ABSTRACT

In these twelve manuscripts, De Quincey attempted to define and illustrate the concept of mythus. As introduced in the note attached to his essay on ‘Evil’ (MS Dove Cottage, Unnumbered 3r), a mythus is a ‘tradition of the people’, a narrative of ‘the reasonable origin of things’. When ‘traditl anecdotes’ are ‘wed’ to history, the result is not a ‘Fable’ (MS Berg 216916 verso), but an historicised account of cultural beliefs.