Friedrich Max Müller and the Role of Philology in Victorian Thought

This volume offers the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary assessment of the career of the 19th century comparative philologist Friedrich Max Müller.

John R. Davis is Professor of History and International Relations at Kingston University, UK. His research covers Anglo-German relations and British and German history. Angus Nicholls is Reader in German and Comparative Literature at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. He is co-editor of the Publications of the English Goethe Society and of History of the Human Sciences.

Introduction - Friedrich Max Müller: The Career and Intellectual Trajectory of a German Philologist in Victorian Britain Part I: Friedrich Max Müller on Language, Metaphor, Religion and Myth 1. 'Language is our Rubicon': Friedrich Max Müller's Quarrel with Hensleigh Wedgwood 2. The Victorian Question of the Relation between Language and Thought 3. Friedrich Max Müller's Cultural Concept of Metaphor 4. Friedrich Max Müller on Religion and Myth 5. Comparative Mythology as a Transnational Enterprise: Friedrich Max Müller's Scholarly Identity through the Lens of Angelo De Gubernatis's Correspondence Part II: Max Müller and Religious Studies - Contribution and Reception 6. Forgotten Bibles: Friedrich Max Müller's Edition of the Sacred Books of the East 7. Parallel Lives: Friedrich Max Müller and William Wright 8. 'Ved-ntist of Ved-ntists'? The Problem of Friedrich Max Müller's Religious Identity 9. Friedrich Max Müller and George Eliot: Affinities, Einfühlung, and the Science of Religion 10. 'A reformed Buddhism [...] would help in the distant future to bring about a mutual understanding': Friedrich Max Müller's Conceptions of Religious Reform, Ecumenical Dialogue and World Peace 11. Friedrich Max Müller and the Emergence of Identity Politics in India and Germany