Ebook: Imagining the Pagan Past: Gods and Goddesses in Literature and History Since the Dark Ages

Imagining the Pagan Past explores the pagan stories of Britain s past. These tales have been characterised by gods and fairies, May Day celebrations, nursery rhymes and in fiction for adults and children. But the pagan history and its stories have always had an uncomfortable relationship with the scholarly world; being seen as childish, self-indulgent and, worse, encouraging tribal and nationalistic feelings.

From the Middle Ages to the present, Marion Gibson explores the ways in which British pagan gods and goddesses have been represented in poetry, novels, plays, chronicles, scientific and scholarly writing. From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare to John Dryden and H.G. Wells to Naomi Mitchison it explores Romano-British, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon deities and fictions. The result is a comprehensive picture of the ways in which writers have peopled the British pagan pantheons throughout history.

Imagining the Pagan Past will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of paganism.