17:30
Gresham College
January 8
This lecture looks at how and why a particular form of the non-Christian divine feminine took over the Western European imagination from the beginning of the nineteenth century – a great goddess representing the natural world, or the moon and stars, or both. It traces the development of belief in this being’s importance, and her impact not only on creative literature but upon the developing disciplines of ancient history and archaeology. It also confronts the problem of the different kinds of politics this figure represents.