Higgins, D (2012) 'Hail England old England my country & home': Englishness and the Local in John Clare’s Writings. Victoriographies, 2 (2). pp. 128-148. ISSN 2044-2416
Abstract
This article rethinks John Clare's connection to place, as well as the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘the local’ themselves. It argues that the localism of his work was enabled by potential alienation and displacement and was connected to a sense of wider national community. Clare's writings attempt to think of England in two related ways: as a political community brought together at times of threat, and as a community of taste brought together by a way of apprehending the natural world. His early patriotic verse is often strained and unconvincing, but poems such as ‘The Flitting’ present an idea of ‘native poesy’ that embodies the local and the national through careful description of the natural world. However, this idea was itself mediated through metropolitan attempts to reclaim the customs and literature of ‘merry England’. Thus Clare's localism and nationalism are shown to be ambivalent and uncanny.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2012, Edinburgh University Press. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in Victoriographies. The Version of Record is available online at: http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/vic.2012.0084. |
Keywords: | place, ecocriticism, nation, autobiography, ‘The Flitting’, Romanticism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of English (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 08 Sep 2017 09:57 |
Last Modified: | 06 Nov 2017 23:25 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Edinburgh University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.3366/vic.2012.0084 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:105634 |