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10 - Country matters

from Part II - Geographies: The Scenes of Literary Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2009

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Summary

An enormous amount of British Romantic literary production is situated in the countryside, as a setting for narrated action, a scene for poetic meditation, or a place to write. One thinks immediately of Wordsworth’s relation to the Lake District, indeed of a whole school called ‘the Lakers’ (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey); or of a writer like John Clare, identified with the peasantry, or of William Cobbett, a keen and critical observer of the changing character of the countryside in his Rural Rides. Landscape painting, most famously exemplified by Constable and Turner, displaces portraiture and history painting in the hierarchy of the visual arts in the Romantic period. The cult of the Picturesque in tourism and landscape gardening becomes a fad and an object of satire in the caricatures of Rowlandson and the novels of Jane Austen. When one thinks of England in the Romantic period, then, one thinks of the country, and it is difficult to imagine what would be left of Romantic literature if it were divested of its natural objects and rural settings, if it lacked flowers, trees, birds, fields, rivers, mountains, seashores and the innumerable ‘prospects’ that invite the traveller to stop and stare at the countryside. Beyond the literary domain, the country becomes the object of a newly intensified attention in the Romantic period.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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  • Country matters
  • Edited by James Chandler
  • Book: The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature
  • Online publication: 28 May 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521790079.012
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  • Country matters
  • Edited by James Chandler
  • Book: The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature
  • Online publication: 28 May 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521790079.012
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Country matters
  • Edited by James Chandler
  • Book: The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature
  • Online publication: 28 May 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521790079.012
Available formats
×