Literary Englands
Versions of 'Englishness' in Modern Writing

The influence of 'Englishness' - loss, nostalgia and exile - on the work of twentieth-century writers.

David Gervais (Author)

9780521061933, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 May 2008

300 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.7 cm, 0.462 kg

"Gervais as a critic is often both sensible and acute." John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement

In our time 'Englishness' has become a theme for speculation rather than dogma: twentieth-century writers have found it an elusive and ambiguous concept, a cue for nostalgia or for a sense of exile and loss. Literary Englands meditates on the contemporary meanings of 'Englishness' and explores some of the ways in which a sense of nationality has informed and shaped the work of a range of writers including Edward Thomas, Forster and Lawrence, Leavis and George Sturt, Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Betjeman, Larkin and Geoffrey Hill. Through close engagement with the language and thought of these writers David Gervais shows the extent to which they have been influenced by the consciousness of working within a long-established, complex and sophisticated literary tradition. In the process he elucidates a nostalgia which lies at the heart of our culture.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. The nineteenth century: pastoral versions of England
2. Edward Thomas: an England of 'holes and corners'
3. Forster and Lawrence: exiles in the homeland
4. Late witness: George Sturt and village England
5. Contending Englands: F. R. Leavis and T. S. Eliot
6. Englands within England: Waugh and Orwell
7. Larkin, Betjeman and the aftermath of 'England'
8. Geoffrey Hill and the 'floating of nostalgia'
Afterword: a homemade past
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]