crime Fiction. She is author of Dark Horse: A Life of Anna Sewell (2004) and co-editor of Mystery in Children’s Literature: From the Rational to the Supernatural (2001) and the forthcoming Childhood in Edwardian Fiction: Worlds Enough and Time.

Peter Merchant gained his doctorate at Cambridge University and has worked since 1983 at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, where he is Subject Leader for English. A Victorian specialist, he is the editor of three Wordsworth Classics (A Tale of Two Cities, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and The Way We Live Now) and has contributed essays to journals including The Dickensian, Dickens Quarterly, Victorian Poetry, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and Recusant History.

“This fascinating and timely collection of essays explores the diverse uses and inflections of myth in European literary culture since 1850. The scope of its engagements is ambitious, and includes Victorian, Modernist and postmodern texts, in French as well as English. The collection is carefully structured, with helpful introductions to each section. The essays contextualize and discuss in innovative ways a remarkable miscellany of literature for both adults and children, from the familiar Chronicles of Narnia to the unfamiliar world of Estonian mythology, from explorations of orthodox Christian faith to diverse expressions of paganism ranging from Swinburne to Yourcenar.”

Dr William Gray, Reader in Literary History and Hermeneutics, University of Chichester, author of Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman, Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald and Hoffmann (Palgrave Macmillan), Robert Louis Stevenson: a Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan) and C.S. Lewis (Northcote House)

"The book will undoubtedly command the attention and respect of its targeted audience, the academic community. But there also exists a very large general readership, both Anglo-American and European, for whom this book will also have a significant appeal."

Chris Mitchell, Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Illinois and Director of the Marion E. Wade Center

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